So you want to make block patterns?

Posted by download in Software on 30-03-2021

If you’ve ever built something for the WordPress block editor — a theme or a plugin — you may have also heard about block patterns.

Looking at the patterns that come bundled with WordPress, I thought it would be nice to dedicate to them a short post. They’re pretty nice, useful shortcuts when you know them, but there’s a good chance you may not know what they are or why you might want to use them.

What’s a block pattern?

Patterns are collections of pre-arranged blocks that can be combined and arranged in many ways making it easier to create beautiful content. They act as a head-start, leaving you to plug and play with your content as you see fit and be as simple as single blocks or as complex as a full-page layout.

They live in a tab in the block library. You can click or drag and you’re able to preview them with your site’s styles.

Basically, a block pattern is just a bunch of blocks put together in advance:

	<!-- wp:group -->
<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} -->
<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/>
<!-- /wp:separator -->
<!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":553,"width":150,"height":150,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none","className":"is-style-rounded"} -->
<div class="wp-block-image is-style-rounded"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://blockpatterndesigns.mystagingwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/StockSnap_HQR8BJFZID-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-553" width="150" height="150"/></figure></div>
<!-- /wp:image -->
<!-- wp:quote {"align":"center","className":"is-style-large"} -->
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large"><p>"Contributing makes me feel like I'm being useful to the planet."</p><cite>— Anna Wong, <em>Volunteer</em></cite></blockquote>
<!-- /wp:quote -->
<!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} -->
<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/>
<!-- /wp:separator --></div></div>
<!-- /wp:group -->

That’s also how you create them: just use the block editor to configure a smattering of blocks to your liking, and the hard part’s over.

How do I get them in the block library?

There’s more documentation in the handbook, but what it boils down to is this:

<?php 
/*
Plugin Name: Quote Pattern Example Plugin
*/

register_block_pattern(
	'my-plugin/my-quote-pattern',
	array(
		'title'       => __( 'Quote with Avatar', 'my-plugin' ),
		'categories'  => array( 'text' ),
		'description' => _x( 'A big quote with an avatar".', 'Block pattern description', 'my-plugin' ),
		'content'     => '<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --><!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":553,"width":150,"height":150,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none","className":"is-style-rounded"} --><div class="wp-block-image is-style-rounded"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://blockpatterndesigns.mystagingwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/StockSnap_HQR8BJFZID-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-553" width="150" height="150"/></figure></div><!-- /wp:image --><!-- wp:quote {"align":"center","className":"is-style-large"} --><blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large"><p>"Contributing makes me feel like I\'m being useful to the planet."</p><cite>— Anna Wong, <em>Volunteer</em></cite></blockquote><!-- /wp:quote --><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --></div></div><!-- /wp:group -->',
	)
);

?>

👆 That’s a snippet of PHP, which means you can drop it in a WordPress plugin, or perhaps more simply, paste it into the functions.php file from your theme. Done:

For patterns that include images, it’s worth thinking about where those are stored. The TT1 Blocks theme (which is a fancy name for “TwentyTwentyOne Blocks”) stores images in the theme library.

Now what?

The thing about a block pattern is, as soon as you insert it from the block library, it stops being a cohesive unit — now it’s just a smattering of blocks, detached from the pattern you created and meant to be customized to your liking. It’s a shortcut, not a template. That also means you don’t have to worry about switching themes or deactivating pattern plugins: the blocks you already inserted won’t go anywhere.

That being said, if you like this one pattern so much you want to use it again and again, with no customization at all, you can make it into a reusable block:

Reusable blocks are created, as the name implies, to be reused. The feature is a great way to store small bits of commonly used snippets that you can edit in one place to update in all. “Follow me on Twitter,” “Article series, or “Subscribe to my podcast” are great examples of that.

What makes a good block pattern?

Patterns, as they ship today, are limited by the features available. If the block editor doesn’t allow you to customize letter-spacing, your block pattern can’t either. While the Global Styles project will expand what’s to blocks, in the meantime, we have to work with the available tools.

Even then, with the most basic ingredients — color, photography, typography — it is possible to do a lot:

Three columns with images and text
Media and text with image on the right

I designed these patterns to potentially land in WordPress core, which all have a few properties in common:

They share a theme.

