WordPress.org

WordPress 5.4 Beta 3 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.

You can test the WordPress 5.4 beta in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose “bleeding edge nightlies” or “Beta/RC – Bleeding edge” option in version 2.2.0 or later of the plugin) * you must already have updated to your site to “bleeding edge nightlies” for the “Beta/RC – Bleeding edge” option to be available
• Or download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.4 is slated for release on March 31st, 2020, and we need your help to get there.

Thanks to the testing and feedback from everyone who tested beta 2 (and beta 1) over 24 tickets have been closed in the past week.

Some highlights

• Round-up of Gutenberg fixes
• Display Site Health score on Dashboard

Developer notes

WordPress 5.4 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developer notes tag for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

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.

Some WordPress developers and agencies were caught off guard when WP Engine announced it had acquired Flywheel in June last year. Flywheel had quickly become a trusted web hosting company for many that specifically catered to the needs of developers and agencies. For some, they questioned whether such a buyout would change the company culture and whether the good things about Flywheel’s services would be swallowed by WP Engine’s offerings.

The move had also come only a month after Flywheel closed its $15 per month Tiny plan. There was some initial confusion that the two events were linked.

“With any acquisition of this scale, there is going to be an initial wave of confusion, skepticism, and a bit of shock,” said Dusty Davidson, CEO and co-founder. “People had come to know, love, and trust Flywheel, and when it was announced that two well-known WordPress companies (and former competitors) were joining forces, they weren’t sure where we would stand as a company.”

Davidson said the company fielded more questions that were concerned about the future than outright pushback against the move. Most such questions centered on whether Flywheel would continue offering their existing services and tools.

“It’s now been six months since one of the largest acquisitions in WordPress history, and we’re happy to report that things remain ‘business as usual,'” said Davidson. “We’ve remained true to our word, and Flywheel is continuing to live out our mission to help creatives do their best work. The community may have been skeptical about how this acquisition was going to pan out, but the fact is that nothing has really changed and our products have only improved!”

How Flywheel would be folded into WP Engine was not clear early on. The two companies approached the change by learning from each other and gathering feedback. “We announced that we were acquired back in June, and it took about six months to figure out the logistics of the acquisition and the relationships between both companies,” said Davidson.

After working out the details, it was decided that Flywheel would operate as a separate division within WP Engine with its own services.

Bringing the Tiny Plan Back

Some users expressed disppointment with the removal of the Tiny plan last year. It was an affordable tier for small sites at $15 per month.

The plan change was the first time Flywheel had changed pricing in the company’s history. “The changes to plans back in May 2019 were made to allow us to continue investing more into the future of our platform, existing and future features, and to offer up more solutions to better fit our customers,” said Davidson.

Based on customer feedback, Flywheel began to see that Tiny was a valuable plan for agencies who needed to offer a managed WordPress hosting solution for smaller clients. “When we joined forces with WP Engine, we were able to realign our goals as a business and refocus our efforts on the audience we’ve always catered to best: freelancers and small agencies,” said Davidson.

SOC Type 2 Certification

Earlier this month, Flywheel announced it had completed SOC 2 compliance and certification as part of their long-term plan in building a more robust and trusted company.

“Businesses using cloud service providers use SOC 2 reports to assess and address the risks associated with third-party technology services,” said Tommy Vacek, VP of Engineering. “When you boil it down though, it essentially means that Flywheel’s security practices are the best in the industry, and we’re one of the only WordPress hosts that has achieved it.”

“It’s a sign of maturity on almost all areas of our business, from finance to information technology, and it also allows us to assess risk in our business and make decisions based off of it,” he said. “It’s a stamp of approval to demonstrate Flywheel’s intentionality around security.”

The 2020 Roadmap and Beyond

Rick Knudtson, CPO and co-founder, feels like the acquisition will allow the Flywheel team to better cater to creative agencies in the WordPress space. “Our product team is working on an exciting update to our offering entirely focused on supporting the growth of agencies, and our marketing team is hard at work creating brand new resources for agencies aspiring to make 2020 a great year,” he said. “Joining forces with WP Engine has allowed us to accelerate our product initiatives.”

The company is now offering a free course on selling WordPress maintenance to clients. Themes by StudioPress, acquired by WP Engine in 2018, are all free for Flywheel customers. Flywheel is also working heavily on tools for WordPress developers.

“Developers drive WordPress forward and WP Engine is committed to supporting the future of WordPress through industry-leading developer tools,” said Knudtson. One such tool is Local, the company’s local development environment built for working with WordPress. “Since joining the WP Engine family, Local has become the standard local development and deployment tool for our customers across both of our platforms.”

Local is currently used by over 50,000 developers. The team spent the last few months re-architecting the tool from the ground up. Knudtson said it is now five times faster than before. They are expanding the team that is working on Local to help handled more advanced developer workflows.

“In 2020, we’ll introduce new ways to use Local so that all developers — novices or advanced, solo or within a team — can build their perfect development on top of Local,” said Knudtson. “Whether you just want to connect to your host and deploy, or you’re integrating into your existing CI/CD workflow, Local should be the solution.”

The Local turnkey products, such as Local Pro and Local Teams, will be available to developers across both platforms in the future.

Since the acquisition, Flywheel has included a new technology called Smart Refresh as part of their in-house caching engine. The system watches for updates made to a WordPress install and clears the cache when needed. Knudtson claims the updates to their system has increased backend performance on the platform by 50%.

The company also recently announced its new Performance Insights feature. The tool provides proprietary performance data for developers to make decisions with sites they control.

Elementor has seen explosive growth in their WordPress-based page building application since its release in May 2016, now boasting more than 4 million installs of the free version of the plugin.

The paid version of Elementor was introduced in November 2016, with a common freemium upgrade model. The Elementor community has taken off, furthering the product's growth and loyalty among freelancers, DIYers, and site wranglers.

In such a crowded space as WordPress page building plugins, and especially considering core WordPress efforts via Gutenberg, Elementor's meteoric rise is an incredible accomplishment.

Others have taken notice. In their Series A fundraising event, Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading a $15 million round. Elementor has been working on raising money since at least the second quarter of 2019, so this news is a long time coming.

Edit: Envato was rumored to be investing as well. I've confirmed with Envato that while they are working closely with Elementor on some projects, they are not an investor in this round.

Elementor has an opportunity to do a lot of interesting stuff with these funds — inside the WordPress experience, and I suspect independent of WordPress as well.

I expect to see a fully hosted version of Elementor's site building capabilities where WordPress is (at least partially) hidden from the view of the user. They are currently hiring for their “Cloud team” which is tasked with “building, maintaining, and supporting the company ‘Cloud Hosting SaaS Solution'.”

What has made Elementor stand out thus far is its relative intuitiveness and the establishment of a very loyal following — mostly lured in with extremely attractive pricing of the “Pro” product ($49 per site, or only $199 for unlimited sites), and a very generously featured free tier.

Not many WordPress-centric companies have raised money. I'm very interested to see where Elementor chooses to take the product from here. They certainly have both the momentum and the backing to do something big.

With a team based in Israel, Elementor has more than 100 employees now working on the product and support. This raise will surely enable them to extend their runway while maintaining an attractive price point for the paid product and assist in the development of their next major release.

Post Status was not included in the embargoed list of news sources to report this story. We became aware of the news through our own means and decided to report on it now.

Within WordPress circles, I don’t talk much about politics. I was raised to believe that politics and religion are not polite dinner topics. That belief generally extends to my work-life too. However, sometimes these topics crash into one another at full speed.

I don’t typically provide qualifying statements about my beliefs when writing an article. My words should stand on their own, regardless of my personal views. However, in this toxic political climate in the U.S. that sometimes worms its way into the WordPress community, alternative views are often automatically dismissed if the writer is not considered one of their own. If I wrote a piece that defended conservatism without self-describing myself as a liberal, my words would fall on many deaf ears. Such is the climate that we live in today.

Therefore, without further ado, I proclaim myself as one of you.

WordCamps and Political/Hate Speech

In Symbols of Hate at WordCamps, Aaron Jorbin makes the argument that red MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats should be banned from WordCamps because they are symbols of racism. While one-sided and starting from the position that such apparel is hate speech regardless of context, it is a thought-provoking piece. It is also the sort of statement that will earn you internet points from what is seemingly a majority, Left-leaning inner WordPress community. But, there are unanswered questions and another side to this story that Jorbin failed to explore in his article.

Jorbin opened with a large image. The image has a simple word as a faux HTML tag: </hate>. Before the argument begins, this imagery lets the readers know that there is no discussion. In HTML, the / character is meant to close a statement. The opening salvo is the end of the discussion. The text is merely a formality.

MAGA caps are hate speech.

There is no context in which a MAGA cap is acceptable. The reader should know this because the argument was won before it was given.

“I fully cosign,” said Adam Soucie, the co-lead organizer for WordCamp 2020, on Twitter. “Show up to @WordCampOrlando in one of those red hats and you’ll be politely asked to leave. You know exactly what you’re doing with that choice. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Central.”

The message is clear that certain people are not welcome. More often than not, that message is squarely aimed at conservatives. This type of groupthink is prevalent within the WordPress community. Your political beliefs are not welcome.

In his article, Jorbin does describe how political speech, the MAGA cap, has been co-opted by various hate groups. The question is whether we allow the actions of the minority of one group to become the deciding factor in how we treat the majority. We must also ask whether we hold other political speech to the same standard.

Conservatives within our community often feel like they have no voice. The article and the subsequent discussions taking place on social media help drive home that feeling.

“Today is a hard day to be a Republican in the WordPress Community,” wrote Bridget Willard on Twitter. “I see the tweets. And the moral superiority. It isn’t kind or inclusive.”

She is not alone. Like her, many feel like they will be ostracized if they post a dissenting opinion that does not 100% jive with the Left-leaning vocal majority.

“A MAGA hat makes me angry and uncomfortable, but speech is speech unless there’s a direct incitement,” responded Steve Stern on Twitter. “Do we ban all political content from all WP events? Is a T-shirt supporting a leftist cause OK? WordPress needs to support freedom, even when uncomfortable.”

It is a slippery slope from banning a MAGA cap to stifling more mundane conservative speech, particularly when conservative voices are within the minority in our community. If the MAGA cap is hate speech, it cannot be a stretch to label anything about the man who gave rise to some extremist voices as falling under the same guideline.

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the red MAGA cap is deemed hate speech, regardless of who is wearing it, their intentions, and context. Outright ban it. Does such a ban extend to a “Trump 2020” T-shirt? In the mind of many who would ban the MAGA hat, I can guarantee they would like to see the ban extended to any Trump or even conservative-related apparel. Others may not be willing to go that far. However, for many, a ban on such apparel has absolutely nothing to do with hate speech. It has to do with a difference of opinion. Political opinion. Instead of meeting on equal terms and discussing those differences as open-minded adults, it is easier to quash an opponent’s freedom of expression by labeling it all as hate.

If a red MAGA cap is always hate speech, it is not a leap to say that any Trump-supporting apparel is also hate speech. There has to be a line, and the one between a baseball cap and a T-shirt sporting “Trump 2020” is blurry.

Perhaps the solution is to ban all political apparel at WordCamps, regardless of whose politics are on showcase. If some cannot stomach a MAGA cap, a life-long hunter should not have to look at a “meat is murder” T-shirt. We should also ban the countless other slogans that itch some group or another the wrong way.

