Looks like somebody whose name rhymes with toast has been busy deleting tweets ahead of #YoastCon … wonder if any of them are in https://t.co/7s6vq2FNXD? ![\"?\"](\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/72x72/1f35e.png\")
![\"?\"](\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/72x72/1f62d.png\")
![\"?\"](\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/72x72/1f921.png\")
pic.twitter.com/Oi7uAexukv
— David Cohen (@explorionary) February 6, 2019
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) took a strong, unequivocal stance on its definition of open source this week, encouraging organizations to sign a public affirmation of its role in maintaining and stewarding the definition. The organization has been instrumental in combatting issues caused by license proliferation, as many open source licenses cannot be legally combined and this can be detrimental to the open source ecosystem.
\nThe affirmation published this week explains the need for a standard definition of open source:
\n\nWithout this single, standard definition of “open source,” software development as we know it would not be possible. There is no trust in a world where anyone can invent their own definition for open source, and without trust there is no community, no collaboration, and no innovation.
Recent controversy surrounding Redis Labs licensing some of its modules under the Apache 2.0 modified with a Commons Clause has highlighted the need for an authoritative definition of open source. Salil Deshpande, who helped create the Commons Clause (written by open-source lawyer Heather Meeker), wrote an article for TechCrunch two months ago about how he perceives large cloud infrastructure providers, such as AWS in this case, to be a threat to the viability of open source. He explained why he and collaborators commissioned the Commons Clause:
\n\nWe wished to define a license that prevents cloud infrastructure providers from running certain software as a commercial service, while at the same time making that software effectively open source for everyone else, i.e. everyone not running that software as a commercial service.
\nWith our first proposal, Commons Clause, we took the most straightforward approach: we constructed one clause, which can be added to any liberal open-source license, preventing the licensee from “Selling” the software — where “Selling” includes running it as a commercial service. (Selling other software made with Commons Clause software is allowed, of course.) Applying Commons Clause transitions a project from open source to source-available.
In referencing MongoDB’s Server Side Public License (SSPL), Deshpande questioned the authority and relevance of OSI:
\n\nOSI, which has somehow anointed itself as the body that will “decide” whether a license is open source, has a habit of myopically debating what’s open source and what’s not. With the submission of SSPL to OSI, MongoDB has put the ball in OSI’s court to either step up and help solve an industry problem, or put their heads back in the sand.
The Commons Clause, which has no chance of being approved by OSI, was a reaction to cloud-based services making a profit from open source software without contributing much back to the software’s creators. This is a common issue encountered by maintainers of popular open source projects. However, the Commons Clause isn’t a good solution for this problem, because it effectively neuters open source software, removing the vital freedoms identified in the open source definition, including free distribution and no discrimination against a specific field of endeavor. OSI President Simon Phipps called the Commons Clause an “abrogation of software freedom” after Redis changed its license.
\n\n\n\nRedis just went proprietary, which sucks.https://t.co/CfIN99Cz5q
\nNo, this is not just \"a limitation concerning fair use\", it is an abrogation of software freedom.
\n— Simon Phipps (@webmink) August 21, 2018
In light of these recent conversations, OSI is calling organizations to band together in recognition of its authority to maintain a single, standard definition of open source:
\n\nRecently there have been efforts to undermine the integrity of open source by claiming there is no need for a single, authoritative definition. These efforts are motivated by the interests of a few rather than the benefit of all, and are at odds with the principles that have so demonstratively served us well in the past decades. If allowed to continue, these efforts will erode the trust of both users and contributors, and hinder the innovation that is enabled by open source software, just as surely as having multiple definitions of a kilogram would erode and undermine commerce.
OSI reached out first to its Affiliate Members, which includes the WordPress open source project, but not all members have responded in time for the publication of the post this week. The organization is still welcoming new signatories and will add more names to the list as it receives them.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sat, 09 Feb 2019 00:18:54 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:119:\"WPTavern: YoastCon Overshadowed by Twitter Storm: Joost de Valk, SEO Industry Leaders Called Out for Objectifying Women\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=87084\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:128:\"https://wptavern.com/yoastcon-overshadowed-by-twitter-storm-joost-de-valk-seo-industry-leaders-called-out-for-objectifying-women\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9849:\"The third edition of YoastCon kicked off today in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, but for those following remotely the conference has been overshadowed by a discussion that erupted on the #yoastcon hashtag prior to the event. Several parties began circulating tweets and unsavory videos involving Joost de Valk, for which he has since publicly apologized.
\nThe story was complicated and confusing to follow, as many of these decade-old tweets were deleted and the videos made private by the websites that are hosting them. The parties who were publishing screenshots from archive.org alleged that de Valk was sexually harassing women in the SEO industry.
\n\n\n\n@yoast can scrub @jdevalk history of thirsty sexual harassment tweets but The Wayback Machine knows all. If it\'s not harassment why was it deleted yesterday? #YoastCon pic.twitter.com/amctSWHqEw
\n— Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) February 6, 2019
\n\n\nLooks like somebody whose name rhymes with toast has been busy deleting tweets ahead of #YoastCon … wonder if any of them are in https://t.co/7s6vq2FNXD?
\n— David Cohen (@explorionary) February 6, 2019
\n\n\nNo seriously, fucking don’t try and excuse behaviour like this. (9/41) pic.twitter.com/DoK1zOl3p2
\n— Tom Rayner (@tjprayner) February 7, 2019
One of the women to whom some of the tweets were directed has publicly stated that she did not perceive them as harassment and that the tweets were taken out of context.
\n\n\n\nHi. I didn\'t want to do this but now I have to. The tweets you\'re reading were sent to me from @jdevalk when SEO Twitter was smaller, more close-knit, and frankly, dumber. It wasn\'t harassment. It was friends being stupid. Calling it more is unfair and out of context. #yoastcon
\n— Lisa Barone (@LisaBarone) February 6, 2019
de Valk responded yesterday with a public apology, acknowledging the tweets and videos.
\n\n\n\nI think and act differently now, though I know that doesn\'t change the past. If anyone felt harmed by this: I\'m truly sorry.
\n— Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) February 6, 2019
He also provided a statement to the Tavern with more context on the after party videos.
\n“The videos are of an event I’ve attended over the last decade called SEOktoberfest, which is an SEO conference at Oktoberfest,” de Valk said. “I’m honestly ashamed of those videos when I see them now… It looks bad and I wouldn’t behave like that now, but I don’t think anything I did myself at those events was ever out of line.”
\nMarieke van de Rakt, who recently took on the role of CEO of Yoast, said she thought the tweets were brought to public attention in retaliation for the company announcing a project to empower women working at Yoast. de Valk left the CEO role to focus on product development at Yoast and his new role of Marketing and Communications Lead at WordPress.org.
\n\nI feel like it started after I was announced CEO and later on talked about a project to empower women working at Yoast. I got some really upsetting tweets. After that it started focusing on #yoastcon. It seems like they want to show the hypocrisy in our statements about women. I never spoke at SEO events before, though I have been to SEOktoberfest. It felt totally welcoming back then. That being said, the pictures and movies aren’t something I particularly enjoy watching. I do think they’re bad, but also a bit out of context. The environment at Yoast is nothing like that. And although my husband likes to party (as do I), I feel he’s always been a strong believer in equal rights and opportunities. I think we all make mistakes and learn from them. At Yoast, we’re really trying to improve inequality with both the diversity fund and my empowerment project.
For those watching the #yoastcon hashtag, the way the situation unfolded it almost seemed like a coordinated personal attack on de Valk, especially given how the SEOktoberfest videos were spliced together with the YoastCon promotional videos. David Cohen, a Philadelphia-based Digital Marketing Director who previously worked at a large SEO agency, started the conversation by publishing de Valk’s old tweets that he had found years ago when researching Yoast and its founder.
\n“As far as the tweets from Joost are concerned, I’ve known about them since 2014,” Cohen said. “I just never knew what to do with them or how to proceed questioning why that behavior was perfectly acceptable for him.
\n“As far as the harassment and abuse in the SEO industry, particularly at the SEO conferences, I’ve known about this since 2011 after seeing it firsthand while working at a large SEO agency in Philly, Seer Interactive.”
\nCohen said that he began publicly criticizing people he calls “SEO celebs” in 2014, for “saying they are against the SEO harassment and abuse, claiming to be ‘male feminists,’ yet knowingly covering up the abuse and enabling the abusers who happen to also be their friends, peers, colleagues, etc.”
\nWhile the discussion on the #yoastcon hashtag seems centered around de Valk’s admitted indiscretions, Cohen said his objective in publicizing the old tweets goes beyond de Valk. He’s calling out other leaders in the industry who he alleges have harassed and abused women for years.
\n“This started a solo mission to take action as a messenger of questions for the group of SEOs most prominent figures who hold the power of influence over the industry about the 10+ year ongoing issue of alleged harassment and abuse of women in the SEO world, particularly at SEO conferences between 2009 and 2012 era.”
\nCohen said the timing with YoastCon was “a mission looking for direct and public answers on this topic once and for all while they were all gathered together at the event.” He began tweeting about these issues well before the event and was using the #yoastcon hashtag to call out other SEO industry leaders for the past few months.
\nWhen asked about his motive, Cohen said he simply wants answers from de Valk, Rand Fishkin, his wife Geraldine, John Doherty, Martin MacDonald, Marcus Tandler, and others regarding what he perceives to be hypocrisy in the SEO industry.
\n“Why has it been totally cool for the SEO celebs, rock stars, ninjas, and conference speakers to be misogynists, to objectify and sexualize women, to hire Playmates for their SEO events, and to engage in behavior that would easily be classified as ‘toxic masculinity?\'” Cohen said. He claims that industry leaders have been covering up harassment and abuse that they have known about and have refused to help the women who have been abused. Cohen and several others who have been circulating the tweets claim that victims of this abuse have been contacting them to share their stories but have not yet gone public with them.
\n“I chose to act on this now because I wanted answers to two questions from specific people: 1. Do you know of alleged harassment or abuse because someone went to you directly and told their story? And if so, did you refuse to use your power and influence to help them at the risk of your own professional and personal interests?” Cohen said.
\n“As for Joost, going with the ‘if I offended anyone’ apology approach is empty and lacks personal accountability for behaviors that are completely misaligned with words. He had to respond publicly. But the question remains open – why?”
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\n\n\n\nThis is an important milestone, as the release date for WordPress 5.1 draws near. “Release Candidate” means that the new version is ready for release, but with millions of users and thousands of plugins and themes, it’s possible something was missed. WordPress 5.1 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, February 21, but we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.1 yet, now is the time!
\n\n\n\nThere are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 release candidate: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the release candidate here (zip).
\n\n\n\nInspired by Archie Bell & The Drells, WordPress’s theme for 2019 is to “tighten up”, and WordPress 5.1 focussed on exactly that.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWith security and speed in mind, this release introduces WordPress’s first Site Health features. WordPress will start showing notices to administrators of sites that run long-outdated versions of PHP, which is the programming language that powers WordPress.
\n\n\n\nFurthermore, when installing new plugins, WordPress’s Site Health features will check whether a plugin requires a version of PHP incompatible with your site. If so, WordPress will prevent you from installing that plugin.
\n\n\n\nThe new block editor has kept improving since its introduction in WordPress 5.0. Most significantly, WordPress 5.1 includes solid performance improvements within the editor. The editor should feel a little quicker to start, and typing should feel smoother. There are more features and performance improvements planned in upcoming WordPress releases, you can check them out in the Gutenberg plugin.
\n\n\n\nPlease test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.1 and update the Tested up to version in the readme to 5.1. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release.
\n\n\n\nThe WordPress 5.1 Field Guide has also been published, which goes into the details of the major changes.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDo you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.
\n\n\n\nIf 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.
\n\n\n\nThis is my release
candidate. There are many
like it. This is mine.
Version 5.0 of the Gutenberg plugin was released yesterday with a new RSS block. Riad Benguella, the project’s technical lead for phase 2, published a demo of the block and its settings. Users can set the number of items displayed and also toggle on/off the author, date, and excerpt.
\nRSS is still relevant today as one of the linchpins of the open web and Gutenberg makes it possible to easily place a feed inside a post or page. (This feature was previously limited to widgetized areas.) The creation of this block is part of a larger effort to port all of WordPress’ existing core widgets over to blocks.
\nVersion 5.0 also introduces a new Amazon Kindle embed block, providing an instant preview from an Amazon Kindle URL. WordPress already has oembed support of Amazon Kindle URLs but it was missing from the Embeds section of the accordion in the block inserter.
\nOne of the most exciting additions in this release is a new FocalPointPicker for the Cover block. It allows users to visually select the ideal center point of an image and returns it as a pair of coordinates that are converted into ‘background-position’ attributes. The result is that the user has more control over how the image is cropped. This feature solves so many problems users have experienced in cropping and displaying images in their WordPress themes and content. The FocalPointPicker was created as a reusable component so that developers can use it to build other blocks with the same capabilities, providing an experience that is consistent with core.
\n![\"Focal](\"https://i1.wp.com/cldup.com/aJ-h5zq4wa.gif?resize=627%2C423&ssl=1\")
The changes included in Gutenberg 5.0 are immediately available for those running the plugin on their sites but only for WordPress 5.0+. This release drops support for earlier versions of WordPress. The updates in Gutenberg 5.0 are planned to be rolled into WordPress 5.2.
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\nIn this episode of Draft, I talk to Anil Gupta, the founder of Multidots. Multidots is a 100+ person company, and Anil has established a very people-first environment there. We discuss his journey and what he’s learned about building a company.
\nI met Anil at CaboPress. We had a great chat there, and we did again at WordCamp US, where we recorded this episode. Anil has a great story and a lot of insight. I hope you enjoy it.