You can think of a pattern as a section of a website: it is meant to be part of a whole, and so it works best when it can exist in the context of other patterns that share the same theme. There are a few sharing a Nature theme in the patterns above, a few sharing an Art theme, and others sharing an Architecture theme. When seen together, it becomes easier to see how you might be able to piece together multiple pages of your site, one page at a time.

They share a minimalist color palette.

By being parts of a whole, patterns will inevitably land in a context that uses different colors. With a reduced color palette, there’s both a better chance of fitting in and less to customize to make it just right.

The best patterns do things you might have not done otherwise.

Whether that’s images offset to create a unique silhouette, or just using less visible features (like fixed positioning in the Cover block), it’s a way to surface creativity.

Tip: You can use any block in your patterns, including blocks that came from a plugin. And if that block is in the block directory, it will prompt you to install it with one click if it’s missing from your self-hosted WordPress:

Here’s a plugin for you

<?php 
/*
Plugin Name: Quote Pattern Example Plugin
*/

register_block_pattern(
	'my-plugin/my-quote-pattern',
	array(
		'title'       => __( 'Quote with Avatar', 'my-plugin' ),
		'categories'  => array( 'text' ),
		'description' => _x( 'A big quote with an avatar".', 'Block pattern description', 'my-plugin' ),
		'content'     => '<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --><!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":553,"width":150,"height":150,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none","className":"is-style-rounded"} --><div class="wp-block-image is-style-rounded"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://blockpatterndesigns.mystagingwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/StockSnap_HQR8BJFZID-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-553" width="150" height="150"/></figure></div><!-- /wp:image --><!-- wp:quote {"align":"center","className":"is-style-large"} --><blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large"><p>"Contributing makes me feel like I\'m being useful to the planet."</p><cite>— Anna Wong, <em>Volunteer</em></cite></blockquote><!-- /wp:quote --><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --></div></div><!-- /wp:group -->',
	)
);

?>

In case you want to make patterns, this example plugin features two of the patterns you saw above. Drop it in your plugins folder and they should show up in your block library.

Installed pattern under “Text” Category

Feel free to tweak it, customize it, and make it yours. It’s GPL, after all!


Thank you @joen for the help writing this post.

WordPress.com Design Update for a More Intuitive Experience

Posted by download in Software on 30-03-2021

We’re excited to tell you more about WordPress.com’s new navigation experience. The update makes managing your entire site more intuitive and creates consistency across all parts of WordPress.com. This update also allows you all to take advantage of the wider WordPress open source community, creating the same admin menu as WordPress.org that you see referenced in lots of documentation and tutorials.

As we continue to grow, we’ve heard that navigating WordPress.com could be confusing because of different sidebars layouts, menus, etc. We listened to your feedback and ran usability tests on new designs to improve the experience.  

Updated Sidebar Menu Design in WordPress.com

This design update combines sidebars and menus that were mismatched and streamlines them into one dashboard that’s consistent for everyone.

For many of you, there will be little to no change in how you use WordPress.com. For those of you who access advanced features, you can easily enable wp-admin as your default view in your Account Settings. We’re surfacing most menu items from third-party plugins and themes by default. You can learn more about interface and account settings here.

While you’re in Account Settings, give your WordPress.com interface a new color scheme. You can now choose a color for your dashboard.

Thanks for the continued feedback to make WordPress.com more intuitive to use for all. And we’re not done yet – we’ll continue to listen and evolve as WordPress.com grows. Happy WordPressing!

WP Briefing: Talking Full Site Editing with Matías Ventura

Posted by download in Software on 29-03-2021

In this episode, Josepha is joined by Matías Ventura, also known as “the spark behind the vision of Gutenberg.” Josepha and Matías discuss full site editing and answer your questions, from “is full site editing a standalone plugin?” to “will full site editing break my current site?”

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

References

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

Josepha [0:41]: This month, we have a bonus briefing, so I’ve asked my dear friend and colleague Matías Ventura to join me. Matías was recently called “the spark behind the vision of Gutenberg.” With full site editing coming our way in 202, I asked if he would join me for a quick Q&A. Welcome, Matías. 