Or, we can all put on our big boy and girl pants and step out into the world as adults who might be presented with ideas outside our own from time to time.

WordPress’s mission statement is to democratize publishing. The goal is not to democratize publishing for some or for those who share our political views. The implication is that we are democratizing publishing for all. By extension, WordCamps are about bringing people together from all walks of life. We don’t all share the same views, but we should respect that others believe differently. The idea is to break bread with those who are different from you and perhaps grow from this interaction.

Then, imagine yourself in my shoes. I live in rural Alabama. This is Trump Country. If I got angry every time I came across the path of someone wearing a MAGA cap, I would spend most of my days in a fit of rage. Some of my more liberal friends ask how I live among them, jokingly. Truth be told, it is pretty easy once you start looking at people as people. Once you stop making assumptions about them by the clothes they wear or the political views they hold. Once you sit down and listen to their hopes and dreams and fears.

At WordCamps, the best thing would be for everyone to leave their politics at the door. If we need a rule to formalize it, then so be it. We all have so much more in common that we likely realize. Let’s focus on the good that we can do together.

Front page of the theme directory, featuring popular themes.

Yesterday, the featured themes page was quietly removed from the WordPress theme directory. Previously, it was the primary page users would see when visiting the directory. It has now been replaced with the popular themes list. This change is only reflected on the WordPress.org website and not directly in the WordPress admin for end-users.

This is the first major change with the featured list since it was switched to a randomized set of themes in 2014. Over the past six years, volunteers have presented numerous ideas on what to do with the page that is, in many ways, the face of WordPress, particularly for new users who are searching for their first theme. No proposal has gone beyond a Trac ticket with a handful of participants or a theme review team meeting. It is almost as if every idea was dead on arrival.

Removing the featured list altogether is not a simple matter of hiding the page on WordPress.org. There is an API endpoint that serves the list and core WordPress fetches themes directly from WordPress.org. Even if removed from the software, we would still be dealing with years of backward compatibility for older versions of WordPress. At this point, outright removal is not an ideal solution.

The commit note makes a point that hiding the page from the theme directory is only temporary. The idea is to eventually replace it with a properly-curated featured themes list.

However, such a proposal could languish for years. Given that we have suffered through six years of a randomly-generated list, it is unclear if anyone is motivated enough to push the project forward.

What Happened to the Curated Featured Themes List?

In October, the WordPress theme review team decided to create a system for a curated feature themes list. The initial plan was for the team representatives to work out the finer details and create a path forward. However, the idea seemed to fizzle out before it ever broke ground. There was little public mention of it after the excitement of the initial decision.

“It was really hard to come up with requirements that we wanted the themes to follow,” said Carolina Nymark, a TRT representative. “Like the keyboard navigation and skip link had to be added to the theme, and no upsell. That alone limited the possible themes to a selection that was too small.”

The idea for curated themes was that they would be the best of the best. Seemingly, that meant going above and beyond the standard requirements while being completely free of commercial interests. In hindsight, that level of scrutiny over the list may have been too tough of a sell. Curation does not necessarily have to strive for perfection. Uniqueness may provide more room for flexibility.

“We did not hold any meetings with votes because there were concerns that people would only root for their own theme, their friends’ themes, or even get paid to suggest themes,” said Nymark. “It would be too easy to game it for profit.” Such backdoor schemes have been trouble with previous programs in the team’s past.

The curated list based on their criteria would be too small to rotate regularly on the featured page. The team attempted to find other solutions. However, they were unsuccessful.

“It was a strain that we could not figure out a good solution where theme authors would be treated fairly,” said Nymark. “Then we had a video meeting with [Josepha Haden, Executive Director of WordPress] where she said that the TRT team representatives should not have to select the featured themes. And it stopped there.”

Ari Stathopoulos, a TRT representative, mentioned the elephant in the room that the team was not addressing. “There would be significant drama if the list was manually curated,” he said. “If it’s done by reps, then those who were not selected would accuse reps of favoring some themes. If it was done by a rotating committee, the same. Authors would rather believe that they are a victim of some conspiracy rather than believe their theme is bad.”

A curated themes list is still a possibility. It is unlikely the theme review team will be handling it directly anytime soon. If it does happen, it will likely be another party who makes the call and gets to be the bad guy.

About eight of the speakers including myself are going to be doing a livestream tomorrow from 2 to 10 UTC, or what would be 9am to 5pm in Bangkok where the inaugural WordCamp Asia was supposed to happen this weekend.

We’d all much rather be in person, but I do think there is a silver lining in us learning how to do official WordPress livestream events that can be accessible to everyone all over the world, following in the footsteps awesome virtual events like WordSesh.

As mentioned in this post, Matt will host a livestream on February 22 during Bangkok daylight hours. He opened an invitation to any speaker who was affected by the cancellation, and the livestream will include the following fine people: Imran Sayed, Md Saif Hassan, Muhammad Muhsin, Nirav Mehta, Piccia Neri, Umar Draz, and Francesca Marano as well as a Fireside Chat and Q&A with Matt Mullenweg & Monisha Varadan.

This should be a great way to get to hear from some speakers who have yet to share their knowledge on a global stage. WordPress is enriched by a multitude of experiences and perspectives, and I hope you are as excited as I am to hear new voices from a part of the world that is frequently underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. 

Also exciting, the WordCamp Asia team has announced that they’re aiming for January 2021, so please mark your calendars now! This small but mighty team of trailblazing organizers has shown great resilience over the years they’ve spent, building toward this event. I am personally grateful for the hard work they’ve done and have yet to do, and can’t wait to thank them in Bangkok next year.

The Tavern is taking a break for the week as both of its authors are out. We’re happy about expanding families, and saying “boo” to the flu.

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite WordPress-powered sites that I follow and learn from:

• Tim Ferriss is back to blogging and it’s great.
• Seth Godin never stopped blogging and stays great.
• Farnam Street always expands my mind. (Three nice .blog domains in a row!)
• HeroPress gives me energy to work through the hard problems in WordPress.
• Naval is thoughtful and provocative.
• Fred Wilson is one of the most successful early-stage investors, and still takes the time to blog almost every day.
• Laughing Squid collects the weirdest and most interesting stuff on the internet.
• Krista Tippett’s On Being expands your soul.

Finally, the podcast I did with Om a few weeks ago covers some fun early internet trivia. We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming next week!

WordPress 5.4 Beta 2 is now available!

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

You can test WordPress 5.4 beta 2 in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option)
• Or download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.4 is slated for release on March 31, 2020, and we need your help to get there!

Thank you to all of the contributors that tested the beta 1 development release and provided feedback. Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing each release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Some highlights

Since beta 1, 27 bugs have been fixed. Here is a summary of a few changes included in beta 2:

• Block editor: Columns in the Block Library that have unassigned-width will now grow equally.
• Block editor: The custom gradient picker now works in languages other than English.
• Block editor: When choosing colors is not possible, the color formatter no longer shows.
• Privacy: The privacy request form fields have been adjusted to be more consistent on mobile.
• Privacy: The notice offering help when editing the privacy policy page will no longer show at the top of All Pages in the admin area.
• Site Health: The error codes for failed REST API tests now display correctly.

Developer notes

WordPress 5.4 has lots of refinements to polish the developer experience. To keep up, subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog and pay special attention to the developers’ notes for updates on those and other changes that could affect your products.

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.

UPDATE – 20 Feb, 2020: This post was originally misattributed to Francesca Marano. The proper authorship has been corrected.

You’ve probably heard that WordPress is open-source software, and may know that it’s created and run by volunteers. WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories.

The beginning

Kori Ashton

In 1998, Kori created her very first HTML website. Her dad was creating websites for a living at the time. She needed a website for her band because she wanted to be a rockstar. Under his training, and with a little bit of self-teaching, she learned how to build a website.

She had been aware of WordPress since 2005, and, in 2008 a client specifically hired her as a freelancer to develop a WordPress website. Kori went straight to Google and taught herself how to build a WordPress website over a single weekend. She really enjoyed the experience of working with WordPress.

My mind was absolutely blown when I saw the drag and drop options inside of menus to create dropdowns and a form builder. 

Kori Ashton

She suggested to her dad that WordPress could be a solution for their customers who wanted to be able to access their own websites. Previously, they had found this was not as easy for clients unless they had specific software and knew how to code. So, Kori and her dad worked to learn WordPress over the next few years. 

Then in 2012, Kori and her parents launched their new business, WebTegrity, in San Antonio, Texas, US. It started out small: just Kori and her parents. Soon, they started subcontracting design work and quickly continued to grow their team.

Going big time

Even though the business was in a saturated industry in San Antonio — over 700 freelancers and agencies were providing similar services — Kori and her parents were able to sell their company five years later, with a multi-million dollar valuation. There were a few choices they made early on that led to that success.

1. They picked a niche: WordPress specialists 

At the time, there were no WordPress-specific agencies in San Antonio. They emphasized the fact that WordPress was the only CMS their company would use. Prospective clients looking for a different type of CMS solution were not the right fit for their business. They also offered on-site, WordPress training and weekend workshops that were open to anyone (including other agencies) as one of their revenue streams. They soon were established as a city-wide WordPress authority.

2. They cultivated a culture

Kori wanted a great culture and environment in her company and to make that happen, she needed to hire the right people. She believes you must be careful about who you bring into the culture of your business, but particularly when hiring leaders into that community. You can’t teach passion so you’ve got to find people that are excited about what you do. You also need to look for integrity, creativity, a love for solving problems, and an eagerness to keep getting better. 

You can teach code all day long, but be sure to find people with the right hearts to join your community and then train them up the right way. This way you will grow your culture in a healthy way.

Kori Ashton

Kori and her two sons

3. They learned how to build sustainable revenue streams

Like many other web development agencies, WebTegrity started out with the “one-time fee and you’re done” business model. This business model is known for unpredictable revenue streams. Hearing about recurring revenue business models at WordCamp Austin was a lightbulb moment for Kori. She started drafting a more sustainable business model on the way back home. 

Support packages were key to their new business plan. Clients needed ongoing support. They decided to include at least 12 months of post-launch support into their web development projects. This doubled their revenue in one year and allowed them to even out their revenue streams.

4. They knew the importance of reputation

Kori believes that every client, whether they have a $5,000 or a $50,000 budget, should get the same type of boutique-style, white glove, concierge relationship.

Every single project results in the absolute best solution for a client’s needs. In addition to that, offering training helped boost their reputation. Explaining the lingo of the web development and SEO fields and showing the processes used, added transparency. It helped set and meet expectations and it built trust. 

5. They proactively gave back to the community

Tori heard Matt Mullenweg speak about Five For The Future at WordCamp US. He encouraged people in the audience who make a living using WordPress, to find ways to give back 5% of their time to building the WordPress software and community. Matt talked about how firms and individuals could give back to the community. He suggested, for instance to:

• start a WordPress Meetup group
• present at a Meetup event 
• facilitate a Meetup group where maybe you’re just the organizer and you never have to speak because you’re not a fan of speaking
• help organize a WordCamp
• volunteer at a WordCamp
• write a tutorial and tell people how to do WordPress related things 
• run a workshop
• make a video

If you’re making an income using WordPress, consider giving 5% of your time back to building the software and/or the community.