\n\nJilt offers powerful email marketing built for eCommerce. Join thousands of stores that have already earned tens of millions of dollars extra sales using Jilt. Try Jilt for free
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 07 Feb 2019 17:04:35 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:15:\"Brian Krogsgard\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:52:\"WPTavern: Transcript of WordPress Weekly Episode 344\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=87083\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"https://wptavern.com/transcript-of-wordpress-weekly-episode-344\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2214:\"Based on requests from listeners, I purchased a transcription of episode 344 of WordPress Weekly where we discussed the WordPress Governance Project. I purchased the transcription from Rev, a well-known service devoted to captions, subtitles, and audio transcriptions.
\n\n\n\nFor an 87 minute podcast, the turn-around time was 25 hours and cost $87. The transcription came out better than I expected considering the way I speak.
\n\n\n\nThe following is a sample of the conversation that took place during the show.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe WordPress Governance Project is an effort that we booted up to surface all the conversations that are happening behind the scenes around WordPress Governance. If you’ve been around the WordPress Project for more than a couple of months, you would know there’s a lot of ongoing conversations internally in the community around who makes decisions, how are decisions made, who are the leaders, who appoints leaders, where is the direction going and who decides on the direction of this project and so on and so on.
And both Rachel and I have been part of this community for awhile and we’ve seen these conversations crop up repeatedly, and they never go anywhere, but they are really important conversations. And here’s a need in our community to surface those conversations because we are in a position now where we need to start acting, taking on the responsibility of being 34.7% of the web and actually using that responsibility for something other than just saying it as a marketing campaign.
Morten Rand-Hendriksen
The transcript is in .txt format for maximum compatibility and includes the speaker’s names.
\n\n\n\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 06 Feb 2019 23:04:40 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Jeff Chandler\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"HeroPress: WordPress Saved My Life\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=2679\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:120:\"https://heropress.com/essays/wordpress-saved-my-life/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-saved-my-life\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11264:\"![\"I](\"https://s20094.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/020619-1024x512.jpg\")
This probably is the first time I will be telling my story because I have always lived a fairly secret live.
\nI am from Nigeria where I was born and still live in. I know we are all stereotyped as scammers and thieves but trust me, a lot of us own and operate legit (online) businesses. Just like in every country, there are good and bad people and we are no exception.
\nI had a great childhood. Everything was fine and rosy until I lost my Dad which meant I had to shoulder the responsibility of my family as the first child. I manage to finish secondary school and was awarded the best Math student.
\nBack then in secondary school, I had a rich friend who owned a Nokia phone (that could browse the internet) he brings to class which he uses to play games and do fun stuff online even though we weren’t allowed to bring nor use a phone in the class. (Funny right? :D)
\nI have always been a football lover (called soccer in the U.S). I still play very well and support Chelsea FC. So each time I have the opportunity to use his phone, I always visit Goal.com to read football news especially concerning my team Chelsea FC of England.
\nBeing a very inquisitive person, I wanted to learn how the web works as well as have my own website. I was able to buy a Nokia 3120 classic phone via the menial jobs I did after school.
\n![\"Nokia](\"https://s20094.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/img2.jpg\")
I visited Google and search how to create my wapsite. We refer to mobile phones optimized sites as “wapsite”. The result of my search were filled with site builders like xtgem.com and wapzan.com.
\nI chose the xtgem.com and discovered I needed an email address to sign up. Didn’t know what that means so I googled it and eventually created a Yahoo email address. Finally registered and built my first website. Sadly, the site is no longer online but I was able to get a screenshot of the site thanks to Wayback Machine.
\n![\"WAPsite](\"https://s20094.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/img1-786x1024.png\")
I had to learn HTML and CSS from w3schools to build the site and it came out well didn’t it?
\nI later moved on to wapka.mobi site builder which allows you to build dynamic websites such as a social network or forum using its own programming language called “wapka tags”. I was able to build a community/forum, sms collection and a file sharing site.
\nI later came across simple machine forum and MyBB, I learned them deeply and used them to build forums and community sites for interested people.
\nI came across a Facebook group called BloggersLab and discovered I could make money blogging. Two prominent platform at the time to create a blog was Blogger.com and WordPress. I chose WordPress because WordPress blogs were always pretty.
\nFrom my savings, I bought the cheapest hosting plan from a local web hosting here in Nigeria and installed WordPress using Softaculous included in cPanel and started writing wapka.mobi tutorials. See https://w3guy.com/?s=wapka.
\n\nI did all this with my Nokia phone.
Here’s how I publish a new post: first I write it on a notebook before publishing on my blog. I was also building mobile sites for people for small amount of money.
\nI couldn’t go to the university because of my precarious financial situation. I continue to do menial jobs during the day and started learning PHP in the evenings and at night using my mobile phone via w3schools.com. I later was able to get a cheap old IBM Thinkpad laptop which I used in getting eBooks from torrent sites because I couldn’t afford them at the time and also to practice coding. Mind you, I was also blogging about the stuff I was learning on w3guy.com
\nI later took up a job teaching children at a school primarily because I got tired of the menial jobs and wanted to earn enough to take care of my internet data plan. After a while, I became fairly proficient in PHP and even took up a job to build a school management system which was really slow and ugly.
\nI needed to start making money with the PHP, HTML & CSS skill I had because my blog wasn’t making any money via AdSense. I think I got to the $100 payout on my second year of blogging.
\nI came across a post on Sitepoint.com that they were looking for writers. I applied and got in. I started writing PHP and WordPress development tutorials and got paid few hundreds of dollars per article. In Nigeria, that’s quite a lot of money. I was able to improve the life and well-being of my family and I. I also wrote for Smashing Magazine, Designmodo, Tuts+ and Hongkiat.
\nI later got admission into a polytechnic to study computer science and decided to stop writing and try to make and sell WordPress plugins for a living.
\nI discovered my tutorial on building custom login form on Designmodo was popular with lots of comment so I decided to make a plugin out of it. That was how my first premium plugin ProfilePress was born. I wanted to sell it on Codecanyon but it was rejected so I decided to sell it myself. It was and still hard doing development and marketing at the same time.
\n\nThankfully, after a year, it started making enough revenue for me to live pretty comfortably here in Nigeria because the cost of living here is little.
Few years later, I came across a payment processing library for PHP called Omnipay which included support for many payment providers like Stripe, PayPal. I use 2Checkout as my payment gateway to sell my plugins via EDD and discovered the driver for 2Checkout in Omnipay was old and unsupported so I built one. I figured I could make money building EDD and WooCommerce payment gateways base on the Omnipay and I did and place them on Codecanyon for sale. They didn’t do well sales wise and I had to stop selling them and moved the 2Checkout gateway for WooCommerce to omnipay.io. I have since built an EDD Paddle gateway which I now sell alongside.
\nMy latest product is MailOptin, a WordPress optin form and automated newsletter plugin. I initially built it for my own need. I figured there might be interest in it so I made a free version and a paid version.
\nI currently live on the revenue from my plugins.
\nI am thankful for WordPress because without it, I’m really not sure I would have been able to live a decent life. Who knows what would have become of me.
\nI am also thankful for the community. I have made lots of friends that has been very supportive and helpful in my journey.
\nIf you live in a third world country like myself and going through hardship, I hope my story will inspire you to be great.
\n\nI tell people, life won’t give you what you want. You demand from life what you want. You make these demands by being determined and never giving up on your dreams and aspiration.
If you are poor perhaps because you came from a humble and poor background, it is not your fault. You can’t go back in time to change things. I implore you to be strong, determined and hustle hard.
\nI will end with this story.
\nTwo guys had become shipwrecked and were directionless-ly drifting on the vast ocean, desperately holding onto a wooden plank.
\nA big ship comes along. Elated, one of the guys let’s go of the plank and makes a bold move, using his last strength to reach the ship.
\nThe other guy holds the plank and tells himself: “God will save me.”
\nA few days later he died and is sent to heaven.
\nIn heaven, he angrily asks God: “Why didn’t you save me?”
\n“I sent you a boat you idiot.”
\nNo one is coming to save you. You are all alone. It’s up to you to change your fortune.
\nDo nothing, be nothing.
\nLa fin.
\nThe post WordPress Saved My Life appeared first on HeroPress.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 06 Feb 2019 08:00:33 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:18:\"Collins Agbonghama\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"WPTavern: Sending Positive Vibes to Alex Viper007Bond Mills\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=87067\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:70:\"https://wptavern.com/sending-positive-vibes-to-alex-viper007bond-mills\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1083:\"Alex Mills, the author of several plugins, including the popular Regenerate Thumbnails plugin, published an update on his fight with cancer and it’s not looking too good.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe blood test had been showing a fraction of a percent and then later 3%. That was obviously trending in the wrong direction but the hope was increasing my special medication would keep things in check. It didn’t.
The bone marrow biopsy came back at a spotty 20% (amounts varied by area). This is not good at all as it means the leukemia has morphed into yet some other form that my donor immune system is having trouble keeping in check, either due to a change or being overwhelmed.
Alex Mill
Please join me in sending positive thoughts and vibes to Alex as his battle against Leukemia ramps up.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 04 Feb 2019 23:53:10 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Jeff Chandler\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:46:\"Dev Blog: The Month in WordPress: January 2019\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6575\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:71:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/02/the-month-in-wordpress-january-2019/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4635:\"The momentum from December’s WordPress 5.0 release was maintained through January with some big announcements and significant updates. Read on to find out what happened in the WordPress project last month.
\n\n\n\nIn a milestone announcement this month, WordPress project lead, Matt Mullenweg (@matt), named two individuals who are coming on board to expand the leadership team of the project.
As Executive Director, Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) will oversee all the contribution teams across the project. As Marketing & Communications Lead, Joost de Valk (@joostdevalk) will lead the Marketing team and generally oversee improvements to WordPress.org.
Both Josepha and Joost have contributed to the WordPress project for many years and will certainly have a much larger impact going forward in their new roles.
\n\n\n\nImmediately after the 5.0 release of WordPress, work started on version 5.1 with some highly anticipated new features coming out in the first beta release. Since then, the second and third betas have been made available.
One of the core updates in this release — a feature to improve the way in which WordPress handles PHP errors — has been pushed back to version 5.2 due to unforeseen issues that would have caused significant delays to the 5.1 release.
Want to get involved in testing or building WordPress Core? You can install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, follow the Core team blog, and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
\n\n\n\nHave a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.
Version 4.1.1 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. It contains the following changes:
\n\n\n\nTo upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in the WordPress plugins directory.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 31 Jan 2019 18:56:48 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:17:\"Christopher Finke\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"Dev Blog: WordPress 5.1 Beta 3\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6566\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/01/wordpress-5-1-beta-3/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3756:\"WordPress 5.1 Beta 3 is now available!
\n\n\n\nThis 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.
\n\n\n\nThere are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Testerplugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).
\n\n\n\nWordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there!
\n\n\n\nOne of the features originally slated for WordPress 5.1—the PHP error protection handler—will target WordPress 5.2 instead. Some potential security issues were discovered in the implementation: rather than risk releasing insecure code, the team decided to pull it out of WordPress 5.1. The work in #46130 is showing good progress towards addressing the security concerns, if you’d like to follow development progress on this feature.
\n\n\n\nA handful of smaller bugs have also been fixed in this release, including:
\n\n\n\n![](\"https://i2.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/rss-block.gif?ssl=1\")
rel attributes to links, ensure the value isn’t empty (#45352), and that it works as expected with customizer changesets (#45292).WordPress 5.1 has many changes aimed at polishing the developer experience. To keep you informed, we publish developers’ notes on the Make WordPress Core blog throughout the release cycle. Subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog for updates over the coming weeks, detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.
\n\n\n\nDo you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! The beta 2 release also marks the soft string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.
\n\n\n\nIf 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.
\n\n\n\nIn just a few weeks
WordPress Five-One will be here.
Your testing helps us!
Here’s what I read in 2018, in chronological order of when I finished it, as promised in my birthday post. I’ve highlighted a few in bold but in general I was pretty satisfied with almost all of my book choices this year. I’ve put a lot more time into the “deciding what to read” phase of things, and have also had some great help from friends there, and have been trying to balance and alternate titles that have stood the test of time and newer au courant books.
\n\n\n\nStressing subscriptions over scale, De Correspondent launched in 2013 with €1.7 million from 18,933 members. Membership has grown over fourfold since then. Subscriptions and book sales are De Correspondent‘s primary revenue sources. Today The Correspondent is closing on its first 50,000 subscribers with $2.6 million raised in pre-launch funding.
\nErnst is a long-time WordPress user, but his vision for journalism led to the creation of a technology company built around a proprietary CMS called Respondens for De Correspondent and now The Correspondent. Respondens’ unique design reflects an ethic where subscribers are treated as a community of people who want to be involved in the production of the news they read. In the future, Ernst hopes to market Respondens to support its development and spread the practice of what we might call “responsive journalism.”
\nErnst and his colleagues intend to avoid the churn of breaking news by taking a structural focus on the issues they cover, working in the tradition of constructive, problem-solving, or “solutions journalism.”
\n\n\n\n9/ Not just the problem, but what can be done about it. In Europe, they call it \"constructive journalism.\" In the US, solutions journalism. The idea: Your report is incomplete — lacks depth — unless it includes what we can do: as individuals, as a society or political community.
\n— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) February 20, 2018
Finding solutions as journalists means listening, engaging, and collaborating with readers. In his predictions for journalism in 2019, Ernst told Harvard’s Nieman Lab,
\n\n“To really be a reader-driven organization, every journalist that works there should be open to the knowledge, ideas, and concerns of their readers. You can’t outsource that interaction to an engagement editor.”
This approach to journalism slows down and deepens communication by focusing issues around the people and the communities they concern. The constructiveness of this approach may have a lot to do with its calming and humanizing effects.
\nErnst has written several Dutch best-sellers, including a Thank-You Book or “gratitude” journal that came out of his efforts to overcome anxiety about public speaking. In his reflections on work, overwork, and gratitude for TEDx, Ernst emphasizes that resistance to “the burnout society” where “creativity is crushed” is a collective task: everyone needs to make daily space for their close relationships where work and media do not intrude.
