Core Concerns
WordPress 6.0 is scheduled for release on May 24. This week the call for testing (with a focus on major features) has begun. The release so far holds 400+ updates and 500+ bug fixes.
Gutenberg 13.0 will be the release containing all the updates going into WordPress 6.0. It also includes an improved editor experience, better responsive blocks, granular control over new design details, and prominently exposed block patterns.
A follow-up from the WebP by default proposal from Adam Silverstein was posted this week:
“The performance team has heard the feedback and takes the community’s concerns seriously. With the help of the community, we will work on conducting additional data-driven research. Based on our findings, we will reassess our proposed approach to enabling WebP by default.”
One thing to checkout it in WordPress 6.0 beta 1, is some of the amazing work that has been done by me and the @XWP performance team. The work we committed to core, improves database performance. Meaning that 6 less MySQL queries are run per average page load.
— Jonny Harris (@thespacedmonkey) April 14, 2022
Six queries shaved off the average WordPress page load’s overhead is not so shabby.
Channing Ritter shared the Design Team’s early-stage exploration of a “Distraction-Free” WordPress Editor mode. It “seeks to elevate UI away from the canvas in order to remove distraction and facilitate keyboard-first editing.”
Last month, Multidots organized a company-wide WordPress contribution day with 92 contributors. About a third were contributing for the first time! More than half of the group worked on WordPress core, with 18 patches submitted. The group also raised $3,680 USD for Teach For India. Want to organize a Contributor Day for your company? Learn how right here.
Today’s my last day at Automattic! I’m very proud of my 8 years here and grateful to have worked with such kind, talented colleagues. Automattic has absolutely changed my life for the better.
I’m leaving to try something new, but will be taking some time off to reset first.
— kjellr (@kjellr) April 15, 2022
Kjell Reigstad is finishing an eight-year run at Automattic as Design Director.
Events, Event Planning, and Inclusion
The schedule for WordCamp Europe 2022 has been posted.
After almost seven years, Rachel Cherry announced her decision to step down as Director of WPCampus. A new leadership model is in the works.
There’s a possibility WP Campus will host a live in-person event in September. If that’s going to happen an organizing team needs to form, and a lead organizer is needed. Rachel says she “will be involved in planning” to make sure any event that may happen is a success.
Winstina Hughes took on the subject of reducing barriers to the full inclusion of underrepresented minority speakers at WordPress events. She notes there are often financial obstacles that need to be addressed. In addition to the Four Freedoms, she thinks a Fifth Freedom might be emerging to remove this barrier:
a Fifth Freedom would transcend barriers that preclude the inclusion of individuals who want to participant in community event programming but can not/do not.
Winstina outlines what individuals and companies can do to move toward greater inclusion, and she indicates a Sponsor Inclusion in Tech website is under development.
Things we don’t see every day…
10up has been named an inaugural Top Gold Agency Partner of WordPress VIP. As Jake Goldman notes, making it past 10 years is a big achievement for any company too. 10up recently turned 11.
If you work in front-end development you may enjoy Roman Shamin and Travis Turner‘s dive into variable fonts. Adam Argyle‘s tutorial on building a split-button component is excellent too. Alex Ivanovs‘ big descriptive list of minimal CSS frameworks is full of surprises. The smallest framework on the list is only 400 bytes.
Lewis Monteith explains why his company doesn’t have a staging environment. Instead, they have “two environments: our laptops, and production. Once we merge into the main branch, it will be immediately deployed to production.”
Jonathan Bossenger shows how to set up and configure an automated WordPress deployment workflow.
“Even better would be if they had to report it to the public.” That was Bruce Schneier‘s comment last month on the US Congress requiring “companies critical to U.S. national interests … to report when they’re hacked or they pay ransomware” or experience “any substantial cyber incident.”
New Releases
WP Engine has released Atlas Blueprints for their Atlas framework for headless WordPress, which made it’s debut last March. Now you can generate fully functional headless installs complete with new theme designs by Brian Gardner. They’re also available via Local‘s add-on for Atlas, so it’s free and simple to demo a headless install locally.
This week WP Engine also made Atlas available across four new hosting plans catering to everything from starter sites to those generating 400k visits per month.
Elementor users need to make sure they are running the latest version (3.6.3). It contains an important security fix for an upload vulnerability that could allow someone to take over a site or perform remote code execution (RCE). Speaking of security Robert Rowley covers a timeline of security in WordPress.
GlotPress 3.0 is now available with new locales, new translation warnings for mismatched URLs, missing name placeholders, and unexpected sprintf tokens. There’s also reduced reliance on default browser styles.
Block Visibility 2.4.0 and Block Visibility Pro 1.5.0 are now available. The Pro version lets you display blocks based on cookies.
Ana Segota recently announced that Anariel Design has released Bricksy Pro, a theme that works with full-site editing and includes block and page patterns.