This gave Kori another light bulb moment. She could make videos to give back. So her way to give back to the WordPress community is her YouTube channel.

Every Wednesday, she published a video on how to improve your online marketing. This made a huge impact, both inside the WordPress community, but also in her own business.

Understanding

So, in summary, how did Kori and her family turn their business into a multi-million dollar buyout in just five years? 

Ultimately, it was about understanding that you have to build value. About keeping an exit strategy in mind while building your business. For instance when naming your company. Will it stand alone? Could it turn into a brand that you could sell as an independent entity?

• Think about revenue streams and watch sales margins.
• Be sure to include healthy margins. 
• Don’t hire until you have no further option.
• Make sure to structure your offerings in such a way that you’re actually recouping your value. 
• Understand entrepreneurship, watch Shark Tank, read more tutorials, watch more videos.
• Get involved in the WordPress community. Get to know its core leaders, the speakers that travel around to all the WordCamps. Start following them on Twitter and try to understand what they’re sharing. 

In the end, the fact that Kori was so active in the San Antonio community helped enable the sale.

We just kept hammering on the fact that we were the go-to place here in San Antonio for WordPress. We kept training, we kept doing free opportunities, going out and speaking at different events, and people kept seeing us. We kept showing up, kept giving back and kept establishing ourselves as the authority.

Kori Ashton

Contributors

Alison Rothwell (@wpfiddlybits), Yvette Sonneveld (@yvettesonneveld), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat),  Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe).

WooCommerce, the open-source eCommerce platform developed and supported by Automattic, announced a partnership with Square payment solutions yesterday. The partnership expands services for merchants who are selling CBD products online. While it is a small step toward making it easier to sell CBD products, there are still many restrictions and pitfalls that merchants must overcome.

Cannabidiol, known as CBD, was removed from the U.S. federal list of controlled substances in December 2018. It is one of 100s of identified cannabinoids in cannabis plants and does not have the psychoactive effects of THC. The Farm Bill (Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018) removed some restrictions and provided a regulated path for farmers and merchants to sell CBD-based products.

CBD exists in a legal gray area in some jurisdictions in the U.S. State and local laws may still ban selling CBD and other substances (for example, I live in Alabama where we have some “dry” counties where selling alcohol is illegal). Therefore, merchants need to be aware that there are legal issues to consider, despite it being legal at the federal level. They should always check their local laws.

Other hurdles include finding a payment processor, web host, shipping company, and bank that don’t have internal policies that forbid CBD products or at least working within any guidelines they do have. WooCommerce’s partnership with Square may help U.S. merchants at least tackle the payment processor part of the equation.

“WooCommerce is proud to offer CBD merchants secure, efficient services that enable business owners to focus on improving consumers’ lives,” says Paul Maiorana, General Manager of WooCommerce.

By using Square, U.S. merchants can also use other Automattic services such as Jetpack for backups and malware scanning, WooCommerce Shipping for printing labels, and WooCommerce Tax for automatically calculating sales tax at checkout.

“Because it’s still a highly-regulated substance, CBD products sold online require adherence to a special set of rules,” wrote Lynn Jatania in a how-to post for WooCommerce merchants. In the post, she describes steps sellers must follow and issues they may encounter.

Restrictions on Automattic-Hosted or Connected Stores

The version of the WooCommerce software available through WordPress.com or WooCommerce.com forbids the sale of CBD products because it is hosted by Automattic. Merchants must use the WooCommerce plugin from WordPress.org and run their stores on a third-party host that allows selling CBD products.

The WordPress.com store guidelines state:

For example, you may not sell (or facilitate the sale of) any of the following in (or through) your store:…Controlled and highly-regulated substances (including alcohol, marijuana, cannabidiol or CBD, and other cannabis-derived products)

Self-hosted WooCommerce stores also have restrictions if they wish to connect their stores to any of Automattic’s services. This became a source of confusion in June 2019, when a self-hosted WooCommerce merchant was informed they could not connect to WordPress.com via Jetpack while selling CBD products. The WooCommerce team updated its guidelines to better clarify what is allowed when using Automattic’s services.

The policy is nearly the same today. However, the partnership with Square loosens the rules to a degree. Currently, only U.S. stores are allowed to sell CBD products while connected to WordPress.com. They are also required to use Square for payment processing.

From the WooCommerce Guidelines for CBD and Other Hemp-Derived Products:

Square has a vetting process for stores selling CBD and other hemp-derived products, so we currently require Square as the payment provider if you’d like to connect your store to Jetpack, WooCommerce Tax, and WooCommerce Shipping. We may approve additional payment providers in the future.

Using Square is not as simple as signing up. To sell CBD products, merchants must go through an application process to make sure they are selling CBD products with approval. The industry is heavily regulated, so this process may take some time.

Release coordinator Francesca Marano announced the release of WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 on February 11. Most of the work has centered on the block editor. However, at the moment, contributors have closed another 258 tickets for the 5.4 milestone.

A second beta release is scheduled for February 18, according to the 5.4 release schedule, along with follow-up betas and release candidates in the following weeks. The final release of WordPress 5.4 is slated for March 31.

At this point in the development cycle, WordPress 5.4 is in a feature freeze, which means no new enhancements or feature requests will be considered. Only bug fixes and inline documentation are planned for the remainder of the cycle.

Developers should follow the beta testing handbook page to test their plugins and themes. Users who want to try out the upcoming release can do so via the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.

Block Editor Changes

New welcome modal for the block editor.

WordPress 5.4 will comprise of 10 major releases of the Gutenberg plugin, which is the development project behind the block editor. The oldest update, version 6.6, was released on October 2. The latest update, version 7.5, landed on February 12.

For end-users who are still using the classic editor, version 5.4 is an opportunity to see if the block editor has improved enough to use. While it may not be ready for everyone, the user experience continues to get better with each release.

The block editor will feel much improved to users who have not yet tested the new features within the Gutenberg plugin. There is a welcome modal to introduce end-users to the block editor, which probably should have been added in WordPress 5.0 when the block editor landed. This update will also feature two new blocks: a social links block and a buttons group block.

The new navigation block will not land in WordPress 5.4. “The Navigation block is usable right now,” said Mark Uraine in a post explaining the decision. “But we don’t think it’s useful yet – at least not until it has an intuitive place to live.” The goal is for it to be available to users in the context of adding it to the header, footer, or sidebar rather than post content. It will make more sense for it to land in an update that branches the block system outside of the content area.

Several blocks now have extra text and background color settings, including gradient backgrounds. Users can set the image size for galleries, drag and drop a featured image, and change the title attribute for the image block. Multi-block selection is much improved along with numerous other user experience and accessibility improvements.

The following is, mostly, our coverage of each major Gutenberg release, dating back to version 6.6, along with a few links to the release announcements for versions we did not cover:

• Gutenberg 6.6 on Make Core Blog
• Gutenberg 6.7 Introduces Storybook and Gradient Backgrounds
• Gutenberg 6.8 on Make Core Blog
• Gutenberg 6.9 Introduces Image Titles, Block Patterns, and New Theme Features
• Gutenberg 7.0 Launches Stable Navigation Block, Post Blocks, and Template Parts
• Gutenberg 7.1 Includes Welcome Modal, Improves Multi-Block Selection, and Adds Drag-and-Drop Featured Images
• Gutenberg 7.2 Adds Long-Awaited Multi-Button Block and Gallery Image Size Option
• Gutenberg 7.3 Brings Navigation Block Colors, Block Collections API, and Dynamic Post Blocks
• Gutenberg 7.4 Adds New Color Controls, Link UI, and Block Scaffolding for Developers
• Gutenberg 7.5 on Make Core Blog

Important Developer Changes

Developers should begin testing their plugins and themes to make sure there are no breaking changes with the 5.4 beta release. Most changes will be with the block editor. However, there are some noteworthy updates to other areas of WordPress.

The get_calendar() function and anything that uses it, such as the calendar widget, have a breaking HTML change. The previous and next month links have been moved below the <table> element and within a new <nav> element. This may potentially break calendar designs for theme authors.

A new apply_shortcodes() function was added as an alias for do_shortcode(). The purpose of the function was to distinguish between do_* functions, which imply an action, and apply_* functions, which imply a filter or something that should return a value. It is purely a semantic change. It would be nice to see further cleanup of the function-naming mess that represents much of WordPress’ core code. With 16 years of technical debt, it could use an overhaul. Perhaps the acceptance of this four-year-old ticket on a simple shortcode function can start a trend.

Like plugins, themes can now set minimum version support. By using the Requires at least and Requires PHP headers in a theme’s style.css file, theme authors can set the minimum WordPress version and PHP version, respectively.

Matt Mullenweg announced this morning that he made the call to cancel the first WordCamp Asia amid concerns surrounding COVID-19, the recent coronavirus strain with over 42,000 reported cases. The virus has caused over 1,000 deaths to date. WordCamp Asia was scheduled to run from February 21-23 in Bangkok, Thailand.

“I’ve arrived at the difficult decision to cancel the inaugural WordCamp Asia event,” wrote Mullenweg. “The excitement and anticipation around this event have been huge, but there are too many unknowns around the health issues unfolding right now in the region to explicitly encourage a large public gathering bringing together over 1,300 people from around the world.”

Mullenweg expressed a desire to explore an online event, possibly live-streaming some of the sessions. However, WordCamp Asia organizers said they will not be able to organize one. “We believe our efforts are now best focused on making the best arrangements necessary to assist all affected participants,” said Naoko Takano, the global lead of WordCamp Asia 2020.

“I greatly appreciate the work everyone — from organizers to attendees, speakers to sponsors — put into making this a big success,” said Mullenweg. “So many people have come together to create an event to inspire and connect WordPressers, and I am confident that this passion will carry through into the event next year. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the virus so far, and we sincerely hope that everything is resolved quickly so that this precaution looks unnecessary in hindsight.”

Some attendees have already made the trip to Bangkok. Others have purchased non-refundable flights. The WordCamp Asia team will refund all event tickets and will provide a free ticket to next year’s event. Organizers, speakers, attendees, and sponsors should all read WordCamp Asia’s cancellation post for details on any next steps they may need to take.

“While we regret that we will not see you in Bangkok this time, we hope you understand that the organising team is standing by this decision to ensure the safety of all WordCamp attendees,” wrote Takano.

There are no details on when the event will be rescheduled. The team said they hope to hold it in early 2021 and will make an announcement as soon as possible.

Several people expressed their disappointment with the news in the comments on the WordCamp Asia cancellation post, but it better to err on the side of caution with such a large event. The first priority is the safety of all attendees. It was no doubt a difficult decision for all parties involved.

Some of the attendees with non-refundable tickets and those already in the region talked about meeting up in the announcement’s comments. This could be a nice alternative to at least network with others.

Update: There is an unofficial WordCamp Asia Meetup currently being set up. Also, follow the #wcasia WordPress Slack channel for discussion.

WordCamp Europe Sends Open Letter of Unity

In a letter from WordCamp Europe, another regional camp, past and present organizers reached out to the WordCamp Asia team.

“We woke up this morning to the sad news that WordCamp Asia has been canceled,” the team wrote. “We can only imagine what a heart-wrenching and difficult decision this must have been, and how much pain it must be causing you to see something you have poured your hearts and souls into just disappear into thin air.”