\nI am grateful Ernst took some time after the holidays to talk about his experience with WordPress, collaborative online communities, and democratized journalism. Here is the conversation we had.
\nDK: What are your thoughts about WordPress today? Have you made any connections or maintained relationships with the WP community in other ways?
\nEP: I started using WordPress in 2006 when I launched my personal blog ahead of an internship at a press agency in the United Nations HQ in New York. The fact that I then, as a twenty-year-old, could start a publication in such an easy way, has been crucial in my career and something I will be the WordPress community eternally grateful for. Since then, I have started several sites, most of them running on WordPress. In 2007 I co-founded the blog of The Next Web Conference, now known as thenextweb.com, in 2009 I started a news blog for the Dutch daily nrc.next, and in 2010, as head of digital at the Dutch quality newspaper (NRC Handelsblad), I switched their main site from ‘Escenic’ to WordPress. The fact that we could so easily build our own plugins (for example, a liveblog feature to cover the Arab spring) was crucial in the success of that news site. Also, the developers enjoyed their work more, since they could give back to the community.
\nI still run my personal site on WordPress, and even though I don’t publish there anymore, I love to stay in the loop of new WordPress releases and the ever-increasing user-friendliness of the software. In lost moments, I enjoy reading the developers forums and checking their discussions about new releases (I admire the distributed, self-organizing and voluntary efforts of the community) but I’m not in touch with one of the members. I’m just an admiring bystander.
\nDK: Can you explain when and why you came to see community and membership features as essential to a CMS? What does it look like when the idea of membership/audience inclusion is integral to the software architecture and vision? How are you doing this in Respondens?
\nEP: The main consideration was focus. We wanted a CMS that only had features for our writers that we deemed important. We didn’t want to create any distraction by having other options available — both to our developers as to our writers. If we build it ourselves, we force ourselves to make conscious decisions about every new feature we add. I.e., we wouldn’t just switch a ‘like’ button on in the comment section, simply because it’s already there. Forcing ourselves to do this made sure we built a laser-focused CMS and publication. The focus and the calm that follows makes it unique. (See “Cultivating calm: a design philosophy for the digital age.”)
\nAlso, our approach to reader interaction — as you mentioned — is a unique asset of our CMS. I elaborate on that in this Medium post, “Reinventing the Rolodex: Why we’re asking our 60,000 members what they know.” We believe in the democratization of the journalistic research process. Anyone could be a source, anyone has expertise and knowledge to share within a specific niche.
\n\n\n\n1/ THREAD: There’s a great untapped resource in journalism, and it’s available to every journalist right now.
\nIt’s the experience and expertise of your *readers*.
\nGiving them the opportunity to share what they know, could fundamentally transform journalism.
\n— Ernst Pfauth (@ejpfauth) December 11, 2018
DK: How does your model of membership-based journalism change at scale, when you have potentially the largest possible national and international audience? Will you still ask your journalists to spend 30-50% of their time reading and responding to member comments and other feedback? Is this essential (or even possible) to sustain at scale?
\nEP: The thought that you see your readers as sources of knowledge and expertise is crucial. It works for the local examples you mentioned, but it can also work for global topics. For example, we interviewed Shell employees from all over the world — who we found through our Dutch members forwarding a call-out. (“How reader engagement helped unearth the Shell tape.”) We also created the position of “conversation editor” to help journalists with the scalability of their reader interaction.
\nYes, there are scale challenges. We see our journalists as conversation leaders and our members as contributing experts. We notice when a journalist gets more feedback from their sources (their readers), they need a research assistant to keep up — for example by highlighting interesting contributions to them or taking over some interviews. These are tasks that can be easily outsourced, as long as the correspondent remains the main point of contact in the comment sections and guides the conversation.
\nI don’t see the 30 and 50 percent as time to spend on ‘responding to comments.’ The comments are just a means to an end. The end goal is to involve your audience, so you can get a wider set of sources, become more inclusive and publish richer journalism. We estimate it takes 30 to 50 percent of your time to live up to that mission.
\nDK: On the other end of the spectrum, does your model have things to teach small, local journalism and other membership-focused businesses that they don’t already know? In the new membership-based local journalism I’ve been watching in the US and Canada — local media startups where there’s no history or expectation of a printed product or advertising — there’s a definite limit on the subjects that can be curated and written (or spoken) about in a deep and penetrating way. Is this a low or slow-growth model that simply must be accepted?
\nEP: It starts with being open about your mission as a journalist (all our new correspondents publish a mission statement when they start working with us) and then telling your audience what you expect from them. It’s about that personal relationship. The CMS, practices, technology and resources all follow. But it’s the being open to your audience input and being open about your shared goal with them that’s crucial. Anyone can do that. And when you start, it might even be easier to do it on a small scale, but it’s more intimate, and you can scale up as you get better at it.
\n![\"The](\"https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/295952-tc_team_behindthescenes_07-521ac4-original-1542160485.jpg\")
The Correspondent team browses their unbreaking newspaper. From left: Zainab Shah, Jessica Best, Rob Wijnberg, Baratunde Thurston, and Ernst Pfauth.
DK: What do you do to keep sane and whole amid the busyness and stress of work? Are you still a practitioner of journaling and daily gratitude? Have your thoughts on that changed or deepened?
\nEP: I still write in a gratitude journal every night and noticed this three-year habit has really made me more aware of ordinary but beautiful moments in life, and also taught me to enjoy the process instead of the end goal. I save my evenings and (80% of) my weekends for family and friends — and always have my phone on DND in those hours. Also: I don’t check my email before I have left my apartment. Setting these clear boundaries and turning them into routines have really helped me to stay sane in the busyness of the campaign.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 25 Jan 2019 23:00:29 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10:\"Dan Knauss\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 344 – Introduction to the WordPress Governance Project\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=87028&preview=true&preview_id=87028\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:90:\"https://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-344-introduction-to-the-wordpress-governance-project\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1443:\"In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Morten Rand-Hendriksen and Rachel Cherry to discuss the WordPress Governance project. We discover why it was created, its goals, and how it aims to help govern the systems and processes that make up the WordPress project.
\nWPML Alleges Former Employee Breached Website and Took Customer Emails
\nThe Era of “Move Fast and Break Things” Is Over
\nNext Episode: Wednesday, January 30th 3:00 P.M. Eastern
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via RSS
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Stitcher Radio
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Google Play
\nListen To Episode #344:
\n
Julie Sugar has a beautiful piece in Lilith Magazine about miscarriage and faith.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 24 Jan 2019 21:44:23 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:111:\"WPTavern: WordPress Names Josepha Haden New Executive Director, Joost de Valk Marketing and Communications Lead\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=87010\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:121:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-names-josepha-haden-new-executive-director-joost-de-valk-marketing-and-communications-lead\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4428:\"During the 2018 State of the Word address, Matt Mullenweg acknowledged lessons learned in the process of releasing WordPress 5.0. One of those was the need for various teams across the project to work together better. The friction during the 5.0 development cycle was beneficial in that it surfaced areas where the project can grow and sparked conversations that are already leading to improvements.
\nLast week Mullenweg announced that WordPress is expanding its leadership team to include Josepha Haden in a new Executive Director role and Joost de Valk as the Marketing and Communications Lead. These new roles better distribute project leadership to more individuals who have demonstrated the ability and judiciousness to guide large, diverse teams towards success. Haden will be overseeing WordPress’ contributor teams and de Valk is leading the marketing team and overseeing improvements to WordPress’ websites and other outlets.
\nThe Executive Director role is particularly critical for the health of the project, as contributor and community feedback pours in across so many different mediums. Tracking all of this information and taking it into consideration amounts to a full-time job. In her first week in the new role, Haden is seeking feedback regarding the challenges contributors face when working on the project. She identified seven challenges which seem to resonate with many who have commented:
\nResponses from contributors have so far revolved around a similar theme – the desire for more clearly-defined projects and goals for teams, along with more communication from leadership.
\n“Define goals and deliverables for each project deliverable,” Daniel Bachhuber suggested. “Once these are defined, it’s much easier to estimate the level of effort and resources required. Distinguish between full-time sponsored, part-time sponsored, and completely volunteer labor. Each of these three do not work at the same pace. It’ll be much easier to estimate a team’s velocity if you know what type of labor you have to work with.”
\nMeagen Voss offered some valuable insight from a newer contributor’s perspective. She said the leadership of the project is very unclear and that people could benefit from that information being more prominently published. She also suggested that WordPress explore the idea of having ambassadors for each team to facilitate communication and collaboration across projects.
\n\nYou get to know your team very well, but no so much other teams. I’ve met some great folks in Slack and am getting to know the two groups I’m involved in super well. But if I have an issue or a question that needs to be addressed to another group, then I would have to hang out in that team’s channel for a while to figure out who the right person is to get in touch with. Identifying “ambassadors” or points of contact for each group could be a quick and helpful way to address that.
The conversation is still open for contributors to jump in and share their own challenges and suggestions. Haden plans to follow up with the next steps after gathering more feedback. Action born out of these conversations has the potential to greatly improve contributors’ experiences working together, resulting in fewer people burning out on communication struggles or losing momentum from lack of clearly defined objectives.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 23 Jan 2019 22:23:19 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:28:\"Matt: Thich Nhat Hanh on Tea\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=48949\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:45:\"https://ma.tt/2019/01/thich-nhat-hanh-on-tea/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:331:\"\n\n\n\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 23 Jan 2019 21:27:25 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:66:\"WPTavern: WooCommerce Launches New Mobile Apps for iOS and Android\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86988\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:77:\"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-launches-new-mobile-apps-for-ios-and-android\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3641:\"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
— Thich Nhat Hanh in The Miracle of Mindfulness
This week marks the first public release of WooCommerce’s new mobile app for Android and the improved version for iOS. WooCommerce began beta testing the Android app late last year and the original iOS app has been updated to offer the same features.
\nThis first release should be considered a basic start that is mostly useful for tracking store performance with detailed stats and getting alerts for new orders and product reviews. Users cannot add or edit products and the app does not yet allow for switching between stores. The first release offers basic order management and fulfillment but does not include the ability to change order status. The mobile apps don’t yet live up to their tagline of “Your store in your pocket,” but it’s a good starting place.
\nAccording to the Google Play Store, the WooCommerce app has been installed more than 10,000 times and the response from users has been mixed. The app is averaging a 2.5-star rating after early reviews from 45 users. The iOS app has received similar responses. Many of the negative reviews are due to connection/login issues and the requirement for stores to use Jetpack.
\n“This has promise, but get rid of the need for Jetpack,” one reviewer wrote. “There are other secure ways of syncing up. Other apps have done it for years. This app has been long overdue, but is poor in execution when you need to install a plugin that tends to bog down your site and that most don’t need. Give an alternative means of syncing and allow us to edit at least the basics of a product on the go.”
\nWooCommerce marketing representative Marina Pape explained the Jetpack requirement in a post announcing the mobile apps’ launch:
\n\nThe Jetpack plugin connects your self-hosted site to a WordPress.com account and provides a common authentication interface across lots of server configurations and architectures.
\nBoth Apple and Google only allow a single trusted sender for pushes for security reasons (read more), making Jetpack the best way for us to give you modern mobile app features like push notifications.
In order to connect sites with the app, Jetpack creates a shadow site on WordPress.com’s servers and syncs quite a bit of data. Although this list of data is transparently outlined, the Jetpack requirement is a deal breaker for some users. They either object to sharing their data or believe the plugin will slow down their stores. Until the app’s features are more compelling than the detriments users perceive in Jetpack, it may lose a few users based on this requirement.
\nAccording to BuiltWith, WooCommerce is now the most popular shopping cart technology used by 22% of the top 1 million websites, with competitors Shopify and Magento not too far behind at 17% and 13% respectively. Having a new mobile app should help WooCommerce remain competitive, but the team needs to keep iterating on the app to make it more useful for those managing stores on the go.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 23 Jan 2019 05:35:53 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:91:\"WPTavern: Gutenberg Phase 2 to Update Core Widgets to Blocks, Classic Widget in Development\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86953\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:101:\"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-phase-2-to-update-core-widgets-to-blocks-classic-widget-in-development\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5791:\"Gutenberg phase 2 development is underway and one of the first orders of business is porting all existing core widgets to blocks. This task is one of the nine projects that Matt Mullenweg outlined for 2019, along with upgrading the widgets-editing areas in wp-admin/widgets.php and adding support for blocks in the Customizer.
\nContributors on phase 2 are also developing a Classic Widget, which would function as a sort of “legacy widget block” for third-party widgets that haven’t yet been converted to blocks. There may be many instances where plugin developers have not updated their widgets for Gutenberg and in these cases their plugins would be unusable in the new interface without the option of a Classic Widget. This block is still in the design stage.
\nThe widgets.php admin page will need to be completely reimagined as part of this process. Mark Uraine, a designer who works at Automattic, created some mockups to kick off the discussion about what this screen might look like.
\n![\"Widgets](\"https://i1.wp.com/cldup.com/o9-F6ebs7m.gif?resize=627%2C421&ssl=1\")
These mockups are just explorations of where widgets may be headed next, and they do not take into account everything that will be required of this screen.
\nNick Halsey, one of the maintainers for WordPress’ Customize component recommended abandoning this screen altogether in favor of showing widget block areas in the Customizer:
\n\nThe widgets admin screen has a fundamental disconnect with the way that widget areas actually work – with different areas showing in different parts of the screen and potentially on different parts of the site. It will be very difficult to clearly reflect the frontend page structure on this screen in a way that users will be able to understand. Experimenting with contextual approaches to this experience in the customizer offers numerous opportunities for this fundamental problem to be solved. Starting with the visible edit shortcuts that are already in core, revamped widgets could be edited directly on the frontend (of the customize preview) or in an overlay that is more directly related to the display on a particular screen. The ability to navigate to different parts of the site within the customize preview solves a problem that this screen will never be able to address.