Matías [0:56]: Hello, hello! Thanks for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Josepha [1:00]: Well, I’m delighted to have you. And I think that we have a lot of excellent questions. All right, so Matías, we actually ended up with questions in about three different groupings. And so I’m going to start with the “what is it about full site editing,” sorts of questions that people had. We’re gonna work our way into “what are we doing with it?” and then “how are we planning on getting this out the door?” Then, a couple of big picture questions that people asked. We’re just gonna leap right in this full site editing part of the Gutenberg plugin, or is it a standalone plugin?

Matías [1:39]: Okay, we’ll start with the basics. Full site editing is part of the Gutenberg plugin right now. I think it’s important to mention that full site editing is like an umbrella for several projects that we’re working on. They are all aiming to bring blocks into more parts of your site so that editing becomes easier and more expressive, and so on. So full site editing right now encompasses adding a ton of new blocks. I think we have around 20 new blocks coming in, including navigation query, site, title, logo, etc. There’s also the interface to interact with templates outside of the content; that’s another big part of the full site editing project. We also have a lot of new design tools included, many of these have been released in previous major releases, but they still comprise a strong part of what full site editing is. We also have something called Global Styles, which aims to allow people to configure the visual aspects of blogs across the entire site, not just on any individual blog. And of course, then there’s a whole layer of how we utilize these tools. It can get complex because there are many layers and projects that need to come together. So yeah, all of these are accessible through the Gutenberg plugin right now.

Josepha [3:07]: Yeah. So it’s not a standalone plugin. If you wanted to check out full site editing the site editor experience as it is now, you would just have to make sure you had the Gutenberg plugin on your site. Right?

Matías: Yes, correct.

Josepha:  So a couple of the questions related to this are how exactly do I enable it on my site? And what is the easiest and safest way to try this on my site? And I think the answer is, is right in there. It’s in the Gutenberg plugin. And so if you have that plugin, you don’t need the testing plugin or anything else to make that work, right?

Matías [3:51]:  No, you like, you might need to install a theme like Twenty Twenty One blocks that unlock some of these new interfaces that we just talked about. Like other of these pieces are available for anything. But some of these, like the interface to edit templates, right now only talk with things that know how to express their desire. 

Josepha [4:14]: And I think we have less than 10 themes right now that do that, but I’ll leave some links to at least 2021 blocks in the show notes. And then, if there are another one or two themes that I can find, I can add those in there as well. 

So you have to have the Gutenberg plugin; you have to have a theme that works with that site editor kind of experience. And then you’re safe to try everything out. It shows up in your left toolbar just like any other thing, like if you were working with plugins, or if you were adding a post or anything else, right?

Matías [4:51]: Yes, correct. And so, some of these details are being worked on right now. Like how and where you access things, and so on. These things are subject to change, but right now, you have this site editor beta in the sidebar when both you have the plugin running and a theme that’s capable.

Josepha [5:10]: Yeah. Excellent note. If you are running this on a production website, I would recommend you not do that unless you are very, very good with WordPress. It’s a really safe and easy thing to test and try out. But because it is still in beta, I recommend always putting it on a test site. I have a couple of different test sites that I run on myself. Another question that I had was, “will full site editing slow down my site?” And I think we have some refreshed performance tests coming out about that. And maybe they’ll be out by the time we publish this podcast.

Matías [5:49]: Yeah, I mean, like the performance has been one of the major focuses for the whole project. In many cases, it should speed up things because we’re like, I think one of the big pieces that these projects bring into the picture, especially for themes, is that it allows only the necessary assets to be loaded on the front end. For example, if for a given page, there are, I don’t know, 10-15 blocks being used, you would only get the CSS and scrapes and so on related to those blocks. This can cut down on a lot a ton of CSS that themes used to end queue on a side, particularly if you were trying to customize many widgets and so on, like a lot of themes have the full styles or multiple widgets, even third party plugins, and so on. So one of the advantages of having this blog system is that we can know at the time of rendering what blogs are being used and only load those assets. 

Josepha [6:50]: Excellent. Another big question that we have is, “does full site editing work with the classic editor? And does it work with other builders?” I think that’s a really big answer if you’re going to get super deep into it. But I think that the short answer is yes, it does. Is that fair?