Putting together a large, regional WordCamp is a tremendous undertaking that takes 100s of volunteer hours. Events such as these can take a full year of planning and organizing.

“We know how hard it can be to come together across cultures and countries, but that in the end it is worth it because you are one team working together,” wrote the organizers. “You are creating a flagship event and you know that it will bring joy to so many people and that every one of you has been waiting for the day of the event, and for that not to happen despite all of that work and care must be devastating.”

Wordfence to Aid With Lost Fees

Mark Maunder, Wordfence Founder and CEO, announced on the Wordfence blog that his company is creating a $10,000 fund to help attendees with hotel and airline change fees. The company will provide up to $200 in assistance per person, which will be served on a first-come-first-served basis. Maunder stressed that people should try to recoup any losses they can by following the advice on the WordCamp Asia cancellation post first. This will allow them to help as many people as possible.

“Cancelling WC Asia 10 days before it commences is a brutally tough call,” he wrote. “I’ve had the organizers in my thoughts for the past few days knowing, via backchannels, that they’re agonizing over this. This is the right call.”

The aid is available to all WordCamp Asia organizers, speakers, and attendees while there are still funds available. Those in need of assistance can find more information on the fund’s announcement post.

Update – February 12: Wordfence exceeded their $10,000 fund with 94 applicants. GoDaddy Pro stepped in to add an additional $10,000 to the fund, according to a tweet by Maunder.

Update – February 13: Yoast added $10,000, bringing the total to $30,000. At the moment, no additional funding is needed because requests are slowing. If needed, Maunder said he would reach out to others who have made offers to help.

I’ve arrived at the difficult decision to cancel the inaugural WordCamp Asia event, which was planned to take place in Bangkok on February 21st. The excitement and anticipation around this event have been huge, but there are too many unknowns around the health issues unfolding right now in the region to explicitly encourage a large public gathering bringing together over 1,300 people from around the world.

We’re going to explore if speakers — including myself — can do our sessions with the same content and at the same time that was originally planned, just online instead of in-person so we can achieve our goal of bringing the pan-Asian community closer together without putting anyone’s health at additional risk.

Regardless, I greatly appreciate the work everyone — from organizers to attendees,  speakers to sponsors — put into making this a big success. So many people have come together to create an event to inspire and connect WordPressers, and I am confident that this passion will carry through into the event next year. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the virus so far, and we sincerely hope that everything is resolved quickly so that this precaution looks unnecessary in hindsight.

WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

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

You can test the WordPress 5.4 beta in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option)
• Or download the beta here (zip).

WordPress 5.4 is slated for release on March 31, 2020, and we need your help to get there!

While the primary goal for 2020 is full-site editing with blocks, contributors to WordPress are working across every area of the project to ensure the software continues moving forward.

Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute. Here are some of the big changes and features to pay close attention to while testing.

Block Editor: features and improvements

WordPress 5.4 Core will merge ten releases of the Gutenberg plugin. This means there’s a long list of exciting new features. Here are just a few:

• Two new blocks: social links and buttons.
• More color options for Button, Cover, Group and Column blocks .
• A Welcome Guide modal.
• Tools for adding featured images in the Latest Posts block.
• Easier navigation in the block breadcrumbs.

Some additional changes to make note of:

• On mobile, the toolbar stays on top, so you can’t lose it.
• Easier image sizing in the Gallery block.
• Drag-and-drop images into the featured-image box.
• Several new APIs.
• Friendlier offline error messages on REST API request failures.
• Table block captions.
• You can now color just parts of the text in any RichText block.

Accessibility improvements

• Easier multi-block selection. 
• Support for changing an image’s title attribute within the Image block.
• Easier tabbing. This had been one of the editor’s biggest accessibility problems, but now tabbing works with the block’s sidebar.
• Visual switch between Edit and Navigation modes and enable screen reader announcements.

To see all of the features for each release in detail check out the release posts: 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5.

Continuing efforts to improve performance

The block editor team has achieved a 14% loading time reduction and 51% time-to-type reduction, for a particularly sizable post (~ 36,000 words, ~1,000 blocks) since WordPress 5.3.

Wait! There’s more

Site Health

When a project powers 34% of the world’s websites, there must be a focus on security. This is why contributors continue working so hard on the Site Health Project.

WordPress 5.4 adds a widget on the dashboard that warns administrators of potential issues that could affect their site’s performance or security. A call-to-action button directs them to the Site Health screen for details and suggested fixes.

Accessibility improvements

WordPress strives to improve accessibility with every release, and this release is no different. Version 5.4 will contain the following accessibility enhancements:

• Better focus management in Menu, Customizer and Site Health screens, to fix some existing keyboard navigation issues.
• Easier keyboard navigation for better semantics in the Media modal.
• An easier-to-read Privacy Policy Guide.

For Developers

5.4 also contains a bunch of developer focused changes.

Calendar Widget

The HTML 5.1 specification mandates that a <tfoot> tag must follow <tbody> tag (which was not the case in the calendar widget). WordPress 5.4 moves the navigation links to a <nav> HTML element immediately following the <table> element in order to produce valid HTML.

apply_shortcodes() as an alias for do_shortcode()

Instead of using do_shortcode(), apply_shortcodes() should be utilized instead. While do_shortcode() is not being deprecated, the new function delivers better semantics.

Better favicon handling

Now favicon requests can be managed with more flexibility. Administrators can choose a favicon in the Customizer, or upload a /favicon.ico file. The WordPress logo will always load as a fallback.

Other changes for developers

• Clearer information about errors in wp_login_failed.
• Site ID has been added to the newblog_notify_siteadmin filter for multisite installs.
• Support has been added for the required WordPress and PHP version headers in themes.
• Embed support has been added for TikTok.

Keep your eyes on the Make WordPress Core blog for  5.4-related developer notes in the coming weeks, breaking down these and other changes in greater detail.

So far, contributors have fixed more than 255 tickets in WordPress 5.4 with more to come.

How You Can 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.

Jeffrey Carandang released the EditorsKit Typography Add-On today, the first commercial extension to his EditorsKit WordPress plugin. The plugin provides page and block-level typography options. It works with Google Fonts, includes preset font combinations, and allows users to create custom typography rules.

Unlike many other block editor plugins that offer a library of blocks, EditorsKit does not add custom blocks. Instead, it focuses on creating a better block editor experience. It enhances the editor interface, adds extra options to the editor toolbar, and extends options for existing blocks. It is a toolkit that is almost experimental, handling user-requested features long before they land in core WordPress or even the Gutenberg plugin.

Until now, EditorsKit has remained a free plugin with no commercial components. However, it was almost inevitable that such a plugin would need some financial backing, particularly with the pace that Carandang is adding new features.

“The plan was actually for Gutenberg and EditorsKit to mature enough, then create premium add-ons or services,” said Carandang. “But, the circumstances changed when I created ShareABlock. There are so many things that I want to achieve when creating a layout that core blocks cannot do yet.”

ShareABlock is Carandang’s community website for sharing blocks and templates. Site visitors can download block files directly from the site and import them into the block editor. Members can also share their custom block and template designs with others. Everything on the site is free to the community.

“For this specific add-on, I was trying to solve the issue when it comes to typography in the Gutenberg Editor that I’ve experienced when creating templates and block patterns for ShareABlock,” said Carandang. “I always find myself doing custom functions to use specific Google Fonts when creating a template. I figured there might be others that are having the same problem.”

The typography add-on for EditorsKit is a value-add on top of the normal free version of the plugin. For users who decide to purchase, they can choose between three plans that range from $29 and $99 per year, depending on the number of sites they need updates and support on.

“My main focus is still on the free version,” said Carandang. “There will just be a few add-ons that will be built along the way whenever the circumstances need it.”

This add-on is just the first step into a larger goal to add some other commercial add-ons and integration into EditorsKit. “I have a couple of other ideas,” said Carandang. “I plan to turn this into a bundle to make it easier for users to manage them inside the settings page.”

How the Plugin Works

Yesterday, Carandang launched version 1.2.5 of the primary EditorsKit plugin. Along with a handful of new features and bug fixes, he added a new “Extensions” tab to the plugin’s settings screen. End-users can grab the typography add-on from that new page. Once installed and activated, users can view and set a default font combination from that same area in the plugin.

Typography Settings on the EditorsKit settings screen.

The plugin adds typography options on the post-editing screen. It provides a custom sidebar that allows end-users to select a font combination for the entire post.

End-users can also create custom typography rules from this same sidebar. Any custom rules created are stored for use on other posts and pages too. There is also an option to apply the rules to the <body> element on the front end and override the theme’s typography.

Post/Page-level typography options in the block editor.

On the block level, each block allows users to select a font family and weight. This is handled through a custom “Typography Settings” panel. Currently, there are over 60 choices from Google Fonts and a few system fonts. The add-on also automatically updates the font-weight options on a per-font basis (not all fonts are built for all weights).

Per-block typography settings.

The one potential downside to this add-on is how easy it is to go overboard when adding external fonts. When using too many on a page, it will slow down the page-loading speed. As a general rule of thumb, users should not select more than two or three fonts to keep speed in check. It would be handy if the plugin added a warning message somewhere in the UI to let users know of the dangers of using too many fonts.

Last Thursday, Awesome Motive CEO Syed Balkhi announced his company acquired the All in One SEO Pack (AIOSEO) plugin. Michael Torbert, the plugin creator, first released AIOSEO in 2007. Since then, the plugin has been downloaded over 65 million times. It is currently active on over 2 million WordPress sites.

Balkhi said his company acquired the project for two primary reasons. “First, because our users continuously asked us to build an SEO plugin that’s easier to use and is more affordable,” he said. “They specifically wanted an SEO plugin that was reliable and results-focused like some SaaS software is.” The second reason was that he did not want the plugin to end up in the wrong hands. “All in One SEO has played an important role in the history of WordPress, in the history of WPBeginner (since this was the first SEO plugin I used), and there are a lot of users who rely on All in One SEO Pack to optimize their WordPress site for SEO.”

“I’m confident in handing over the reins to such a great organization in Awesome Motive and excited to see what the next chapter brings for AIOSEOP under your leadership,” said Torbert in response to Balkhi’s announcement.

For many years, AIOSEO enjoyed the spotlight. It was the go-to SEO plugin for a large segment of the WordPress user base. However, in recent years, Yoast SEO has captured a larger share of the market. It is currently installed on over 5 million websites. Other plugins such as The SEO Framework have also eaten into the market. Plus, newcomer Rank Math SEO has been making waves and picking up users at a steady clip. Needless to say, there is much fiercer competition among SEO plugins than in AIOSEO’s heyday.

“The SEO plugin market is definitely a competitive one, but I feel it’s only competitive by quantity,” said Balkhi. “WordPress as a platform is flourishing, and one of the reasons for that is the choices/freedoms that WordPress offers to users, including the choice of which SEO plugin to use.”

Balkhi has a knack for growing products, and the WordPress ecosystem is steadily growing. Currently, over 14 million websites use his software. He launched WP Beginner, a free WordPress resource site, in 2009. Since then, he’s launched successful products like OptinMonster, a conversion optimization toolkit; WPForms, a drag-and-drop form builder; MonsterInsights, a Google Analytics plugin; and more. In 2019, his company launched RafflePress, a contest and giveaway plugin.