Getting blocks to work in the Customizer is also part of phase 2, but conversation on the ticket related to wp-admin/widgets.php indicates the team is not going to abandon this screen just yet.
\n“While this screen will eventually be deprecated in the future, especially as more of the site is built in Gutenberg, it’s a necessary “baby step” to get us all there together,” Uraine said. “Maybe the best thing is to keep the existing layout, but just allow the use of all blocks within the accordion content areas? This will keep our resources and investment minimal on this particular piece with just a few suggested tweaks to the mockup in the initial post. It will also allow us to move to the Customizer more quickly.”
\nGutenberg accessibility contributor Andrea Fercia encouraged contributors to address accessibility before creating visual mockups by designing the information architecture first. He encouraged them to organize the required information and controls while thinking about how someone might navigate them in a linear way.
\n“The customizer is not fully accessible,” Fercia said. “The admin widgets screen is the only place where persons with accessibility needs have a chance to manage widgets without having to face big accessibility barriers.”
\nDiscussion on the future of the widget management screen continues in the ticket and contributors are looking to get more input during this exploration stage. There’s also a project board where anyone can share a blog post with their own explorations.
\nPorting widgets to blocks has its own project board if you want to follow along or jump in on an issue. Most of the core blocks are already finished and a handful are still in progress.
\nUpdating the widgets management page and bringing blocks into the Customizer is a major overhaul but will further unify WordPress’ interface for editing and previewing content. Widgets have served WordPress well over the years, making it easy for users to customize their websites without having to know how to code. The feature has also survived many evolutions, eventually making its way into the Customizer five years ago in WordPress 3.9. One of the limitations with widgets is that they can only be used in “widgetized” areas. Transforming widgets into blocks removes that limitation and makes it possible to use widgets in posts and pages as well.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 22 Jan 2019 21:11:48 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"Dev Blog: WordPress 5.1 Beta 2\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6550\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/01/wordpress-5-1-beta-2/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4498:\"WordPress 5.1 Beta 2 is now available!
\n\n\n\nThis 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.
\n\n\n\nThere are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).
\n\n\n\nWordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there!
\n\n\n\nOver 110 tickets have been closed since beta 1, many of which are documentation and testing suite improvements. Here are the major changes and bug fixes:
\n\n\n\npre_render_block and render_block_data filters have been introduced allowing plugins to override block attribute values (#45451, dev note coming soon).get_template_part() will now return a value indicating whether a template file was found and loaded (#40969).orderby values for post__in, post_parent__in, and post_name__in has been standardized (#38034).WordPress 5.1 has many changes aimed at polishing the developer experience. To keep you informed, we publish developers notes on the Make WordPress Core blog throughout the release cycle. Subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog for updates over the coming weeks, detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.
\n\n\n\nDo you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! The beta 2 release als marks the soft string freeze point of the 5.1 release schedule.
\n\n\n\nIf 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.
\n\n\n\nDo you enjoy bugs?
I don’t. So, we fixed them all.
Well, not all. But close.
Over the weekend, many WPML customers received an unauthorized email from someone who claimed to have hacked the company’s website and gained access to customer emails. WPML founder Amir Helzer suspects that the attacker is a former employee.
\n“The customer is an ex-employee who left an exploit on the server (not WPML plugin) before leaving. Besides fixing the damage, we’ll also be taking legal actions,” Helzer said Saturday night.
\nThe WPML team worked around the clock over the weekend to secure their systems and sent out an email informing customers of the incident. They also assured customers that the WPML plugin does not contain an exploit and that payment information was not compromised. The company published an announcement to their website, detailing the incident and their response:
\n\nWe updated wpml.org, rebuilt everything and reinstalled everything. We secured access to the admin use 2-factor authentication and minimized the access that the web server has to the file system.
\nThese are more precautions than actual response to the hack. Our data shows that the hacker used inside information (an old SSH password) and a hole that he left for himself while he was our employee.
\nThis hack was not done via an exploit in WordPress, WPML or another plugin, but using this inside information. In any case, the damage is great and it’s done already.
WPML urges customers not to click on any links in the email the attacker sent out and recommends they change their passwords for wpml.org. The attacker has customer names, emails, and sitekeys, but WPML said the sitekeys cannot be used to push changes to customer websites.
\nHelzer is convinced that the attack was an inside job and suspects two former employees. He and his team are working to provide evidence to the authorities. He said the the nature of the attack demonstrates that it was likely not an outside hacker:
\n\n\n\n
\n- The first time our site was breached was on the day we fired an employee, who had access to our servers. We didn’t identify the breach at that time. However, once we got hacked, we analyzed the original hole and we found in our log when it was placed (yup, he deleted the log, but he didn’t delete the backup). Now that we finished cleaning up the mess, we’re going through all logs and collecting the full evidence.
\n- The attacker targeted specific code and database tables that are unique to our site and not generic WordPress or WPML tables.
\n- The attacker crafted the attack so that it would cause us long term damage and not be apparent in first sight. That long-term damage is very difficult to guess without knowing our business objectives and challenges. This is information that our employees have, but we don’t disclose.
\n
The idea that a former employee who is known to the company would risk performing these illegal actions is difficult to grasp, even in the case of someone who was fired and may have been acting in retaliation. The risks of being caught seem too great.
\n“In many jurisdictions including the USA, this is jail time,” Wordfence CEO Mark Maunder said. “So I find it quite incredible that an employee would leave a backdoor, use it to deface their site, steal their data and email all subscribers. This is the infosec equivalent of walking into a police precinct and tagging the wall while the cops watch.”
\nHelzer said the incident should serve as a wakeup call for companies that employ remote workers. It highlights the importance of having procedures in place for revoking employee access to all systems used as part of day to day operations.
\n“We have to admit that our site was not secured well enough,” Helzer said. “If someone previously had admin access and stopped working for us, we should have been more careful and avoided this situation.
\n“This can be a wakeup call for others. We talk a lot about the benefits or remote work and most of the WordPress industry works remotely. This made us realize that we need to be a lot more pessimistic when we allow any access to our system.
\n“For example, the fact that we’re now coding for ourselves a requirement to login with 2fa, means that we’re not alone in this exposed situation.”
\nThe attacker’s unauthorized email and WPML’s response email went out over the weekend, so many customers will be learning of the incident today when they return to work. Helzer said customers have been supportive so far.
\n“I think that customers appreciate the fact that we contacted them as fast as we could and we dropped everything and ran to handle this,” he said. “I think that we’ll still have damage. Clients did not run away from us right now but a good reputation is something that you build over years. A nasty incident like this stays ‘on your record.’ This is our livelihood and we take it seriously.”
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 21 Jan 2019 16:21:19 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:58:\"WPTavern: WPML Website Hacked, Customer Emails Compromised\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86908\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:68:\"https://wptavern.com/wpml-website-hacked-customer-emails-compromised\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3452:\"On Saturday, January 19, WPML customers started reporting having received an email from someone who seems to have hacked the plugin’s website and gained access to customer information.
\n\n\n\nGot same mail and there is this text on #wpml website visible now. What happened guys? #security #hack #vulnerability #0day or something? #WordPress
\n— Gytis Repečka (@gytisrepecka) January 19, 2019
The hacker claims to be a disgruntled customer who had two websites hacked due to vulnerabilities in the WPML plugin:
\n\nWPML came with a bunch of ridiculous security holes which, despite my efforts to keep everything up to date, allowed the most important two of my websites to be hacked.
\nWPML exposed sensitive information to someone with very little coding skills but merely with access to the WPML code and some interest in seeing how easy is to break it.
\nI’m able to write this here because of the very same WPML flaws as this plugin is used on wpml.org too.
The hacker also claims to have exploited the same vulnerabilities in order to send the email to WPML’s customers and has published the same message to the plugin’s website. The text is still live at this time and product pages have also been defaced.
\n\n\n\nDefaced product features page, for example. pic.twitter.com/MWNZh6g1HQ
\n— Wordfence (@wordfence) January 20, 2019
The commercial multilingual plugin has been in business since 2009 and is active on more than 600,000 WordPress sites. It is a popular plugin for business sites in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, especially those with a global audience. Customers are still waiting for an official explanation from WPML.
\nWe contacted the company for comment but have not yet received a response. If you are using the plugin, you should deactivate it until the company pushes an update to patch the security vulnerabilities. This story is developing and we will publish new information as it becomes available.
\nUpdate from WPML founder Amir Helzer: “The customer is an ex-employee who left an exploit on the server (not WPML plugin) before leaving. Besides fixing the damage, we’ll also be taking legal actions.”
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sun, 20 Jan 2019 02:32:15 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 343 – Newspack, Expanding Leadership, and Cory Miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:59:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86902&preview=true&preview_id=86902\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:87:\"https://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-343-newspack-expanding-leadership-and-cory-miller\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1823:\"In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss Automattic’s quest to create a new service tailored to journalists. We discuss what’s next for Cory Miller as his chapter at iThemes ends later this month. Near the end of the show, we talk about recent leadership changes in the WordPress project and share our opinions of Slack’s new logo.
\nEmbarking On My Next Adventure
\nWordPress 5.1 Schedule Updates
\nExpanding WordPress Leadership
\n\nHow WordPress Knows What Page You’re On
\nNext Episode: Wednesday, January 23rd 3:00 P.M. Eastern
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via RSS
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Stitcher Radio
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Google Play
\nListen To Episode #343:
\n
WordPress.com has announced plans to create a new, open source publishing platform that caters to small and medium-sized news organizations. The Google News Initiative has contributed $1.2 million towards the development of “Newspack” on top of WordPress.com’s infrastructure.
\nAutomattic and Google have joined with other contributing partners from the broader world of journalism for a total of $2.4 million in funding for the first year of the project. These partners include The Lenfest Institute for Journalism ($400K), ConsenSys, the venture studio behind Civil Media ($350K), The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($250K), and an additional partner who will join later this month. Spirited Media and News Revenue Hub will also contribute to the creation of the platform.
\nLocal news organizations are critical for a healthy democratic society, keeping the public informed about things happening close to home. The move to digital news consumption has forced consolidation in the news industry where larger players have come out ahead while smaller publications struggle to stay above water.
\nIn a report called “The Expanding News Desert,” published in 2018, researchers at the University of North Carolina found that nearly one in five newspapers has disappeared during the past 15 years. Many others have become “ghost newspapers,” shells of what they once were – either absorbed by larger dailies that purchased them or suffering from a severely pared back newsroom that is unable to adequately cover local events.
\nWordPress.com has amassed an expert team to address this crisis in local news. The Newspack platform will cater to the technological and editorial needs of smaller newsrooms, with the monetization tools to make their work sustainable. WordPress.com is currently accepting applications for charter participants and plans to launch in beta near the end of July 2019.
\nThe WordPress community has speculated widely about what shape Newspack will take, whether it will be like WordPress.com VIP tailored to publications or something similar to Jetpack with a curated set of tools that could be used by self-hosted sites through SaaS upgrades. According to WordPress.com president Kinsey Wilson, a former executive for NPR and The New York Times who joined Automattic in 2018, the platform may end up being a hybrid of approaches.
\n“It’s still very early in the process, but I expect elements of both VIP and Jetpack to inform this,” Kinsey said. “Newspack will be part of the WordPress.com platform, but we’re going to be working on a highly curated experience tailored to these news organizations, with individualized support available across editorial and business.”
\nThe platform will support plugins that solve problems publishers experience at the local level and will also include Gutenberg-specific editorial tools.
\n“It will leverage Gutenberg,” Kinsey said. “A few examples of the tools that might be launched with Newspack include email integration for marketing and editorial; programmatic ad integration, analytics, real-time backups, and revenue generating tools for subscriptions and e-commerce. We hope to work closely with partners across the WordPress ecosystem for potential ways to work with services that are beneficial to news organizations.”
\nThe most important distinction of the Newspack platform is that it will be open source. That also puts it directly in competition with proprietary CMS’s like Arc, Vox Media’s Chorus CMS, and MediaOS, that are prominent in the news industry right now. Instead of working together, larger media companies have opted to build their own CMS’s and many of them are also licensing enterprise versions to publishers or offering them as SaaS solutions.
\nI asked Kinsey if Newspack will be something news organizations could self-host or if it will be inextricably tied to WordPress.com’s infrastructure. WordPress.com is making it open in the sense that publishers will not be tied to using it forever if they want to their information and copy the same setup somewhere else.
\n“It is not only open source, it will be designed so that at any point in time any individual site or even a commercial competitor could capture an image of the setup and port it to another platform,” Kinsey said. “The value we offer is our knowledge of the news industry, our ability to keep pace with new requirements, and our ability to vet various plug-ins and open-source contributions to the project for security and interoperability — all at an attractive operating cost of between $1,000 and $2,000 per month. In addition, we hope to expose news organizations to a wider community of like-minded developers and to create an on-boarding system that simplifies the setup.”
\nOperating costs on proprietary platforms are much higher than what WordPress.com is planning for Newspack. Arc costs smaller publishers $10,000 per month in software licensing fees and can cost up to $150,000 monthly for larger publications. Vox media executives told the Wall Street Journal that the company “plans to sell Chorus at different pricing tiers depending on the demands of each customer with fees in the six and seven-figure ranges.” Small local news publications are often priced out of using a publishing platform like this.
\n“It breaks my heart how much of their limited resources these organizations still sink into closed-source or dead-end technology,” Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a post introducing Newspack on his blog. “Open source is clearly the future, and if we do this right Newspack can be the technology choice that lasts with them through the decades, and hopefully our 15 years of growth lends some credibility to our orientation to build things for the long term.”
\nGoogle’s support of Newspack is in line with its history of building with and supporting open source projects. When asked for clarification on Google’s investment in the project, Kinsey said, “It is a donation that is intended to support work that otherwise would not likely find commercial support because of the relatively modest means of small digital publishers.”