Matías [7:08]: Yeah, I don’t think it touches a bit on that full site editing is not like a single thing. There are multiple projects around it. So again, like the template editor that only deals with blogs, it doesn’t have a lot to do with a classic editor. But the classic editor use for both doesn’t change anything at all; like the same way that when the block editor was introduced, it didn’t change how you could still write posts in the classic editor. You will still be able to do that.

Josepha [7:41]: And if you are brand new to WordPress person, or, I mean, I guess at this point, you don’t have to be super brand new. If you’re fairly new to WordPress person and have no idea what we’re talking about when we say the classic editor, you don’t really have to worry about it either. You don’t have to go and find out what that is; the block editor that you have right now works perfectly for what you’re trying to do. So if you don’t know what I mean when I say classic editor, don’t worry about chasing it down either. 

I think that this last question we accidentally answered earlier, but I’m going to go ahead and ask it anyway since I received it. “I keep hearing that you can use the site editor with the 2021 theme. But I don’t seem to be able to. What am I missing?” I think the answer is that there’s the Twenty Twenty One theme shipped with the WordPress release 5.6. And then there is the Twenty Twenty One blocks theme; those are two different themes. The link to the Twenty Twenty One block theme is going to be in our show notes this time around. And so, if you have been trying to use the full site editor with Twenty Twenty One and not succeeding, try the link to the one below. And I bet that that will work for you.

Matías [8:50]: Yes, that’s correct. 

Josepha [8:51]: All right, excellent. Well, that brings us kind of into our second set of questions, which is about how we are doing it. The first one that folks have is “will full site editing be on by default in the next release. In this context, the next release is WordPress 5.8. But I think it’s a safe question to ask if full site editing will be on by default in the release that it’s planned for.

Matías [9:15]: Yeah, and for this, I need to go back to the same principle of many projects because there are many pieces of full site editing, and we have been merging them in major releases, particularly like the blocks and the design tools. There are more coming in that we want to make accessible as soon as possible. The full experience that requires a theme to opt-in to templates using blogs won’t be by default; it requires a specific theme running. A lot of these details we’re still like determining exactly what projects are ready to be merged and so on. But yeah, if you have a theme right now that works the way you want, it doesn’t change anything there. If anything, it adds some more capabilities and more customization tools, and so on. And the theme can also regulate how much they want to incorporate.

Josepha [10:13]: Matías, you’ve mentioned a couple of times in this podcast so far like this is a really complex and really complicated part of this work. And just for anyone out there who’s either encountering Gutenberg or full site editing or this podcast for the first time, I think a tiny bit of context that’s worth having here is that Matías and I have been working on this together in various capacities for like, five years. And Matías has probably been working on this for practically a decade. So, when we say that this is a really complicated problem, and when we say that this is a complex set of issues that we’re working with like, it is all that we have been thinking about for I want to say at least the last three or four years, but certainly it’s all that we have been trying to untangle for quite a bit of time before that as well. So we don’t take it lightly when we’re like, “this is complicated;” we mean it. It’s really complicated. And we’re trying our hardest over here as WordPress. 

The next big question, since we’re all stuck in the “it’s very complicated,” part of things is the question, “will this update break my current site?” Like, if I have a site that is updated and ready, and it’s exactly as I wanted it to be, and it took me two years to get there will full site editing, whichever release it’s in. Currently, 5.8 is what we’re planning for. Will that break anything on my site as I know it right now?

Matías [11:44]: No, not at all. One of the major things that the WordPress team, the WordPress community, always cares so much about, never to break things. Many of these things are stepping stones that you can adopt, as we’ve talked about full site editing. But for example, we also have a few concurrent projects around the widget screen and the navigation screen that are meant to bring blocks into existing interfaces. So again, the theme doesn’t need to change, and a lot of care is being put into making this more like you’re unlocking new features, and nothing really breaks or falls apart.