Balkhi noted that he does not manage all of these properties on his own. “The truth is that I’m blessed to work alongside with some of the most talented people in the ecosystem that are my partners in various ventures, such as Thomas Griffin, Jared Atchison, Chris Christoff, John Turner, Blair Williams, Steve and Stephanie Wells, Josh Kohlbach, and now Benjamin Rojas,” he said. “Without my partners and the rest of our amazing Awesome Motive team, none of what we do would be possible.”

The question is now whether his company can grow AIOSEO’s audience from its current 2 million users while turning a profit.

“Our growth plan for the next year and beyond is to make an SEO plugin that’s geared towards beginners and non-techy business owners,” said Balkhi. “An SEO plugin that’s always reliable, comes with exceptional customer support, and most importantly is results-focused. I believe when we meet these three criteria, we will have done more than enough to set ourselves apart from the competition.”

Except for Torbert, the entire AIOSEO team is joining Awesome Motive and will continue working on the plugin. “Some of the team members were previously part-time contractors, but now they will be working full-time on AIOSEO, so you can say that the product team has actually grown,” said Balkhi.

Benjamin Rojas will be taking the lead role in managing the plugin. He was previously one of the senior members from Awesome Motive’s OptinMonster team. Alongside this change, the company is planning to add two new hires in the coming weeks. Balkhi expressed a desire to “hit the ground running at full speed.”

The Future of the Plugin

Primary settings screen for the AIOSEO plugin.

The current version of AIOSEO (v.3.3.5) feels a bit dated. It lacks integration directly with the block editor, relying on the older meta box system. The settings screens do not fit completely into the WordPress admin UI. Cleaning up these areas could offer some quick and instant wins in the short term.

AIOSEO and other SEO plugins, in general, need to make the complex simple.

SEO plugins can be painfully complex to configure. At times, the user experience can be overwhelming. The average user should not need to be an SEO expert or spend half an hour configuring a post’s SEO options. It should not feel like work before sharing content with the world.

“Aside from SEO experts and consultants, just about everyone else finds SEO to be confusing,” said Balkhi. “How do you know whether the SEO settings that you have are driving results? Is the green light enough or is it lying? Is the green light even relevant?” These are the types of questions Balkhi said his company receives from users. “Unfortunately there isn’t a single solution in the market that solves these problems,” he said.

Based on what is currently available, there’s a gap between the set-it-and-forget-it type of SEO plugins and highly-advanced plugins. There’s an unclaimed middle ground that guides users without complicating things.

Balkhi is not yet prepared to provide specific details from the roadmap, playing it a little close to the vest. “I want to build a WordPress SEO plugin that’s both reliable and results-focused,” he said. He will be working closely with the team as they work to revamp the plugin.

“I have a lot of plans to improve the product, and I’m really excited to be bringing several of our internal SEO tools into a single plugin suite to share with the larger community,” said Balkhi. “My goal is that after our series of updates and new features, All in One SEO will give WordPress sites an even bigger SEO advantage over other third-party CMS platforms.”

Organic Themes released the Bulk Block Converter WordPress plugin last month and updated it in the past week. The plugin allows users to convert classic content, written in the old editor, to the new block format.

Unless end-users have the Classic Editor plugin installed, their old content is placed into the classic block in the newer block editor. WordPress provides an option for transforming this content into individual blocks from the block-editor interface. However, this must be done on a per-post basis.

“Going back and converting each post and page with a classic block to individual blocks can be a very long and tedious process,” said David Morgan, co-founder of Organic Themes. “The Bulk Block Converter plugin quickly scans all your posts and pages for classic blocks, and allows you to quickly convert them all to individual blocks within one interface.”

Originally, Organic Themes built the plugin for internal use at their company. “We developed the plugin to help us convert the content of our theme demos to blocks more efficiently,” said Morgan. The company had to convert over 40 theme-demo sites with an average of 50 posts and pages per site. They built this plugin to avoid a long and painstaking process. Then decided to share it. “We thought the tool could be very useful for other users migrating to Gutenberg.”

For users with a lot of old content, Bulk Block Converter could be the key to moving it all to the new block editor system. Based on the conversions I ran on a couple of test installations, it worked flawlessly.

How the Plugin Works

Block Conversion plugin screen in the admin." class="wp-image-97059" srcset="https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/bulk-block-converter-tool.png 896w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/bulk-block-converter-tool-300x175.png 300w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/bulk-block-converter-tool-768x449.png 768w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/bulk-block-converter-tool-500x292.png 500w" sizes="(max-width: 896px) 100vw, 896px" />Bulk Block Converter admin screen for converting content.

The Bulk Block Converter plugin adds a new “Block Conversion” sub-menu item to the WordPress “Tools” menu in the admin. Once on that screen, it provides a “Scan Content” button. When clicked, it checks all of your posts, pages, and other custom post types for classic content. It then builds a list table of all the content.

From that point, you can choose between converting each post individually or running a bulk conversion of all posts. I always recommend being cautious with such plugins by converting and checking a couple of individual posts before trying bulk conversions.

The process for converting posts was snappy during my tests. In just a few moments, I converted all of my old content over without issue.

Like any plugin that modifies content in this way, it is prudent to store a backup of your site before converting the posts. This is also a one-way conversion process. Once a post is transformed, there is no going back.

The Gutenberg development team launched version 7.4 of the plugin yesterday. The update includes a few user-facing features: a text color control for the group block, background-color control for the columns block, and a new link UI for rich text components. For developers, the team introduced a script for launching a block plugin from the command line.

After a dramatic increase in speed in the last update, version 7.4 continues down the same path. When tested against a post with approximately 36,000 words and 1,000 blocks, page load speeds dropped from 5.461s to 5.037s and keypress events from 34.63ms to 34.54ms. This is not a significant reduction, but every improvement helps.

The update includes over two dozen bug fixes and several enhancements. Work toward the navigation block continues. The experience is slowly getting better, but it still doesn’t feel ready for production.

The team also launched an early, experimental mechanism for handling global styles, a feature that may be complete this year. Global styles would allow themes to set default colors, typographical settings, and potentially more. Theme authors should keep an eye on the development of this feature and offer feedback.

Group Block Gets Text Color Control

Changing the text color for an entire group.

The Gutenberg team once again cleans up one of my biggest gripes. When using the group block in the past, end-users could not apply a text color to every sub-element of the group block. Instead, they had to add a text color to any blocks within the group. It was a painstaking process at times, particularly with groups of many blocks.

With this change in version 7.4, users can apply a text color to the entire group at once, and that color should trickle down to sub-blocks. Of course, users can still change the color of inner blocks if necessary.

Columns Block Gets Background Color Control

Customizing the background color on a columns block.

Gutenberg 7.4 adds the background color control to the columns block. This makes it work similarly to the group block by adding a background color to the entire containing block. Unfortunately, it did not receive the same text color control in this release.

Currently, there is still no way to add background and text colors to an individual column. End-users can only add a color on the sub-blocks within a column. The feature is a step in the right direction, but it’s still missing some essential color options.

Link UI Updated

Inserting a link into a paragraph with the new UI.

This is a minor change but welcome. The link UI for rich text, a component used for blocks such as paragraphs, now has the same UI as the navigation and button blocks. The consistency is nice, but I am a fan of the improvement overall.

The UI change is subtle, but it already feels slightly more comfortable after a day of use.

Block Scaffolding for Developers

Initial JavaScript file for an auto-created block plugin.

For developers who want to jump-start a new block plugin, the Gutenberg team released an official script for getting started. By running the npm init @wordpress/block command, the script will install and run you through setting up a custom block. The script creates an entire plugin folder, including the necessary PHP, CSS, and JavaScript files.

This script is ideal for building single-block plugins, which will eventually be exposed via the official WordPress block directory. Because it creates an entire plugin, it is probably not the best route for creating new blocks within an existing plugin.

Syed Balkhi joins me to discuss the acquisition of AIO SEO.

All in One SEO is one of the most widely used plugins in the WordPress ecosystem, with more than two million installs.

In the announcement post, Syed says the entire All in One SEO team is joining Awesome Motive, aside from founder Michael Torbert:

Aside from new ownership change, it’s business as usual. You can continue to use the plugin that you love without any interruptions.

With the exception of Michael, the entire All in One SEO team joined Awesome Motive. This means that you are still being supported by the same talented people.

On top of that, we have added more team members from Awesome Motive who will be working on the All in One SEO project, including me.

In a near future release, you will see a small plugin design refresh in the WordPress admin area.

With our experience and a dedicated team, we will be adding several new features and improvements to the All in One SEO WordPress plugin in the near future.

Some of the questions he answers:

• So who is your target customer with All in One SEO?
• How is the model structured? You’re directing strategy… is there a partner you're working with?
• How does your vision for AIO SEO compare to what you see in Yoast SEO?
• How do you envision the free/premium divide?
• What are the first three things you plan to do?
• How did the conversation with Michael start? Did you approach him? Did he approach you? Tell me a story.
• How far do you think you can scale this business model?
• What do you think about the consolidation we’re seeing in the plugin ecosystem — the consolidation you’re a major player in?

Links:

• Awesome Motive
• AIO SEO on WP.org
• Acquisition announcement

Full Transcript

There are few clear answers.

As members of the core design, editor, and theme review teams joined for the inaugural biweekly meeting that may decide the fate, at least in part, of WordPress themes, it became clear that there is no structured game plan. There are many ideas. There are several moving pieces. There are components and teams and ideas that must all coalesce and build something that has never been done before in WordPress.

There is room for both excitement and concern.

It is not necessarily a bad thing to be in an early experimental stage. However, WordPress is a mature product. It feels like there should be something more concrete about the future of one of its most integral parts — themes.

That is what these meetings are for. They are about building bridges between various teams and making some decisions. One of the problems going forward will be cutting through the noise.

Takeaway #1: there are still more questions than there are answers.

Moving Forward With Block-Based Themes

If there is one thing that almost feels like a foregone conclusion it is that we are transitioning into a future where themes will be built entirely of blocks. Even the meeting was dubbed the “Block-Based Themes Meeting,” despite some pushback that such a meeting name was biased.

This is no surprise. Block-based themes are where we are going. The real question is how that will work and what level of control theme authors will ultimately have over their creations.

Kjell Reigstad, a design director for Automattic, kicked off the meeting with an introduction of block-based themes and what the meeting would cover. “As most of you probably know, Gutenberg is in the process of expanding beyond the editor,” he said. “As we’ve already seen, Gutenberg allows for a great deal of user-customization inside of post and page content. It allows any user to create custom layouts all by themselves, and style adjustments too. These will all usually be retained even after a user switches themes.”

Full-site editing seeks to bring blocks to the entire site, which is traditionally the domain of themes. “By turning elements like the header and footer into block areas, users will have the flexibility to place any sort of content wherever they want,” said Reigstad. “It allows for a lot of creativity! They’ll theoretically be able to click and edit their header in place, or change their sites entire color scheme without needing to jump into an entirely separate interface.”

Takeaway #2: block-based themes are happening.

The Definition of Block-Based Themes

Live Demo Q&A from The Gutenberg Times.

After a quick introduction of how the meeting would work, Jeff Ong, designer at Automattic, filled in the details of how block-based themes work. Currently, such themes are experimental and must be activated by ticking the full-site editing (FSE) checkbox via the Gutenberg plugin’s Experiments settings screen.