\nWordPress.com’s Newspack announcement comes on the heels of the news of Digital First Media’s unsolicited $1.36 billion bid for Gannett. The future of local news is tenuous, as larger players in the industry press for more consolidation and cost-cutting journalism. In the same week, Facebook, who has had a hot and cold relationship with publishers, announced the company is investing $300 million to support local news.
\nIn recognition of the dire situation facing many local newsrooms, the largest companies on the web are committing funds to help them find a sustainable business model. WordPress.com’s Newspack platform, with its affordable, open source alternative to proprietary systems, is positioned to make a strong impact during this seminal time in the evolution of the news industry.
\n“By itself, an open source CMS is not going to help news organizations remain independent,” Kinsey said. “However, by helping new, emerging organizations overcome the complexity and cost typically associated with technology deployment and instead allowing them to focus resources on journalism and smart business practices, we think we can help them become more sustainable.”
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 17 Jan 2019 22:52:47 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:40:\"Matt: My TED Video on the Future of Work\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=48932\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:45:\"https://ma.tt/2019/01/ted-the-future-of-work/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2707:\"I was thrilled to participate in TED’s new video series, The Way We Work, and not surprisingly I made the case that distributed work is where everything is headed.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt has over 130,000 views already! What I really love about this video in particular is that we get into the specifics of how a company can start to embrace a culture of letting employees work from anywhere, even if it started out as a traditional office with everyone in the same place. Automattic never started that way, so even as we’ve scaled up to more than 840 people in 68 countries, there’s never been a question — it’s now built in to our entire culture.
For distributed work to scale up, it’s going to require more CEOs, workers, and managers to test the waters. Any company can experiment with distributed work — just pick a day or two of the week in which everyone works from home, I suggest Tuesdays and Thursdays, then build the tools and systems to support it. Yes, that may require some shuffling of meetings, or more written documentation versus verbal real-time discussion. But I think companies will be surprised how quickly it will “just work.”
If the companies don’t experiment, workers may force them to do it anyway:
WooCommerce Blocks 1.3.0 was released yesterday with six new blocks. Previously, the plugin allowed users to display a grid of products by category. The new version introduces a Featured Product Block with design options for customizing nearly everything about the display, including color overlay, price and description, text alignment, call-to-action button, and the product photo.
\n\n\n\nVersion 1.3.0 also introduces a Hand-Picked Products block that displays a grid of manual selections that can be ordered in different ways. Other new blocks include the following, which display as a grid and can be filtered by category:
\n\n\n\nWooCommerce Blocks is also now a feature plugin, which means that after it is more polished and tested, the plugin can be considered for merge into WooCommerce core. WooCommerce Blocks 1.4 is expected the last week in January with improvements to the Featured Product block and a new Products by Attribute block.
\n\n\n\nIn December 2018, WooCommerce published usage data that indicates 40% of users who could be considered “established business owners” also have a brick-and-mortar location, and 27% host events in physical locations. This means that many WooCommerce store owners have multiple channels for selling their products. The data also showed that large stores don’t always turn to big companies to handle their website development needs.
\n\n\n\nBased on that usage data, blocks have the potential to greatly improve the site management experience for many WooCommerce store owners who want to market to different audiences beyond their physical stores. Blocks enable them to easily swap out featured products and customize promotions on products that are selling well in their stores. All of these actions are quick to configure inside the new editor with a live preview. The sooner this feature plugin lands in WooCommerce core, the easier it will be to make these kinds of quick updates. Store owners with sites running on WordPress 5.0+ can take advantage of these blocks now by installing the plugin.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 16 Jan 2019 20:11:25 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"WPTavern: CoBlocks Adds Row and Columns Page Building Blocks for Gutenberg\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86811\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"https://wptavern.com/coblocks-adds-row-and-columns-page-building-blocks-for-gutenberg\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3005:\"CoBlocks, one of the earliest block collections for Gutenberg, has added new page building blocks and tools in the latest 1.6 release. ThemeBeans founder Rich Tabor and plugin developer Jeffrey Carandang partnered together on this iteration of CoBlocks to bring users new Row and Columns blocks and a Typography Control Panel.
\nThe Row and Column blocks are resizable and can be dragged to new positions.
\nAfter selecting the Row block, users can choose the number of columns and then a layout for the row.
\nThese row layouts can also be adjusted from inside the row toolbar or inspector sidebar panel, which includes responsive media query controls.
\n![](\"https://i0.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-15-at-5.53.18-PM.png?ssl=1\")
Version 1.6 also includes a new Typography Control Panel with support for Google fonts. Users can customize the fonts with built-in controls for line-height, letter-spacing, font-weight, and text-transform properties. It also supports customizing fonts for the core heading, paragraph, and button blocks.
\nThe video below shows a quick demo of column layouts and nested row blocks in action, as well as a few other blocks in the collection. Tabor said the team has more blocks in development that are geared towards full page layout and design. They are also working on a more advanced Google Maps block, feature blocks, and image cards.
\n\nThe Gutenberg team has been discussing a “section” block since February 2018, where columns blocks could be placed inside the more generic section container. It’s on the roadmap for Phase 2 but contributors are taking their time to carefully define how this block will work. In the meantime, plugin developers have created their own versions of sections.
\nCoBlocks is currently setting the bar for Gutenberg-powered layouts. When WordPress core gets deeper into site building, this plugin’s user-friendly approach to rows and columns should provide some inspiration for creating an intuitive page building experience.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 16 Jan 2019 01:49:38 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:67:\"WPTavern: WordPress Support Forums Add @mentions with Auto-complete\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86721\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:77:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-support-forums-add-mentions-with-auto-complete\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1852:\"The WordPress Support forums have been updated to include Twitter/GitHub style auto-completion for usernames. As users begin typing @username in the forum’s TinyMCE editor, it will begin to suggest usernames, narrowed further by characters typed. Hitting tab or enter will complete the username and link it to the user’s profiles.wordpress.org page. This will trigger a notification for the user.
\nA similar feature was implemented on WordPress trac three years ago. This initial version of @mention auto-complete for the support forums works in a similar way in that it completes a partial search query from a known set of usernames. In this case it only includes thread participants. In order to make the auto-complete scale for WordPress.org’s 10+ million registered users, it does not perform site-wide username lookups or include moderators, plugin reps, or theme reps who have not yet commented on the thread.
\nThe @mentions have been implemented across all WordPress.org forums. Any issues with the feature can be reported on trac by re-opening the original ticket or creating a new one. Daniel Iser commented on the ticket that he is working on getting this feature working for bbPress during the first half of this year.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 15 Jan 2019 18:12:43 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"Matt: Journalism and Newspack\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=48924\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:46:\"https://ma.tt/2019/01/journalism-and-newspack/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2189:\"WordPress.com is partnering with Google and news industry leaders on a new platform for small- and medium-sized publishers, called Newspack. The team has raised $2.4 million in first-year funding from the Google News Initiative, Lenfest Journalism Institute, Civil funder ConsenSys, and the Knight Foundation, among others. We’re also still happy to talk to and engage other funders who want to get involved — I’d love to put even more resources into this.
It’s been a difficult climate for the news business, particularly at the local level. It also breaks my heart how much of their limited resources these organizations still sink into closed-source or dead-end technology. Open source is clearly the future, and if we do this right Newspack can be the technology choice that lasts with them through the decades, and hopefully our 15 years of growth lends some credibility to our orientation to build things for the long term.
\n\n\n\nHere’s Kinsey in Nieman Lab:
\n\n\n\nThe goal is to both make sure that the catalog of publishing tools as well as business tools they need to be able to run what one hopes is a sustainable news operation are addressed simultaneously. It’s not simply a CMS for a newsroom, but a full business system that enables publishing and monetization at the same time.
–Nieman Lab interview
As you have come to expect from Automattic, everything will be open source and developed to the same standards WordPress itself is. We’re working with Spirited Media and the News Revenue Hub on the platform, and we will likely look for even more partnership opportunities from across the WordPress ecosystem. If you’d like to invest or get involved, drop us a line at newspack@automattic.com.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 15 Jan 2019 01:03:55 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:109:\"WPTavern: WPCampus Selects Tenon LLC for Gutenberg Accessibility Audit, Completed Report Expected in February\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86773\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:117:\"https://wptavern.com/wpcampus-selects-tenon-llc-for-wp-campus-gutenberg-accessibility-audit-completed-report-expected\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1626:\"WPCampus announced that Tenon LLC, a leading accessibility firm founded by Karl Groves, has been selected to perform its Gutenberg accessibility audit. More than $10,000 has come in through WPCamps’ crowdfunding campaign. Shortly before WordCamp US 2018, Automattic pledged to fund the remainder of the audit. The final cost for the chosen vendor is $31,200.
\n\n\n\nA diverse committee of WordPress, accessibility, and higher education professionals evaluated seven proposals before selecting Tenon LLC. The company’s Tenon API delivers advanced reporting that assists clients in understanding which issues to prioritize first in the process of building more accessible experiences. The Access Monitor plugin for WordPress is an example of a tool built using this API. Site administrators can use it to identify and tackle accessibility issues with the help of automated testing.
\n\n\n\nWPCampus will leave its crowdfunding campaign open until Friday, February 8 to allow more community participation. The organization plans to deliver a progress update on Thursday, January 31, and is aiming to complete the audit by late February. A public report of the findings will be published as a resource that anyone can access.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 14 Jan 2019 17:20:22 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:17:\"Matt: Thirty-Five\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=48911\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://ma.tt/2019/01/thirty-five/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3398:\"![\"\"](\"https://ma.tt/files/2019/01/IMG_8762-768x1024.jpg\")
What a year.
\n\n\n\nFirst, it feels amazing to write this inside of the new Gutenberg block editor in WordPress 5.0. It was a labor of love for so many and the next chapters are going to be even more exciting.
\n\n\n\nThe best part of the last year was growing closer to my friends and loved ones — I don’t know if it’s externally perceptible but my heart feels a lot more open.
\n\n\n\nI’ve found a good balance with meditation, work, sleep, fasting, eating, and reading that gives me a lot of joy, energy, and feels like a combination I could sustain the rest of my life.
\n\n\n\nReading in particular was a highlight as I finished 38 books, which is the most in a year since I started tracking, and so many of them were truly excellent I’m going to do another post just on books. I will give a special call out to The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. Leaving my Kindle Oasis at an airport ended up being a blessing in disguise as I started using the Kindle app on my iPhone a lot more and that’s become my new favorite habit. (And the physical Kindle was returned!)
\n\n\n\nIt was a strong travel year, covering 126 cities, 20 countries, and 377k miles. I especially enjoyed visits to Tulum, Iceland, Bodrum, Tonga, Kauai, Lanai, and Courchevel. I finally checked off my bucket list item to become scuba certified and had an amazing opportunity to swim with humpback whales.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://ma.tt/files/2019/01/Tonga-Wanderings-2-of-5-1024x635.jpg\")
I was a few feet from Adam Gazzaley when he took this photo.\n\n\n\nI also had lots of opportunities to practice patience, weathered a torrent of personally-directed criticism across every medium, and had a few months that were the hardest I’ve worked in my career. With the benefit of a little distance, though, those things don’t loom as large. I learned a ton — often the hard way but often that’s what it takes — and discovered I had some additional gears that can kick in when needed.
\n\n\n\nAs I pass solidly into my mid-thirties, I don’t have any drastic shifts on the horizon but I am looking forward to continuing to strengthen the habits I’ve been able to develop this past year.
\n\n\n\nOther years: 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Sat, 12 Jan 2019 00:12:56 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:70:\"WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 342 – GitHub, Commercials, and Governance\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:58:\"https://wptavern.com?p=86783&preview=true&preview_id=86783\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"https://wptavern.com/wpweekly-episode-342-github-commercials-and-governance\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2012:\"In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss what’s new in WordPress 5.0.3. We share insight into a new feature in WordPress 5.1 that will protect users from fatal errors or more commonly known as the white screen of death.
\nWe discuss the WordPress Governance Project and WordPress’ leadership overall throughout the past few years. Near the end of the show, we share our opinions on WordPress.com’s new marketing campaign.
\nWordPress 5.0.3 Maintenance Release
\nGitHub Announces Free, Unlimited Private Repositories
\nWordPress 5.1 to Replace “Blogging” References with “Publishing”
\nWordPress Governance Project Flagged as Unsanctioned, First Meeting Set for January 15
\nWordPress.com Launches New “Do Anything” Marketing Campaign
\nNext Episode: Wednesday, January 16th 3:00 P.M. Eastern
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via RSS
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Stitcher Radio
\nSubscribe to WordPress Weekly via Google Play
\nListen To Episode #342:
\n
WordPress 5.0.3 was released this week with more than a dozen fixes related to the block editor. The automatic background update has gone out and 23.2% of sites are currently running on 5.0+, with 47.2% hanging back at 4.9. Meanwhile, work on WordPress 5.1 charges forward and Beta 1 is now available.
\n\n\n\nOne of the projects Matt Mullenweg identified for 2019 was to merge the Site Health Check plugin into core to assist with debugging and encourage “good software hygiene.” The Site Health Check project, formerly called “ServeHappy,” began with the goal of helping users get their sites running on supported versions of PHP but has evolved to include other aspects of site maintenance and debugging.
\n\n\n\nWordPress 5.1 brings one of the most exciting aspects of the Site Health Check project into core. It introduces a new white screen of death (WSOD) protection feature that catches fatal errors so that users can still log into the admin to attempt to resolve the issue. In the past, non-technical users would have to contact their hosting companies or FTP into their files to try to fix plugin or theme compatibility issues by turning things off.
\n\n\n\nIn preparation for WordPress’ highly anticipated minimum PHP version increase, 5.1 will display a warning and help users upgrade their version of PHP. The minimum will be bumped to 5.6 in April and, depending on feedback, will be bumped again to 7.0 in December 2019.
\n\n\n\n“This project benefits not just WordPress users, but also the surrounding PHP ecosystem as a whole,” Jenny Wong said in the notes she published from the Site Health Check Project review at WCUS 2018. “Our hope is that this will prompt a lot of PHP updates across the web.”
\n\n\n\nIf you want to take advantage of more features from the Site Health Check plugin, you can install it from WordPress.org and visit the Dashboard > Health Check for a detailed overview of your site. It also has a very handy troubleshooting mode that enables a vanilla WordPress session, where all plugins are disabled, and a default theme is used, but only for your user. This works without disrupting the way the site displays to visitors.
\n\n\n\nWordPress 5.1 also introduces some updates for developers, including the ability to replace the cron system with a custom cron handler, set a custom location for WP_DEBUG_LOG, a new wp_blogmeta table, and a few other changes.
WordPress 5.1 is currently slated for release on February 21. The upcoming release is a big step on WordPress’ journey to becoming even more user-friendly. The idea that users will never again be locked out of their sites due to a WSOD is a major enhancement that will greatly improve the way they interact with WordPress’ plugin system. It also makes the prospect of installing new themes and plugins less daunting for non-technical users.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 11 Jan 2019 21:17:46 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:30:\"Dev Blog: WordPress 5.1 Beta 1\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6540\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/01/wordpress-5-1-beta-1/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4140:\"WordPress 5.1 Beta 1 is now available!
\n\n\n\nThis 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.
\n\n\n\nThere are two ways to test the WordPress 5.1 beta: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want to select the “bleeding edge nightlies” option), or you can download the beta here (zip).
\n\n\n\nWordPress 5.1 is slated for release on February 21, and we need your help to get there. Here are some of the big items to test so we can find as many bugs as possible in the coming weeks.
\n\n\n\nSite Health Check is an ongoing project aimed at improving the stability and performance of the entire WordPress ecosystem. The first phase of this project is included in WordPress 5.1. For the first time, WordPress will catch and pause the problem code, so you can log in to your Dashboard and see what the problem is (#44458). Before, you’d have to FTP in to your files or get in touch with your host.
\n\n\n\nAdditionally, in April 2019, WordPress’ will increase its minimum supported PHP version to 5.6. To help you check if you’re prepared for this change, WordPress 5.1 will show you a warning and help you upgrade your version of PHP, if necessary.
\n\n\n\n![](\"https://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-15-at-5.33.39-PM.png?ssl=1\")
![](\"https://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-15-at-5.40.22-PM.png?ssl=1\")
![](\"https://i1.wp.com/wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Screen-Shot-2019-01-15-at-9.56.52-AM.png?ssl=1\")
WP_DEBUG_LOG can be set to a custom log location (#18391).wp_blogmeta table (#37923).LIKE support to meta_key comparisons in WP_Meta_Query (#42409).There have been over 360 tickets closed in WordPress 5.1, with numerous small bug fixes and improvements to help smooth your WordPress experience.
\n\n\n\nKeep your eyes on the Make WordPress Core blog for more developer notes (which are assigned the dev-notes tag) in the coming weeks detailing other changes in 5.1 that you should be aware of.
Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!
\n\n\n\nIf 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.
\n\n\n\nMiss my haiku?
I will have plenty for you
in the coming weeks.
Jetpack 6.9 was released today with three new blocks for the editor. Subscriptions, Related Posts, and Tiled Galleries are now available as blocks under Jetpack in the block inserter tool.
\n\n\n\nThe most exciting thing for both Related Posts and the Subscription form is that they can now be placed anywhere within post or page content with a live preview. Previously these modules were limited to wherever the theme placed them, or widgetized areas in the case of the Subscription form. Below is an example:
\n\n\n\nTiled galleries can now easily be inserted, manipulated, and previewed in the new editor with all of the same features they had before. Styles and link settings for the galleries can be found in the block sidebar, but they are somewhat limited when compared to other plugins like Block Gallery. Now that the Jetpack team has the basic block in place, they can easily update it with new features.
\n\n\n\nUsers will need to have their Jetpack accounts connected to WordPress.com to access any of these new blocks, but they will all work on the Free plan.
\n\n\n\nIf you have been missing Jetpack shortlinks since Gutenberg was released, you will be pleased to find that Jetpack 6.9 brings them back under a new Jetpack icon at the top right of the block editor. Clicking on it reveals Jetpack’s publicize options as well as the shortlink.
\n\n\n\nJetpack is constantly evolving its admin menu and user flows. This release brings changes to various screens, including a new “My Plan” section in the Jetpack dashboard, as well as a reorganization of the sections and cards under Jetpack > Settings. It also improves the notices displayed to users who have not connected their WordPress.com accounts.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 11 Jan 2019 00:14:41 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:74:\"WPTavern: Google Launches Opensource.dev as an Introduction to Open Source\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86688\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"https://wptavern.com/google-launches-opensource-dev-as-an-introduction-to-open-source\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2463:\"Google has launched a new educational site at opensource.dev that offers a succinct and approachable introduction to open source software and licensing. WordPress is cited as one of the more well-known examples in the opening paragraphs:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt’s in your phone, your car, your TV, and your wifi-connected light bulbs. Open source components enable engineers to build on the work of a global community of developers to deliver better products faster and at lower cost. Linux, the Apache web server, Android, Firefox, and WordPress are examples of open source projects you may have heard of.
Google relies heavily on open source for both internal tools and consumer-facing products. A few of the company’s more widely used open source projects include Android, Chromium, Chromium OS, Go, and Material Design icons, but there are also many smaller projects. Google has created more than 2,000 open source projects in the last decade, which you can browse through using a fun, interactive explorer.
\n\n\n\nThe new Opensource.dev site gives an important nod to Open Source Initiative (OSI) as the maintainer of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the globally-recognized authority on open source licensing.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGoogle and many other OSI sponsors and affiliates recognize the OSD as the definition of open source and OSI’s authority as the maintainer of the OSD. Licenses which do not comply with the OSD might still provide access to the source code, but they’re not “open source”.
The site ends with a solid list of curated links to important open source organizations, foundations, and other resources for further exploration. Overall, opensource.dev provides a nice summary that answers the question, “What is open source?” It’s a resource agencies and freelancers might consider sharing with clients who are new to the concept.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 10 Jan 2019 19:53:44 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:83:\"WPTavern: Elementor Acquires Layers WP to Expand Compatible Theme Options for Users\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86701\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:94:\"https://wptavern.com/elementor-acquires-layers-wp-to-expand-compatible-theme-options-for-users\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5844:\"Elementor has acquired Layers WP, a WordPress site builder that was previously marketed as an all-in-one theme solution for getting a business online. Layers co-founders David and Marc Perel identified Gutenberg as the main reason for the sale in their farewell announcement:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWith the arrival of Gutenberg we realized that a big change was required for Layers to keep pace. A massive investment of time and money was needed so we had to assess the best way forward. Having spent all of our 20’s working 18 hour days to build beautiful WordPress products we reached a point where we felt it best to partner with another company to try take Layers to the next level.
Elementor is the leading WordPress page builder, with more than a million active installations. CMO Ben Pines said they estimate that number to be closer to 2 million, based on the daily install rate. The company has grown from 6 employees to 55 since it launched in June 2016.
\n\n\n\nElementor was well-prepared for Gutenberg’s inclusion in 5.0. While other page builders are still considering how to move forward with the new editor, Elementor released its Elementor Blocks for Gutenberg plugin in October 2018, making it possible for users to insert any Elementor template into Gutenberg with one click.
\n\n\n\nIn the past, Layers didn’t meet the requirements for being listed in the WordPress.org themes directory, because the team decided not to follow best practices for keeping plugin and theme functionality separate. In 2016, Perel said they were opting to maintain Layers as a hybrid product, a theme that included plugin-like functionality, in order to keep third-party conflicts to a minimum, which he said also lessened their support burden. This prevented the product from receiving greater exposure on WordPress.org. As larger page builders began to dominate the market, Layers failed to gain the traction it needed to compete. Add Gutenberg to the mix and Layers’ founders were in need of an exit.
\n\n\n\n“We feel that this acquisition has come just at the right moment when WordPress itself is going through a huge amount of change,” Perel said. “With the release of Gutenberg and the new built-in post editor we realized that much of Layers would need to change in order to keep pace with the new look of WordPress and feel that Elementor is the best company to respond to the shifting tide of the industry.”
\n\n\n\nElementor has released all 11 of Layers’ themes for free and Ben Pines said they are considering listing them on WordPress.org to make it easier for users to find them and stay updated. All of the themes have been updated to be fully compatible with both Gutenberg and Elementor. Existing Layers’ customers will receive two months of support before support is handed over to the Layers user community.
\n\n\n\n“Updating themes for compatibility is no easy matter, and we get thousands of requests asking for a theme that is compatible with Elementor,” Pines said. Finding a theme that is fully compatible with the page builder can be challenging. Pines said users often decide to use Elementor first and then look for a theme. There’s even a Facebook group called Elementor + Which Theme? with more than 2,400 members.
\n\n\n\n“Themes still pose an issue for users,” Elementor’s head of business development, Zvi Shapira, said. “We saw value in continuing the Layers project, and not leaving thousands of Layers users without a home. Layers is a well worthy project, and offering a theme that is compatible with Elementor and Gutenberg for free for our users and for all WordPress users has great value.”
\n\n\n\nPines identified Layers’ advanced Customizer panel as one of its chief selling points. Along with the acquisition, all of the Layers Pro features, such as resizing the logo, customizing buttons, and styling menus, are now rolled into the free version.
\n\n\n\nGutenberg is forcing some consolidation among page builders, as smaller operations struggle to keep pace with the technical updates required. Gutenberg is expected to standardize a way of layout building further along in the site customization phase. Pines said his team isn’t worried about how that will impact Elementor, even if core ends up overlapping with some of the solutions they offer in the plugin.
\n\n\n\n“I really don’t know if there will be an impact and of what sort,” Pines said. “It’s like the blocks we developed for Gutenberg. We adapted to provide our users with the maximum flexibility.” The plugin ensures that users don’t have to choose between using Gutenberg and the page builder. Acquiring Layers’ theme collection means Elementor users no longer have to look so hard to find a compatible theme.
\n\n\n\n“Our hope is that Layers themes will help less tech-savvy users manage the entire site design hassle-free,” Pines said.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 09 Jan 2019 23:29:12 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:45:\"Dev Blog: WordPress 5.0.3 Maintenance Release\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6530\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:71:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/01/wordpress-5-0-3-maintenance-release/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4566:\"WordPress 5.0.3 is now available!
\n\n\n\n5.0.3 is a maintenance release that includes 37 bug fixes and 7 performance updates. The focus of this release was fine-tuning the new block editor, and fixing any major bugs or regressions.
\n\n\n\nHere are a few of the highlights:
\n\n\n\nFor a full list of changes, please consult the list of tickets on Trac, changelog, or read a more technical summary on the Make WordPress Core blog.
\n\n\n\nYou can download WordPress 5.0.3 or visit Dashboard → Updates on your site and click Update Now. Sites that support automatic background updates have already started to update automatically.
\n\n\n\nThank you to everyone who contributed to WordPress 5.0.3:
\n\n\n\nAaron Jorbin, Alex Shiels, allancole, Andrea Fercia, Andrew Nevins, Andrew Ozz, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), bobbingwide, Csaba (LittleBigThings), David Binovec, David Herrera, Dominik Schilling (ocean90), Felix Arntz, Gary Pendergast, Gerhard Potgieter, Grzegorz (Greg) Ziółkowski, Jb Audras, Job, Joe McGill, Joen Asmussen, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, kjellr, laurelfulford, Marcus Kazmierczak, Milan Dinić, Muntasir Mahmud, Nick Halsey, panchen, Pascal Birchler, Ramanan, Riad Benguella, Ricky Lee Whittemore, Sergey Biryukov, Weston Ruter, and William Earnhardt.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:56:31 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:19:\"Jonathan Desrosiers\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:82:\"WPTavern: WordPress 5.1 to Replace “Blogging” References with “Publishing”\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86675\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:81:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-1-to-replace-blogging-references-with-publishing\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1627:\"WordPress 5.1 will replace the “Happy blogging” language in wp-config-sample.php with “Happy Publishing.” The next major release also cleans up a few other “blog” references by replacing them with the word “site.” A lot of tutorials and documentation will need to be updated. WordPress contributors are continuing to fine-tune the wording in various files to reflect its expanded capabilities as a publishing platform.
\n\n\n\n“As of this commit, WordPress is no longer a simple blogging platform,” Gary Pendergast wrote in the commit message. “It’s now a comprehensive publishing solution.”
\n\n\n\nThis commit signifies the end of an era, which actually ended a long time ago but is now formally recognized in the software’s language. WordPress can still be used for blogging, but it’s so much more dynamic. These days, successful blogs can easily transition into e-commerce stores or online magazines without having to migrate to a new platform.
\n\n\n\nWith Gutenberg now in the hands of millions of users, publishing different types of content is becoming more accessible for those who don’t know how to code. The new era of “Happy Publishing” in 2019 will bring even more progress on that roadmap, enabling users to have a more unified editing experience for other aspects of content management, including widgets and menus.
\n\n\n\nGitHub users no longer have to pay to keep code private. The company is now offering unlimited private repositories to Free account users, with up to three collaborators. Developers have different reasons for wanting to keep their code private – it may not be ready, they may be working on a side project, or may just be starting out in their coding journey. GitHub now makes it possible for users with free accounts to do that work in private, without having to upgrade to a Pro account for $7/month.
\nThis change brings the code hosting site more in line with competitors like GitLab.com, which allows for unlimited private projects and collaborators, and Bitbucket, a platform that has offered this for much longer. Bitbucket was actually GitLab’s inspiration for this model.