“Once you’ve activated this FSE experiment option, a few major changes will occur in how WordPress behaves,” said Ong. “WordPress will look for HTML templates inside of a block-templates directory of your theme, instead of using the PHP templates, to determine how your site will appear.”

This was not a new concept to the people present. Most have explored the initial documentation for block-based themes over the past two months.

This part of the meeting was more about providing information. The following are key links for further exploration of full-site editing and block-based themes:

• Full-Site Editing Project
• Full-Site Editing Tickets
• Theme Experiments Repository
• Block-Based Themes Documentation

Global Styles Are a Part of the Process

Example mockup from the primary global styles ticket.

Tammy Lister, experience designer at Automattic, introduced global styles, a feature coming to the Gutenberg plugin and eventually core WordPress. She described global styles as being at the “what goes into the cake” stage, meaning the team is still deciding what the feature will entail.

“So what are global styles?” Lister began. “In short, it’s style you can apply across your site right there in the browser. Pretty neat! Think of it as a kit full of component tools you can activate and take advantage of. Tried, tested and ready to go. It’s your decorating kit to get your site space just the way you want it.”

At the moment, the baseline for the “kit” includes text, background, and primary colors in which themes can set the defaults. The baseline would also include typographical settings for changing the font size, scale, and alignment.

“However, is that enough?” asked Lister. “This is currently a big question. There needs to be exploration on what are common things needed and what needs to be available.”

Another argument for the biggest question award would be whether global styles are a necessary feature for core WordPress at all. With the possibility that users can directly manipulate templates in the WordPress admin, adding styles to the mix may make some theme authors feel like they will be permanently sitting in the back seat.

Lister made it clear that global styles should not go too far. “These are tools available in the editor, so addressing what is needed or not is key, over allowing everything and creating a complicated experience,” she said. “A personal point I’m thinking about here is how when I had a crowded art box I could never find that ‘one pencil’ I wanted, we want to avoid that.”

Takeaway #3: End-users will likely be able to set global styles from the WordPress admin. For many, this level of power will be a good thing. For theme authors who build hyper-detailed designs, they may be cringing at the thought.

Open-Ended Questions Going Forward

When will block templates and global styles land? The rough timeline for block-based themes is for it to remain experimental through mid-year and have something basic in place as we close 2020. Global styles are likely to land this year, but there is no definite date yet.

Global styles could easily land in the next several months. It has a tighter scope than themes made of HTML block templates. Given the point that block-based themes are currently at and the unanswered questions about how the system will work, its time frame may be optimistic. The scope touches almost everything in WordPress to some degree, at least anything that ends up on the front end of the site.

Everything about themes will change. How theme authors approach design will likely move toward styling on the component/block level. Blocks will go into sidebars as widgets are slowly replaced. Even theme options may be a thing of the past. “Personally, I don’t think the customizer will disappear immediately, but I do think it’s clear that many of its current duties won’t be necessary in this Gutenbergy future,” said Reigstad.

One question on many theme authors’ minds is what sort of quality control they will have over their theme if users are handed so much power to change things.

One proposal in the meeting was to allow theme authors to lock down certain templates so that users could not mess up the design by moving parts (e.g., a meticulously-crafted header and nav menu template that works across browsers and screen sizes). There is not yet an open ticket for this possibility, but some theme authors will need to have a level of control over this for certain designs to work.

Ending the meeting on a high note, Ari Stathopoulos, a representative from the theme review team, gave his final thoughts. “Themes are not going away,” he said. “They may change, completely transform in many ways. The tools we’re currently using and the way we’re currently building themes is not the way themes will be built next year. But they will still exist, and the new way is neither better nor worse. It’s just different. If we embrace that and open up our imagination, there’s lots of amazing things we — as theme authors — can build.”

I am cautiously optimistic that things will work out in the end. I’m excited about the idea of end-users being given tools to build out the websites of their dreams. I’m concerned, along with many theme authors I have chatted with, about what the role of theme designer will be in a year.

At the moment, I imagine a major split in types of themes: block-based vs. traditional with perhaps some block elements. Only time will tell whether this becomes an insurmountable rift or whether there is a place for both concepts.

Takeaway #4: it’s still far too early to come to any solid conclusions about what the future holds.

Last week, London-based digital marketing agency Sweans Technologies released Guteblock, its new block collection plugin. Currently, the plugin boasts 12 custom blocks. The company plans to add more and has big plans for the plugin’s future.

While the team earns no points for originality in plugin naming, they are nevertheless throwing their hat into the ring of ever-growing block collection plugins alongside the likes of Atomic Blocks, CoBlocks, and Kioken Blocks. There is already steep competition in this arena, but there is also a lot of space for growth.

“WordPress bets high on Gutenberg editor and the block styles,” said Ajay Thomas, CEO of Sweans. “With the introduction of blocks, WordPress allows greater user control over the page-designing process beyond what the theme can handle. For the upcoming block directory, we believe that blocks will be the third integral part of WordPress after plugins and themes.”

The plugin’s team has put together the following video to show installation and usage examples:

Plugin Blocks

Guteblock is still a little rough around the edges in comparison to more mature block library plugins. Some things were confusing, such as some block color options not using the theme-defined colors. The drop cap block felt like it could have simply been added as extra settings to WordPress’ paragraph block.

The container block currently does nothing but group elements. At the moment, it is a step down from WordPress’ existing group block. Thomas explained that the team wanted to develop other blocks before fleshing it out. “The main features we will add to the container block are custom background settings, which include color, customizable gradient, an image with parallax effect, video, customizable SVG and other features including shadow, border-radius, etc.,” he said.

Of its library of 12 blocks, it has some interesting blocks that will come in handy, such as the number box block, which allows users to add columns of numbered boxes. The notification block is also useful for adding a bold warning, note, or similar message.

Number Box block from the Guteblock plugin.

The post grid block is one of the nicest blocks in the collection. It lets users create a grid of posts, showcasing the featured image, post title, and optional excerpt. It has settings to control the post count, number of columns, and font sizes.

Post Grid block from the Guteblock plugin.

The biggest downside to the post grid block at the moment is that it relies on the post-thumbnail size for featured images, which may make them look stretched and distorted on the front end. In the future, it would help if the user could select their preferred featured image size.

The plugin includes a social sharing block. Currently, it adds sharing links for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Reddit. Each social network can be enabled or disabled individually. The plugin also includes round, square, and modern block styles.

Social Sharing block from the Guteblock plugin.

A social sharing block will likely be more useful when WordPress moves toward block-based themes. Controlling this at the post level instead of globally is unnecessary work except in some edge cases where a user wants social sharing only on a limited number of posts or pages.

Thomas believes the team members and author profiles blocks are the most useful blocks. “One of the extremely important features of team members block is that users can highlight one block separately by changing the background color, font color, etc. and drag and drop members to reorganize, he said. “Regarding the author profile block, our block will fetch the author’s name, bio, and image and display there. Users can modify the same if needed.”

Upcoming Blocks and a Premium Version

At the moment, Guteblock is a free plugin. However, Sweans plans to launch a commercial version in the future. The company did not provide an exact date of launch but said it will happen shortly. It is also unclear what the pricing model will look like.

“This will be mainly a more customizable plugin with some other blocks such as Amazon link builder, events and shows, a premium slider, etc.,” said Thomas. He stressed that the free version will have at least 34 blocks down the road.

The plugin’s development team is currently working on two primary blocks to include in the premium edition. “The first block will help Amazon affiliates search for their products in the Amazon catalog, access real-time price and availability information, and effortlessly create links in your posts to products on Amazon.com using the Amazon Product Advertising API,” said Thomas. “The second block is for adding event details in a post or page. You can show the time, date, venue, and the details of the event, and this can be directly added to your desktop/mobile calendar with one click.”

Along with work toward their commercial version, the development team is preparing to add 16 extra blocks to their free version. This update will include blocks for Google Maps, video, grids, advanced columns, newsletters, pricing tables, and more. They will also provide alternative versions of some core blocks, such as blockquotes and buttons.

The company plans to dip its toes into the upcoming block directory too. “We are planning to release some very useful and unique blocks into the block directory and will maintain its excellence and effectiveness,” said Thomas. “But, at the same time, we will improve our plugin’s collection to make them stand out from the rest as we are updating them regularly to give the finest user experience.” It will be interesting to see if the block collection plugin or the individual blocks perform better.

A lot of folks in the WordPress economy, whether employed with a side hustle or self-employed, manage multiple things. Also, many of us work with partners, or are interested in partnerships.

Cory has long worked with partners, and we're now running Post Status as partners. Also, we are both working on several projects.

In this episode of Draft, we talk about how to balance multiple things, how we try and structure our weeks, and some things to consider when working with partners.

Show links

• Kolbe
• Strengthsfinder
• Wait But Why

Sponsor: Pagely

Pagely offers best-in-class managed WordPress hosting, powered by Amazon's Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Pagely helps big brands scale WordPress. Their new platform NorthStack is a completely serverless solution for managed application hosting. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner!

Full Transcript

Today, Ahmad Awais launched WP Continuous Deployment, a continuous deployment pipeline for updating plugins hosted on WordPress.org via GitHub actions. It is a Node.js-based CLI script that simplifies the process of keeping plugins updated. Developers only need to type out a single line in their terminal or command prompt. Other than setting up a couple of secret keys on GitHub, the script handles everything in just a few moments.

“We live in the age of agile workflows,” wrote Awais in the project announcement. “Developers only want to git commit && git push and expect their products to be deployed globally…It’s been a minute since I worked on a WordPress project, but for the last year or so, I’ve been fantasizing about a git-based plugin deployments workflow that will allow me to get away from those old SVN repositories finally.”

On November 14, GitHub announced it was rolling out GitHub Actions. Actions are a way for developers to automate workflows from their Git repositories. Developers can share, fork, and reuse them across projects. A few days later, 10up launched two GitHub actions for WordPress plugin developers. These Actions are the basis for WP Continuous Deployment.

10up’s WordPress Plugin Deploy Action handles deploying plugin updates directly to the WordPress plugin directory. The WordPress.org Plugin Readme/Assets Update Action handles committing changes to a plugin’s readme or assets. The WP Continuous Deployment script automatically adds both and sets up appropriate GitHub workflow files for each.

“What I hope to accomplish with WP Continuous Deployment is make it easy for any developer to use the GitHub Actions built by 10up and others and help migrate to this new workflow with a pinch of automation,” said Awais. “Without WP Continuous Deployment, migrating to GitHub Actions for deploying WordPress plugins is a task that requires knowledge of how GitHub Actions work, what files you have to create, what secrets are, and where to put them. We lose a great number of developers that are unable to figure out this step — due to a bulky and dry operational experience.”

The workflow for many WordPress developers today runs directly through Git, primarily with repositories hosted on GitHub. Often, developers expect any committed code to automatically deploy to the places it should go, such as production websites.

The WordPress plugin directory system, which relies on SVN instead of Git, can sometimes be a bottleneck in team workflows. Some teams even have developers who have never used SVN in their careers. It makes sense for teams to use a single system. Doing so leads to fewer bugs and requires fewer resources to train people on a dying version control system.

“We’re not doing anyone a favor by keeping SVN around,” said Awais. “Projects are hiring hundreds of open source developers to make it easy for the developers’ community to interact with their projects. Whereas WordPress — that once held that edge — has started to lag behind by making it hard and impractical to get started with WordPress development. Go pick 100 random students for universities all over the world and ask them to start an open-source project. You’ll be amazed by the majority of them choosing to start with Git and MIT license. And, here in the WordPress community, we ask people to use SVN. That’s impractical and inaccessible for a majority of developers today.”