\nGitHub’s announcement was well-received but for many who have already moved to GitLab, this news come too late. Some are also wary of giving GitHub access to their private projects after Microsoft acquired the company for $7.5 billion last year. However, GitHub seems to be focusing its efforts less on monetizing the small fish and more on evolving the company’s Enterprise offering. It has combined its Business Cloud and Enterprise products into one unified “GitHub Enterprise” product that starts at $21/user/month.
\n\n\n\nOf course the GitHub update is so bigmega giantcorp can get you to give them more info & in turn more power & in turn more money, if that\'s annoying &/or unsavory to you there are alternatives (that are less convenient but that\'s what this is all about anyway) no grump just fact
\n— Jon Christopher (@jchristopher) January 7, 2019
“At GitLab we think that repositories will become a commodity,” GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij said in reaction to GitHub’s announcement. “I think Microsoft will try to generate more revenue with people using Azure more instead of paying for repos. We’re focusing on making a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle that can replace a lot of other tools.”
\nEvery inch given in this space makes code sharing platforms more competitive. In terms of private repositories, GitHub has come close to offering what its smaller competitors have been giving away for free for a long time. If GitHub were to add Continuous Integration (CI) for free users to match GitLab’s free tier, for example, it might capture even more of the market. Different features sway different types of users to adopt one platform or another and eventually some of those turn into paying customers.
\nFor existing GitHub Free users, unlimited private repositories means the opportunity to keep their incomplete projects out of the public eye, instead of having people stumble on them and wonder why they don’t work as expected. It also frees up a few more dollars for Pro users who want to downgrade to Free accounts.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Jan 2019 18:46:55 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:47:\"Dev Blog: The Month in WordPress: December 2018\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=6527\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:72:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2019/01/the-month-in-wordpress-december-2018/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3528:\"New features, a big event, and important announcements marked December as a milestone month for the WordPress community.
\n\n\n\nOn December 6 WordPress 5.0 was released. This release includes the much anticipated new block editor as the default editing experience. While some users have chosen to continue using the Classic Editor on their sites, many site owners have quickly upgraded to this latest version.
Two security and maintenance releases came out over the course of the month, with the latest update providing a huge boost to performance and stability.
The new version of WordPress comes a new default theme: Twenty Nineteen. This theme is designed to highlight how the block editor can be used.
Want to get involved in developing WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
\n\n\n\nThe next phase of Gutenberg is being decided, starting with widgets, which will make it easier for users to customize their sites. This will be done with features being added to the Gutenberg plugin.
Want to get involved in develop the future of the WordPress dashboard? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
\n\n\n\nWordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg outlined 9 projects for the year 2019. These projects range from creating a block for navigations menus, porting all existing widgets into blocks, forming a triage team to tackle open issues on Trac and more.
A status update for porting existing widgets to blocks has been posted by Mel Choyce.
\n\n\n\nWordCamp US 2019 will be held during Nov. 1-3, 2019, in St Louis, Missouri. It will be one of our largest events of the year and will feature Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address.
If you have a story we should consider including in the next “Month in WordPress” post, please submit it here.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Tue, 08 Jan 2019 09:18:48 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:11:\"Aditya Kane\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:96:\"WPTavern: WordPress Governance Project Flagged as Unsanctioned, First Meeting Set for January 15\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86573\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:106:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-governance-project-flagged-as-unsanctioned-first-meeting-set-for-january-15\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10550:\"The WordPress Governance Project is a new community initiative, led by Rachel Cherry and Morten Rand-Hendriksen, that will host its first meeting Tuesday, January 15 2019.
\n\n\n\nThe purpose of the project is to address two objectives:
\n\n\n\nHendriksen advocated for open governance when he introduced the project at WordCamp US in his presentation, Moving the Web forward with WordPress. He discussed how the decisions made for WordPress’ future affect a large portion the web. The project will first look at WordPress’ internal governance structure and then move into the second aspect of getting WordPress a seat at the table in important discussions affecting the broader web.
\n\n\n\nContributors on the project are aiming to propose a governance model for WordPress at or before WordCamp Europe 2019 or the Community Summit, if one is planned for 2019. The group plans to research existing governance models from corporations, government, and the open web community and submit their proposal to WordPress’ current leadership for consideration.
\n\n\n\nThe governance project has piqued the public’s interest but some have found its objectives confusing. It is not clear what actions will be within the realm of possibility with the current benevolent dictator model WordPress has used. Part of the scope of the project is to “propose a leadership and governance model for the WordPress open source project and its communities.”
\n\n\n\n\nThat\'s part of the job: to figure out how it can and should work. The status quo is not tenable, and leaves us out of important conversations about where the web and the internet is headed.
— Morten i Norge(@mor10) December 18, 2018
The idea of governance means different things to audiences across cultures. The second aspect of the project that aims to get WordPress a seat at the table seems more feasible and more likely to be well-received by the project’s leadership. It might make more sense to split up the two objectives into different projects. WordPress’ internal governance and its role in the greater web are very different topics, but the project’s creators seem to view them as inseparable.
\n\n\n\nMatt Mullenweg hasn’t joined in the Twitter conversation about governance but he did address the topic on a recent Post Status podcast episode.
\n\n\n\n“When he was talking about open governance, my take was that he was talking about getting WordPress a seat at the table, and discussing these regulation changes and et cetera happening,” Mullenweg said. “I think the example last year was that there was this meeting at 10 Downing Street. Who was there? Was WordPress represented?
\n\n\n\n“And he started talking about the Web Foundation, and I began thinking, “Wow, WordPress only represents a third of websites, and not even, really. It’s a third of the top 10 million. Another foundation like the Web Foundation actually might be a better vehicle to try to advocate on the open Web as a whole, versus just the people who happen to be using a single CMS.”
\n\n\n\nWhen asked more about WordPress’ leadership structure, Mullenweg reviewed the different approaches he has taken with the project. In 2018, the expression of his BDFL-style leadership was manifestly more overt than previous years, which may have influenced or even inspired the creation of the WordPress Governance Project.
\n\n\n\n“There’s been a lot more leaders, but I would actually argue the point that WordPress has always been sort of my vision being set, or even my direct leadership,” Mullenweg said. “There was a good four or five years there where the leadership structure, because we’ve experimented with lots of different – we don’t call it governance – but essentially leadership structures in WordPress. For a while, we had kind of the … It wasn’t a committee approach, but essentially like the lead developers consensus approach. We did that for a few years.
\n\n\n\n“Even from the beginning it wasn’t just me. It was me and Mike Little, so it’s never been solo. Then we went to where the release lead was the final decider, including over me, so that was probably, I don’t know, 3.9 to 4.7 maybe, that included overruling me as project lead for what was in the release or not, and that was to try to give a little more autonomy and flexibility to release leads. But the big change was a few years ago I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to take back over core WordPress development,’ and that was to try to make some of these big changes happen. So right now it is much more of a benevolent dictator model, although both of those words are questionable. But, I don’t see that as the permanent forever structure.”
\n\n\n\nMullenweg may not be able to sustain this level of involvement in core leadership indefinitely, with all of his other responsibilities at Automattic. He said he is open to WordPress empowering other leaders in the future.
\n\n\n\n“I’m not saying it always has to be me, but what I want is a strong, opinionated, thoughtful leader setting a bold direction, taking experiments and being willing to fail, comfortable with failure, is I think what you need to create great software,” he said.
\n\n\n\nBrian DeConinck, a WordPress developer who has recently been a vocal critic of the project’s leadership, called for more transparency around the decision-making process in his initial thoughts on the governance project.
\n\n\n\n“Matt is the central figure of the WordPress project,” DeConinck said. “He’s been a guiding force since the beginning. Without a doubt, he’s an important and valued member of our community. I don’t imagine governance as a means of usurping him.
\n\n\n\n“But should there be a single human face at the head of a project and a community at this scale? When people are critical of decision-making, having Matt at the center makes it easy to make criticism needlessly personal. This dynamic is hard on Matt and others in the project leadership, and ultimately toxic for the community.”
\n\n\n\nDeConinck said in order for the governance project to be successful he thinks it needs to be international, multicultural, and multilingual, with diverse voices, as well as clear mechanisms for WordPress users to provide feedback. He outlined a detailed list of success criteria that hasn’t officially been embraced by governance project as it has yet to hold its first meeting.
\n\n\n\nDeConinck’s suggestions are incompatible with the current BDFL-style leadership, as he claims that “feedback from a community of millions of users can’t adequately be processed and acted upon by a single individual listening and making decisions for the project.” WordPress has risen to become a dominant force on the web during the past 15 years under this style of leadership. Any meaningful proposal of change to the leadership structure will need to demonstrate how the new model can continue to enable WordPress to make rapid progress and maintain its relevance on the web.
\n\n\n\nEarlier this morning, WordPress Community Team representative Francesca Marano posted a notice on behalf of the governance project’s leadership to announce that the project has been removed from WordPress.org.
\n\n\n\n“Concerns have been raised about the posting of news about the WordPress Governance Project on make.wordpress.org and use of the #community-team Slack channel giving the impression the project is sanctioned as an official WordPress project,” Marano said. “It has not received such sanctions from WordPress leadership.”
\n\n\n\n“We went through what we believed were the appropriate channels for launching the project through the Community group (ie speaking to group members, asking for access to the Make blog, coordinating with the team and others to find a meeting time which didn’t collide with others, etc),” Morten Rand-Hendriksen said. “We were later informed the project was not sanctioned by WordPress leadership and therefore cannot use the Make blog or Slack.” He would not comment further on what transpired or the communication his team received.
\n\n\n\nFor the time being, it looks like the governance project will need to prove its worth independently before being officially adopted by WordPress. Many other community-led efforts and tools have followed this same process before coming under the umbrella of core.
\n\n\n\nThe project now has its own dedicated website at wpgovernance.com and a Slack instance at twgp.slack.com. The first meeting was set for January 8 but has been postponed to January, 15, 1600 UTC to allow participants to sign up at the new Slack workspace.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 07 Jan 2019 19:49:27 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"WPTavern: Beaver Builder Doubles Down on Serving Power Users in Response to Gutenberg\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86569\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:96:\"https://wptavern.com/beaver-builder-doubles-down-on-serving-power-users-in-response-to-gutenberg\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3074:\"At WordCamp US I had the opportunity to chat with Beaver Builder co-founder Robby McCullough about how the page builder is navigating the Gutenberg era. The proliferation of blocks for the new editor has made it easy for non-technical WordPress users to add things like pricing tables, maps, tabs, accordions, and other UI elements. Future iterations of Gutenberg will soon tackle layouts. These improvements to core will radically change how page builder products are marketed to WordPress users.
\n\n\n\n“One of the decisions we made in response to the news of Gutenberg early on is that we wanted to double down on our professional power users,” McCullough said. “It took us a long time in our growth as a business to figure out who our customers were. We realized there were two distinct camps: one that was like a do-it-yourselfer type, someone who maybe had a small business or a hobby website who wanted to use WordPress but wasn’t familiar with writing code. The other was more of a freelancer – maybe a one or two person agency, people who were building lots of websites and had development and frontend skills. We see that as the space where we want to live now. We’re hoping to continue solving problems and making the experience better for folks with a few more skills in their tool belts.”
\n\n\n\nFollowing up with McCullough later, he said that applying this new direction to Beaver Builder is already translating into the features they are prioritizing for the plugin.
\n\n\n\n“For example, in our latest major release, we added percent, em, rem, and viewport-based units for things like font sizes, margins, and padding,” McCullough said. “Without a basic understanding of CSS, this feature wouldn’t be too helpful. We also added dozens of pre-built row templates. So, instead of creating single-page designs, our goal was to create a modular system of rows that can be mixed and matched to build out sites. We’re working to build features that better enable folks who build lots of websites.”
\n\n\n\nIn the interview below we discussed the current integration between Gutenberg and Beaver Builder. McCullough said his team is considering bringing blocks into Beaver Builder or bringing Beaver Builder content into Gutenberg; both are possibilities. His team has been waiting to see how quickly the community adopts Gutenberg before making any major decisions.
\n\n\n\n“My hope is that there’s still going to be a place for page builders, Beaver Builder and everyone in this space, to have a little bit more agility,” McCullough said. “We can see Gutenberg kind of be like Instagram in that it’s going to appeal to a mass audience. We like to live in the Photoshop space where you’re going to get a lot of fine-tuned controls, solving problems and creating features that are going to help people build websites every day.”
\n\n\n\n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Fri, 04 Jan 2019 20:20:37 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:75:\"WPTavern: WP Storybook: A Handy Reference for WordPress React UI Components\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86604\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:85:\"https://wptavern.com/wp-storybook-a-handy-reference-for-wordpress-react-ui-components\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1553:\"LUBUS, a web design agency in Mumbai, has published a site called WP Storybook that offers an interactive way to explore various WordPress React components. It allows developers to browse and search UI components and see a live preview of the component next to example source code.
\n\n\n\n![\"Wp](\"https://i0.wp.com/cldup.com/yCZSRiLkVv.gif?resize=627%2C297&ssl=1\")
\nWP Storybook lets you view different states for various UI components and even test them on different viewports. The development team at LUBUS is adding more as they discover them while building projects with Gutenberg using reusable components. Their goal in publishing the project is to help developers work faster by making components easier to discover and reference.
\n\n\n\nLUBUS’ roadmap for WP Storybook includes the following:
\n\n\n\nIf you want to contribute to WP Storybook or log an issue, the code is open source (MIT license) on GitHub.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Jan 2019 23:51:43 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:73:\"WPTavern: WordPress.com Launches New “Do Anything” Marketing Campaign\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86590\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:78:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-launches-new-do-anything-marketing-campaign\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4698:\"WordPress.com is kicking off 2019 with a new national marketing campaign that features 14 entrepreneurs, writers, and non-profit organizations who are using the platform to make a big difference for their communities. The campaign is focused around the question: “What Would You Do If You Could Do Anything?”
\n\n\n\nWordPress.com published its inaugural ‘Anything Is Possible’ List, which includes 10 mini-documentaries ranging from 1 minute to 1:44. A few of the stories highlighted include Congolese-American sisters operating a successful hair salon in NYC, a 12-year-old journalist running her own online publication, a blogger who went viral and published her own book, and a non-profit fighting misinformation and extremist narratives. Each is presented more in depth on a new Do Anything campaign site that was launched today.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDo Anything is WordPress.com’s first large-scale national brand campaign. It will debut TV, print, and digital advertising spots in The New Yorker and on TV networks, including The History Channel, CNN, and National Geographic. WordPress.com will also be running ads on podcasts, including The Daily and NPR. The new 30-second TV ad was created by Interesting Development, an agency based in New York.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMuch like gym memberships, WordPress.com tends to see more action at the beginning of a new year with 20% more sites are created in January than the average, according to Mark Armstrong at Automattic. The timing for the campaign is aimed at tapping into the motivation that millions of users have for starting a new business or blog at this time of year.
\n\n\n\nIn 2016, Automattic started hiring for more marketing positions as an answer to Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Web.com, EIG, and Godaddy, competitors that Matt Mullenweg identified as having spent over $350M in advertising that year. In 2017, the company created five commercials, its first ever TV spots, as part of a series called “Free to be.” Many found the commercials to be confusing and the messaging wasn’t clear.
\n\n\n\nBy contrast, the 2019 “Do Anything” campaign is much better at demonstrating what people can do with WordPress. “As we share new work with the world we realize that some things will hit and some things will miss,” Automattic’s SVP of Brand, Michelle Broderick said. The company has continued to evolve its marketing based on feedback. This particular campaign was directly inspired by the people who are making things happen with WordPress.
\n\n\n\n“We were inspired by the people who use WordPress to imagine a better world,” Broderick said. “We saw everyone from bloggers to business owners to scientists to politicians using WordPress to share their story.”
The new TV spot is an improvement over previous campaigns in terms of communicating a clear message, but it doesn’t carry the same authenticity as the mini-documentaries. Each one is relatable and inspiring in telling the stories of people who have already answered the question “What would you do if you could do anything?” Many of those who were featured have carried on with their dreams through perseverance, despite tragedy and struggle along the way. The documentaries are more poignant than the TV spot, which has the added constraint of having to capture the viewer’s attention with a shorter amount of time.
\n\n\n\nThe “Do Anything” campaign as a whole is a good representation of the power of WordPress and should also help boost name recognition for the software in general. Broderick said Automattic is expecting tens of millions of impressions across TV, print, digital, and podcasts. The campaign is aimed at the American market but Armstrong said they hope to branch out into international markets in the future.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Thu, 03 Jan 2019 20:05:22 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"Sarah Gooding\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:34:\"HeroPress: YOU Make The Difference\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:56:\"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=2672\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:120:\"https://heropress.com/essays/you-make-the-difference/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=you-make-the-difference\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10124:\"![\"Pull](\"https://s20094.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/010219-min-1024x512.jpg\")
\n“A place is only as good as the people you know in it. It’s the people that make the place.”
\n― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four
This quote is a large part of the space WordPress holds within me.
\nComing from a career in Civil Engineering and a background of Industrial Technology WordPress as a software drew me as a tool. It was a means to an end. I wasn’t blogging, I wasn’t looking to create an online voice, I was looking to build something and I needed a tool.
\nI was good at learning software, had used over a dozen very complicated systems by that point in my life, so I found WordPress and started learning it too.
\nA very melodramatic discovery story of WordPress for a HeroPress piece, I know.
\nThe truth is I probably wouldn’t have stuck around were it not for the people. The story has evolved for me over the years but that’s the beginning. The beginnings are usually far less romantic than the endings in any story.
\nSo why was I looking for a tool? Well, that’s a bit better of a story.
\nI’ll prep you with the fact that I was driven, opinionated, blunt, and defensive. I had spent my college years and first years in my chosen career in a male-dominated industry. I learned how to navigate and thrive and took a job at a very large Engineering firm. About a year in I was granted a fantastic opportunity to work on a small startup team that was doing amazing work in 3D scanning.
\nBeing a startup team demanded that we produce more and more work to determine the viability of the investment the firm was making in my boss’s plans. As we worked on landing deals that required overnight travel and training that required days away it brought to the surface a reality that wasn’t so good for me. As the only woman on the team, I doubled the travel budget. They needed two of everything for me since I couldn’t bunk up with my male coworkers.
\nThe next months were a perfect storm of events. I made an opinionated comment to a division supervisor that was above my pay grade which enhanced my visibility as a problem. Then I got pregnant.
\n\nYou can’t walk around 3D scanning a PVC manufacturing facility while with child. They also don’t make maternity coveralls.
I was officially dead weight. I lost the pregnancy and became depressed, anxious. It was easy for them to let me go then, I had stopped being productive. I found out a couple weeks after losing my job I was pregnant again. Talk about a whirlwind.
\nMy husband was in the process of changing careers from Retail to Healthcare and maternity leave is not something you like to bring up on an interview, so I decided to find something to do from home. I started a local family newsletter and decided to create an online marketplace for moms who craft out of their homes, like a local Etsy. This is where my search for a tool began.
\nA few months later, with no WordPress experience other than what I managed to rake together while I was learning and building, I got a job at WPMUDEV doing product support. I needed the extra cash so my other projects took a backseat and I was soon completely engulfed. Through that job, I came to learn about the ecosystem that was WordPress. I had no idea that there was a place that existed outside of the corporate universe that could exist without sexist politics, hierarchy, and status quo. It was mind-blowing.
\nI was so hungry for people to interact with after being in such a team-oriented environment for so long. I loved working with others and I felt very alone until I found this great group of people. And oh what joy when I found it! I was a new mom at home with a baby trying to learn how to handle that new space in my life. My husband had completed a successful career change and we had moved. I had another baby. I met my friend Mason and we started a business together. I lost another pregnancy.
\n\nIn the space of two short years, my life had completely turned upside down and landed me in the place that would help me survive it all.
You see, without the people, I wouldn’t have made it. I wouldn’t have been able to navigate the overwhelming waters that surrounded me outside of my day to day work. The people who befriended me, who were kind to me, who made jokes with me, who valued my contribution and intelligence without ever having set eyes on me, those were the people who kept me sane. They let me see I didn’t need to be defensive, that I didn’t have to be sorry about being opinionated, that I was different and that I should lean into that.
\nWhen I left product support to work with Mason at, what was formerly called, WP Valet it was yet another major shift in my life. The product space was so different than the agency space and I quickly adapted to the new pace. There was a rush of excitement while learning new things and applying skills that had laid dormant for some time. My father was a Navy man and an entrepreneur and shaped so much of how I applied myself, now I was in a place to push myself even further and define my own path. I was spoiled by my first interactions at WP Valet with developers like Zé Fontainhas and Mario Peshev. The whole thing was thrilling!
\nMy first WordCamp was WordCamp Miami 2013. It was probably the first time I’d traveled alone in some time and I was meeting my work family for the first time. On top of that, I was in MIAMI, so it was bound to be a great trip. I got to meet David Bisset and Lisa Sabin Wilson that year, and so many other wonderful people. I was on cloud 9, each and every personality was inspiring to me, all so different than what my former colleagues and field specialists were like. To top it off I walked into my first talk at a WordCamp, Pippin Wilson was talking about how developers should share code. I was beside myself, sharing your code and supporting each other? Not cutthroat over projects and billable hours?! I was swooning over the idea of ‘community’ and what I had stumbled into.
\n\nNeedless to say, I left 100% hooked on my path. WordPress was my life from that time on.
We as people have long-tailed stories that weave and zigzag and turn back on themselves. We are products of ALL the things going on in our lives at any given moment. Without the personal struggles and the professional push, I would not have been able to value the community as much as I do. The overlapping of personal and professional trials and successes are what gives depth to our experiences. Their overlapping is what colors the story of our lives.
\nFast forward a few years through a cross-state move, speaking selections, the birth of another child, a company expansion, another pregnancy loss, a company rebranding, a company restructuring, a return to school for Yoga training, and all the other things life throws in your path with family and work and here I sit typing my story at my counter while my middle child hums ‘Mamma Mia’ next to me. I am forever grateful for the life that I’ve been able to live through a whole new career in WordPress.
\nI am grateful for every soul I have met. I had the privilege to work with and become friendly with some of the nicest and most genuine people I will ever meet online and face to face. The ecosystem of WP has changed a lot over the years as most ecosystems do, but it still attracts the same types of people. Those who are brave, who are kind, who are looking to the future. My world is so much bigger because of all you. Thank You ![\"?\"](\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/11/72x72/1f642.png\")
The post YOU Make The Difference appeared first on HeroPress.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Wed, 02 Jan 2019 20:15:00 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:15:\"Kimberly Lipari\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:39:\"Matt: Democratize Publishing, Revisited\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=48797\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:55:\"https://ma.tt/2018/12/democratize-publishing-revisited/\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:1674:\"During my State of the Word Q&A I received some blogging homework from Toru Miki, a WordPress contributor based in Tokyo. He asked me to revisit the WordPress mission, “Democratize Publishing,” and reflect on what that mission means to me today. So here you go, Toru:
For many years, my definition of “Democratize Publishing” has been simply to help make the web a more open place. That foundation begins with the software itself, as outlined by the Four Freedoms:
0. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
\n\n\n\n1. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.
\n\n\n\n2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
\n\n\n\n3. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions, giving the community a chance to benefit from your changes.
In 2018, the mission of “Democratize Publishing” to me means that people of all backgrounds, interests, and abilities should be able to access Free-as-in-speech software that empowers them to express themselves on the open web and to own their content.
But as Toru noted in the original question, “Democratize Publishing” has come to mean many things to many people in the WordPress community. That’s one reason I like it. The WordPress mission is not just for one person to define.
So I’d like to ask everyone: What does “Democratize Publishing” mean to you?
I found this post by Taylor Lorenz describing how aspiring influencers are posting fake, unpaid sponsored content to raise their status or hoping to nab a real sponsorship is totally bananas.
\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:7:\"pubDate\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:31:\"Mon, 24 Dec 2018 16:08:34 +0000\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}s:32:\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\";a:1:{s:7:\"creator\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"Matt\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:13:\"\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";s:5:\"child\";a:2:{s:0:\"\";a:5:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:86:\"WPTavern: WordPress Designers Explore Ideas for Moving Navigation to a Block Interface\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"guid\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:29:\"https://wptavern.com/?p=86518\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:4:\"link\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:97:\"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-designers-explore-ideas-for-moving-navigation-to-a-block-interface\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:0:{}s:8:\"xml_base\";s:0:\"\";s:17:\"xml_base_explicit\";b:0;s:8:\"xml_lang\";s:0:\"\";}}s:11:\"description\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5176:\"Creating a block for navigation menus is one of the nine projects Matt Mullenweg identified for 2019 that will make a big impact for WordPress users. It’s also one of the most challenging from a UI perspective. At WordCamp US’ contributor day, the design team explored ideas for what a navigation block might look like in the new editor.
\n\n\n\nThe team’s designs for a navigation block are still in the rough sketches stage, but it’s interesting to see different approaches as the project develops.
\n\n\n\n“If the Nav block could live in a container block (columns perhaps), then the settings for it could be tweaked in the sidebar,” XWP designer Joshua Wold said. “A further problem comes up when you try to figure out how much of the design of the nav should be controlled by the theme vs the Gutenberg editor.”
\n\n\n\nThis is an important question that will need to be answered in the near future – not only for navigation but also more broadly for the future of the role of themes in WordPress. We will be exploring this in more depth in future posts.
\n\n\n\nDesigner Mel Choyce and Riad Benguella (one of the leads for Gutenberg phase 2), are currently soliciting ideas from the wider WordPress community about how the project should tackle the upcoming customization focus.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOne of the chief complaints about the first phase of the Gutenberg project was the lack of public discussion about the goals and the process of creating the editor. The Gutenberg team’s willingness to collate ideas across multiple mediums demonstrates a strong effort to seek out more diverse perspectives for phase 2. Ideas have already started rolling in.
\n\n\n\n\nRiffing on something @photomatt said at #SOTW #WCUS: To map out the future of themes / #Gutenberg 2.0 / #WordPress Next, maybe ship a Block Zen Garden type thing and asking designers / devs to create solutions, then work backwards to find a UI / UX to make that possible.
— Morten i Norge
“Rather than starting with the back-end UI, we can start with the front-end result and build a UI to make the building of that front-end possible without messing up the accessibility and resilience of the root HTML document,” Morten Rand-Hendricksen said. “At the root of this would be CSS Grid as the main layout module to allow drag-and-drop style block layouts without making changes to the HTML source order.”
\n\n\n\nMany of the ideas that are coming in so far relate more broadly to site customization. These include questions about what role the Customizer will play and requests for features like creating custom widths on the fly and the ability to drag content across columns. If you have ideas about how navigation can be implemented in a block, take some time before the end of the year and drop your comments on the make/design post or write your own post and leave a link for others to share feedback.
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You can read On Tranquility of Mind online for free here or I enjoyed this edition from Penguin.
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\n','Hello world!','','publish','open','open','','hello-world','','','2019-02-09 21:55:33','2019-02-09 21:55:33','',0,'http://onewaybillions.com.br/?p=1',0,'post','',1),(2,1,'2019-02-09 21:55:33','2019-02-09 21:55:33','\nThis is an example page. It\'s different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHi there! I\'m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my website. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin\' caught in the rain.)
...or something like this:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe XYZ Doohickey Company was founded in 1971, and has been providing quality doohickeys to the public ever since. Located in Gotham City, XYZ employs over 2,000 people and does all kinds of awesome things for the Gotham community.
As a new WordPress user, you should go to your dashboard to delete this page and create new pages for your content. Have fun!
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