Awais said that GitHub Actions have allowed his team to shed a lot of dead weight. He originally did not make his GitHub Actions open source because they were specific to his use cases. After trimming the code down, he realized they were not any different from the Actions that 10up had already released.

“I see dealing with SVN as a DevOps task,” he said. “Something web developers should not be concerned with in 2020. Web developers want to build websites. They want to use Git to do that. With JAMstack, everyone has become accustomed to the idea of pushing a git commit and getting the new build/release. That’s why I built WP Continuous Deployment.”

Set up in 1, 2…

Running the setup process for WP Continuous Deployment

When I originally tested 10up’s GitHub Actions last year, there was a small learning curve. I had to figure out what those new workflow files were for and whether I needed to change things. It was not an overly complicated process, but there was a moment of confusion or two.

What Awais’ script does is take those two GitHub Actions one step further and automate nearly all of the setup.

Developers must have Node.js installed on their computer to run the script, which is fairly common today. With a single command of npx wp-continuous-deployment, the script is installed. It then prompts you to enter your WordPress.org plugin slug to set everything up. Once done, you merely need to create a couple of secret keys on your GitHub repository.

Awais wanted to automate the entire process. However, GitHub does not yet have an API for creating secret keys. Until that happens, it is the only manual step required.

Within two minutes of choosing which repository I wanted to test the script on, I had everything in place and ready to go. Now, I just need to find some time to actually write code for some of my numerous plugins so I can truly put this script to the test. Thus far, things are looking good.

It may finally be possible for me to purge everything related to SVN from my life. That would be a welcome change. #lifegoals

Following an action-packed December, 2020 is off to a fine start with some new releases and announcements. Read on to find out what happened in the WordPress project in January.

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Release of Gutenberg 7.2 & 7.3

Gutenberg 7.2, the first Gutenberg release of 2020, was deployed on January 8th and included over 180 pull requests from more than 56 contributors. This was followed soon after by Gutenberg 7.3. New features include a new Buttons block, support in adding links to Media & Text block images, improvements to the Navigation and Gallery blocks, performance improvements, and accessibility enhancements. These releases also included many additional enhancements, fixes, new APIs, documentation, and more.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Proposal for an XML Sitemaps Feature Plugin

In June last year, a team of contributors proposed a feature plugin that would bring standardized XML sitemaps to WordPress Core. Since then, the team has been working to bring this to reality and have now published a working plugin to demonstrate this new capability.

The plugin is still in development, but the included features already provide much-needed functionality from which all WordPress sites can benefit. You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard or download it here.

Want to get involved in bringing this feature to Core? Follow the Core team blog, report any issues you find on GitHub, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

A New Block-Based Themes Meeting

The Theme Review Team has announced that they will be holding bi-weekly meetings in the #themereview channel focused on discussing block-based themes. If you are interested in discussing themes within the context of Gutenberg’s full-site editing framework, this will be the place to do so! The first meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 5, at 16:00 UTC.

Want to get involved with the Theme Review Team or become a reviewer? Follow their blog, and join the #themereview channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

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Further Reading

• The Core team has started work on WordPress 5.4 and kicked off their planning with a summary post. You can follow all the v5.4 updates by watching the version tag on the Core team blog.
• The inaugural WordCamp Asia event is taking place in February. This will be the largest WordPress event in the region, bringing together around 1,500 WordPress enthusiasts from around the world.
• Two WordPress community leaders, @chanthaboune and @andreamiddleton, were nominated for CMX awards due to their work on the WordPress project, with @andreamiddleton winning the award for Executive Leader of a Community Team.
• A feature plugin has been proposed that introduces lazy-loading images to WordPress Core, which will be a huge step forward in improving performance all across the web.
• The Core team has put together an extensive and informative FAQ to help new contributors get involved in contributing to the project.
• One key priority for Gutenberg is the ability to control the block editor. There are already a number of APIs that control the experience, but there is a lack of consistency and missing APIs. A method to address this has been proposed.
• The Design team published detailed information on the recent design improvements in Gutenberg.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

In collaboration with the core design and editor teams, the WordPress theme review team will begin hosting biweekly (fortnightly) meetings on the future of themes. The meetings will be held every other Wednesday on the #themereview WordPress Slack channel at 16:00 UTC. The first meeting is on February 5.

Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project is about tackling site customization. This covers everything from turning sidebars into block containers to redefining how themes will work in a block-based system in the coming years. The latter is a huge unanswered question. There are several ideas on how themes should be handled.

Kjell Reigstad, a design director for Automattic, proposed the meeting as a step toward answering the future-of-themes question. “The main thing I’d like to accomplish is to build up regular cross-team communication around the theme plus full-site editing work,” he said. “There are so many potential changes on the horizon, and we really need perspective from both the Gutenberg folks and theme authors. I know it’s difficult to keep up with all the development happening, and I thought this dedicated meeting would be a great place to stay up to date and share ideas on a regular basis.”

Currently, the agenda for the first meeting is still open but should be posted next week. Anyone who wants to participate or make sure an idea sees discussion, should let the team know in the announcement post’s comments.

“I’d initially like to try and get everyone on the same page in terms of what’s happening already on the Gutenberg front,” said Reigstad. “So for instance, the experimental block-based themes implementation and the global styles work. We’ll likely go over those a little bit, share links and updates, and then pivot into some discussion questions.”

Bringing in the theme review team is imperative for a smooth transition into whatever themes eventually become. “There’s already a lot of full-site editing work going on, and there are already experimental reference documents for block-based themes,” said Reigstad earlier this week in the team’s regular meeting. “It’s important for the TRT and the theme community to keep up to date on this work, and to develop a clear communication loop with the Gutenberg teams.”

There is some concern that the concept of full, block-based themes will simply be railroaded into core WordPress, regardless of feedback. Not all members of the theme review team or theme authors are supportive of the idea.

Theme reviewer Joy Reynolds pointed out in the announcement’s comments that using the phrase “block-based themes” in the meeting title shows bias in favor of themes made of blocks. “Why is the current Full Site Editing code outside the scope of the Customizer?” she asked. “What is the goal? Is it even something that makes sense for themes? Don’t we need a merge proposal? Or even a consensus on design before forcing these changes into core and having meetings about using experimental code as if it’s the only choice?”

These are questions that will certainly come up in the meeting.

Block-based themes already feel like a foregone conclusion. The initial code is currently in the Gutenberg plugin, albeit as an experimental feature. There is already documentation for building such themes. There is a core theme experiments repository Everything seems to be moving full-steam ahead in that direction.

Whatever direction themes end up going, the meeting will at least offer an opportunity for the community to add their input. For success, the editor, design, and theme review team members will need to find some common ground to begin their discussions.

It seems to be the week for dropping news of WordPress feature plugins. Felix Arntz, WordPress core committer and developer programs engineer at Google, announced a plan to push a lazy loading feature to the platform. If testing goes well, this feature could land in WordPress 5.4 in March.

The concept of lazy loading allows a webpage to render without loading certain resources until they are needed. This leads to faster page loads and saves data on the visitor’s end. Lazy loading is particularly useful when rendering images on the web.

The opposite of lazy loading is called eager loading, which loads everything in bulk. By default, this is how all images are loaded on the web. This often leads to poor performance on image-heavy webpages where many of the images are not in the site visitor’s viewport when first viewing the page.

For many years, various JavaScript libraries have handled this feature but not always to success. A native solution is slowly making its way into browsers. Native lazy loading works by adding a loading attribute to an <img> or <iframe> element. Browsers can then decide how to load a resource based on the value of the attribute. Currently, Chrome, Edge, and Opera all handle the loading attribute. Once the attribute officially makes it into the HTML specification, the feature should be a standard that all browsers support.

Adopting the new loading attribute is a great chance for WordPress to lead the way for a faster web overall.

Felix Arntz

The new Lazy Loading feature plugin is now available in the WordPress plugin directory. The plugin relies only on native browser support and does not add extra JavaScript. The implementation adds a loading attribute to images in post content, excerpts, comments, text widgets, avatars, and instances of using core WordPress image functions. By default, the plugin sets all images to load lazily rather than eagerly.

It is refreshing to see the continued work by core contributors on more robust image solutions. Along with WordPress 5.3’s large image size handling, both features will lead to a generally faster web. With more users loading high-quality images via mobile phones over the past few years, it has only exacerbated the problem of a slow web. That is why it imperative that WordPress continually push for image optimization.

“With WordPress enabling native lazy-loading by default, it would significantly impact performance and user experience for millions of sites, without requiring any technical knowledge or even awareness of lazy-loading as a concept,” wrote Arntz in the announcement post. “Adopting the new loading attribute is a great chance for WordPress to lead the way for a faster web overall.”

Arntz and a team of engineers originally released a native lazy loading plugin in September 2019. This was shortly after Google brought the “loading” attribute feature to version 76 of its Chrome browser. The Native Lazyload plugin currently has over 7,000 installations.

How This Affects Existing Plugins

Because not all web browsers support the loading attribute, users may not want to automatically drop their current plugins when the feature lands in WordPress. Users may choose to support browsers without native lazy loading for a while

The proposed code within the Lazy Loading plugin attempts to detect whether the loading attribute exists on an image before applying it. This means the code should play nicely with existing plugins and avoid conflicts in most cases.

Developers of plugins that handle lazy loading need to start testing their plugins and updating them for WordPress 5.4. Follow the Lazy Loading API ticket on core Trac to stay updated on when the feature lands and the GitHub repository for contributing to its development.

Thierry Muller, a Developer Relations Program Manager at Google, and several contributors posted an update on the XML sitemaps feature that may land in WordPress this year. After seven months of development, the team has made the XML Sitemaps feature plugin available on GitHub. It is currently open for testing and feedback. The plugin should also be available in the WordPress plugin directory by next week.

Update (January 31, 2020): The Core Sitemaps feature plugin is now available in the WordPress plugin repository.

The project aims to ship a basic version of an XML sitemaps feature to all WordPress installations. It will also offer an API for plugin developers to manipulate. Therefore, sitemap plugins would not automatically disappear. Instead, plugins would offer users various options on how their sitemaps work.

A team created by Google, Yoast, and other contributors originally proposed XML sitemaps as a core WordPress feature in June 2019. Traditionally, WordPress has left this feature to plugins to implement, and many have filled this role over the years. However, several other major content management systems ship with sitemaps as part of their core codebase.

Many praised the initiative, such as WordPress project lead Matt Mullenweg. “This makes a lot of sense, looking forward to seeing the v1 of this in core and for it to evolve in future releases and cement WordPress’ well-deserved reputation of being the best CMS for SEO,” he said.

However, several people questioned whether WordPress should ship with XML sitemaps. Some were worried about performance and others felt like the feature should remain in plugins.

“At a high level, expanding the number of WordPress sites with Sitemaps ultimately speeds up content discoverability by search engines and re-crawl fresher content flagged by the lastmod date faster than a scheduled bot would,” Muller said of the primary reasons the feature belongs in core.

WordPress users may see this feature arrive in major update this year. “Ambitiously [version] 5.4,” said Muller of the release goal. “Realistically 5.5.”

The feature plugin currently indexes the following URLs for a site:

• Homepage
• Blog posts page (if not the homepage)
• Posts and pages
• Categories and tags
• Custom post types
• Custom taxonomies
• Users/Authors

Custom post types and taxonomies are registered only if they are public. There is also a filter hook available to change which post types, taxonomies, and users are indexed. Ideally, WordPress would provide a registration flag for post types and taxonomies.

Solving the Performance Issues

One of the primary concerns with the initial proposal is how well a core sitemaps feature would perform and scale, particularly on larger sites. Without a full caching solution built into core, it presented some hurdles for the team.

“Solving the performance issue is not trivial, and we have looked into various solutions,” said Muller. “We believe that we landed on a solution that doesn’t need full caching and will still be scalable.”

For performance, there are two primary challenges:

• The number of URLs per page.
• The lastmod date in the index.xml file.

“Addressing the number of URLs per page is fairly trivial,” said Muller. “While sitemaps can have up to 50,000 URLs per sitemap, we found that capping it at 2,000 is acceptable from a performance perspective and totally acceptable from a search engine perspective.” The team decided to stick with a default of 2,000 URLs per sitemap and to provide a filter hook for plugins to alter if necessary.

Finding a solution for the lastmod date was not as easy. “We believe we found a good balance, which will be scalable and doesn’t open the can of worms that full caching exposes us to,” said Muller.

The solution the team implemented involved scheduling a cron task that runs twice daily (the frequency can be filtered by plugins). The cron job fetches the lastmod dates of each sitemap and stores them in the options table, which essentially works as a light caching solution.

“Relying on cron should be stable enough for small to medium websites,” said Muller. “Enterprise websites usually have server cron set up to more regularly ping WP Cron instead of relying on website visitors to trigger it. In fact, most managed hosting providers have that for all plans.”

If the team’s initial implementation is not well-rounded enough, they have been researching an alternative implementation that uses custom post types to store and update sitemap data. Two open GitHub tickets further explore performance that developers may want to check out: Issue #1 and Issue #39.

What Happens to Sites With Existing Sitemaps?

One question that remains unanswered is what happens when a user updates to WordPress 5.4/5.5 and already has a sitemap. There are likely millions of WordPress sites that are running a plugin or have some sort of sitemap solution in place.

“This is a question which we haven’t quite solved,” said Muller. “It is important to work with plugin authors, and in an ideal world, all plugins providing advanced sitemaps solutions would extend the core API. We would love to get feedback from the community on that one.”

WordPress must take care to avoid any major conflicts or indexing errors, or at least alleviate issues for the users who may be unaware of this upcoming feature.

In December of 2019, Nick Hamze, the owner of Sorta Brilliant, quietly launched Block Garden with a proposal for plugin authors to build block-based plugins off concepts, called seeds, from his site. He has since written extensively on the block editor and has shared a multitude of ideas, many of which are sorta brilliant.

It is easy to be drawn in by Hamze’s unabashed love for blocks. In a post titled “You aren’t busy, you’re just not excited,” Hamze challenges developers to build something, anything and not worry about it being perfect or becoming an earth-shattering product. “The purpose of Block Garden is to get you excited about blocks,” he wrote in the post. “To make you so excited about blocks that you’ll make the time to bring them to life. The community needs you more than you realize. I honestly believe that every person has at least one block in them. If I can get you to create that first block, I know you’ll be hooked for life.”

He has created a space for those who genuinely love the block editor. Block Garden is reminiscent of some of the early WordPress blogs where normal, everyday end-users shared their love of the platform. It is refreshingly optimistic. It is block geekdom at its finest. And, I kind of love it.

Hamze put out a job posting for block developers earlier this month. Several developers answered the call. “I can’t code but I have ideas and cash that I’m investing into blocks, mostly to keep the boredom at bay that is slowly killing me,” he said. “We are making some really fun blocks together. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

In a few short weeks, Hamze and his co-authors have released multiple block-related plugins through his Sorta Brilliant brand that are now available on the WordPress plugin directory:

• P.S. – A container block for grouping blocks into a popover.
• StreamShare for Twitch – Embed Twitch content into the block editor.
• Ghostwriter – Adds a heading block style that types out the text on the front end, Ghostwriter style (for you fans of the ’90s TV series).
• Ubiquitous Blocks – Exposes the Reusable Blocks admin screen and allows users to automatically add them to posts.

Emoji Conbini

Inserting an emoji with the Emoji Conbini plugin.

In collaboration with George Mamadashvili, Hamze’s latest release is the Emoji Conbini plugin. It adds an emoji inserter to the block editor toolbar.

Emoji Conbini utilizes the Emoji Mart library, which offers a Slack-like emoji picker. When the picker is open, the user merely needs to choose their preferred emoji. Users can also search for a specific emoji.

Hamze was aware of the Emoji Autocomplete Gutenberg plugin before commissioning his emoji plugin for the block editor. “I loved how easy it made adding emoji but I didn’t like the UI,” he said. “It seemed like you had to know what emoji you wanted to add and relied on keyboard shortcuts, which I don’t think everyone is comfortable with.”

The problem with both emoji plugins is that they insert the WordPress-based emoji image directly into the editor instead of the emoji character. By default, WordPress will automatically convert emoji characters to images on the front end. For the average user, this is likely a non-issue. However, some users prefer to use the browser-based emoji and disable the images that core outputs. Both emoji plugins remove this possibility. They also remove the possibility of using a different emoji image library.

“To be honest, I’m not really a fan of the browser versions, but I’m willing to consider anything if there is a demand for it,” said Hamze of the possibility of simply inserting the emoji character. “To me, getting version 1 out there is the most important, and if anything needs to be changed, people will let me know.”

The term “conbini” initially drew me to the plugin, which is the name given to Japanese convenient stores 🏪. If you have never been to one, they are like stepping into another world (almost everything in Japan seems otherworldly to this smalltown guy from the southern U.S.).

“I love everything from Japan,” said Hamze. “The music, anime, the tech. I bid on items on Yahoo Japan daily as I love surrounding myself with cool stuff from Japan. I’ve only been to Japan once, but it was magical. I especially loved going to conbini. My favorite thing to get there was rice balls from Lawsons.”

The plugin name also plays into Hamze’s goals with Sorta Brilliant and Block Garden. While many other plugins are offering full packages for blocks, he is dropping smaller, convenient extensions to the block editor. Emoji Conbini shows that there is perhaps a market for add-ons that are block-related but not necessarily blocks, or at least some people are thinking about it.

Discovering Block Extensions

In his post “The block directory needs more than just blocks,” Hamze argues that one of the largest hurdles for block-related plugins is discoverability. He further argues the block directory is too tightly focused on individual blocks, proposing a “block enhancements” category as a solution.

For Emoji Conbini, 10up’s Insert Special Characters, ThemeIsle’s Blocks CSS, and other plugins that extend the block editor, there is no way for users to discover these plugins without specifically searching for them. These are useful plugins that could help sell the block editor to users who are on the fence.

There is an unknown number of possibilities for enhancements to the block editor. This sub-category of block-editor plugins does not seem to get the attention that is going toward blocks. However, in some cases, they can be far more useful for everyday writing than the numerous blocks in development.

Hamze’s initial idea proposes an enhancements category for the upcoming block directory, but that has problems. For one, the block directory will be directly tied to the block inserter in a future version of WordPress. Plus, these types of plugins are not actual blocks. However, the concept of making block enhancements more visible to users is a necessary part of the puzzle. For the block editor’s continued success, WordPress needs to expose its users to a wider world of possibilities than simply installing another block.

Now is the time to start thinking about exposure for plugins that enhance the block editor. Eventually, these types of plugins may need to be further grouped into editor toolbar (e.g., character inserters), block options (e.g., extra settings for existing blocks), and other categories. I suspect that we are only now glimpsing a future where users will be asking how to find not just blocks but block editor extensions.

Swift Control expanded panel on the site front end.

David Vongries, creator of the Page Builder Framework theme, launched the Swift Control plugin last week. The plugin is billed as a replacement for the core WordPress toolbar (admin bar). It allows site owners to customize the front-end control panel’s appearance and what links are displayed.

Swift Control adds a new button on the front end of any site the plugin is active on. When clicked, the button expands to open the full array of button-like links to various admin screens. By default, the links point to the dashboard, edit screen for the current post, and the customizer.

On the whole, the default functionality is not much different from the normal toolbar. The selling point for this plugin is its customizability. For users who want more control over admin access links from the front end, the plugin is a nice option.

Vongries said the plugin made it easier for his customers to work with than the WordPress toolbar. He had wanted to release it as a standalone plugin for others to use over the years. However, he lacked the time and resources to put the release together.

“We built this for our multisite network around 3 years ago to make it easier for our customers to navigate and access the key areas of their website,” said Vongries. “We actually ended up using this — what was back then just a couple pieces of custom code — on all of our client websites. I got so used to it, I’m using it on my own sites as well.”

The plugin is simple to use and does its job well. For the moment, the largest downside is that the front-end controls are always positioned in the middle of the left side of the screen. This means it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. “We’ve actually planned to provide some position options so you can align the panel to the left, right, top-left, top-right and so on,” said Vongries. “That’s on the roadmap as well as some different styling options for the panel.” Both the positioning and styling options are planned for the free version of the plugin.

It would also be nice to see some mobile-specific options for the control panel. An option to move it to a different location on smaller screens would be helpful so that the buttons do not inadvertently cover content. Adding an option to disable it completely on mobile may also be worth considering.

The positioning is the only potential downside of an otherwise well-made plugin. Because it is being actively worked on, it may be a non-issue in future versions (I’m currently running version 1.2.1).

Customize the Swift Control Panel

Swift Control plugin settings screen.

The beauty of Swift Control is in its options for customizing what buttons appear in the front-end panel. By default, the free version of the plugin contains seven “widgets” (what the plugin calls its buttons/links):

• Dashboard
• Edit {Post Type}
• Customize
• New Post
• New Page
• Themes
• Plugins

Users can drag and drop these widgets wherever they prefer in the control panel. Each widget has its own options. By clicking the edit button, users can change both the icon and title for the widget. Users can also decide whether links should open in a new browser tab.

Swift Control Pro, the commercial version of the plugin, kicks customization up a notch. Besides the widgets available in the free version, it adds widgets for custom post types, launches the editor for page builders (Elementor, Brizy, Divi or Beaver Builder), supports WooCommerce, and adds a logout widget. Users can also create custom buttons.

Both the free and pro versions offer additional settings. Users can customize each of the colors used in the control panel so that it matches their site. Other settings are switches to enable or disable features, such as turning off the WordPress toolbar.

The following video shows how Swift Control Pro works (the free version is essentially the same but does not have the pro widgets):

Future Plugin Plans

Besides new positioning options, Vongries said they are working on an import and export feature. Ideally, this would allow users to keep their settings from test environments or when copying to new sites. It could also be interesting in use on multisite.

“One of the other features we’re going to work on next is the ability to show controls based on user roles,” said Vongries. “This will require us to change the UI of the widgets though, and we haven’t yet decided on what they should look like.” Currently, the team is exploring various ideas with the UI for such a feature, such as creating an expanding section for access to advanced widget settings.

The first order of business is bringing in more users and getting feedback, which should help steer the future direction of the plugin.