Josepha [12:23]: This update, like all the other updates, should have minimal, minimal impact on what you have to actively fix on your site. Every once in a while, a bug is gonna get by. We can’t say that we’re 100% perfect with not breaking things. But also, we always and I and I know that we’re planning on this for our remaining releases for the rest of the year. At the very least, I can’t imagine we’d ever change it. But after every major release, we always make a plan to have a minor release within the next one or two weeks. Because we know that a broken thing on a site is really incredibly impactful, even if you’re only 1% of the sites that had that happen to it. And so I think that’s true in this case, too. And getting that feedback back from all of the people who are actually using WordPress is the thing that makes us be able to kind of move quickly when we do see those problems. 

One of the questions that we have been getting is, “can I see a live preview without saving the changes that I made?” When I got this question, I didn’t actually understand it. And so I went and looked at a site without the Gutenberg plugin on it, and then a site with the Gutenberg plugin on it. And of course, on sites without Gutenberg, without the block editor, without full site editing, when you are looking to preview, you have the option to open up your preview in a new window. And you don’t have that with Gutenberg because it’s supposed to be a true WYSIWYG editor. A true what you see is what you get, editor. I think that the answer to this is, yes, you can see a live preview without actually saving the changes on the front end of your site. But you don’t actually have to reload anything. You don’t have to open it up in a new window. You don’t have to, like, actively click “please show me a preview” because what you see in your editing screen should be what you see at the end of your app as an end-user.

Matías [14:28]: Yeah, that’s the sort of the main gist to it. Yes, the site editor is built so that it always reflects the front end as truly as possible, so that’s one layer. Also, the preview tools should allow you to see in different devices like mobile breakpoints, and I don’t know if they will have breakpoints and stuff like that. There are a lot of things in the current interface that is just not enabled. There are some challenges in the sidebar. Because the site editor is not just focused on a single post, it’s focused on the entire site. So, there can be many, many changes that need to be shadowed for the site. 

If you’re changing the site title, some of the global styles, aspects, and so on need to be orchestrated. So, to see in the previewing new window, there are some challenges there to integrate. Again, the interface is not final yet; a lot of these things are still being tweaked and improved. There are many things from the regular post editor that are not enabled yet. But they will be enabled. So yeah, it’s a, I guess, it’s not a simple thing to answer. Because, again, the idea of previewing the site that’s core to the whole project is that you’re always interacting in the same way that when you’re in the customizer, you’re seeing the preview all the time. That’s the main scope of this project,

Josepha [15:54]: Excellent. Changes like that changes to your workflow can be really hard to get your mind around, especially if part of that existing workflow was there to create some confidence in what you’re seeing with your users. And so I understand. Now that I’ve researched that question a bit, I see where that’s coming from. Based on existing workflows and existing patterns that we have for ourselves in WordPress, will we need to have a theme to use the full site editor?

Matías [16:33]: I think we’ve already covered some of these. And again, they are tools that can work on any existing theme. There is other stuff that needs space-specific themes to opt-in into these tools, like blog templates and so on.

Josepha [16:50]: Yes, I think the question that we have next, because I see that the literal next question I have is actually something we have covered; just because we’re being pretty conversational about it, not because anyone already asked the question. So I’m actually going to skip to the last question of this section that I received. I got this next one via Twitter. The question is, “how do you view the role of themes once full site editing is fully rolled out and all the page elements (content, headers, widgets, footers, etc.) and all the views are managed via blocks and block patterns? Will things become typographic and block styles?”

Matías [17:28]: I think this is a great question because it goes to the heart of, why are we doing all this. One of the main reasons is to empower users more. WordPress has been democratizing publishing for a while; this is another step into allowing themes to get more customization tools and more control over their site if they want to. I think the recent call for testing has focused on the 404 page, for example. That’s something that forever has been locked away from users. And it’s also something that, as a theme developer, and I used to develop themes a long time ago, that was one of the things where you decide what sort of approach you take for the 404 page. Maybe sometimes you want to have something more whimsical. Sometimes you need something more serious. And committing to one when you can have such a diverse and broad user base can be challenging. With these, it becomes as easy as offering a few different patterns for that template. Then the user will always be able to change the copy and modify something. So again, it opens up a lot of these things that used to be locked down. However, from a theme perspective, I think this doesn’t reduce the theme at all. If anything, it allows the theme to focus less on coding and functions and more on design expression and aesthetics. I don’t think that would ever be exhausted. That will always remain as diverse as humans are interacting with WordPress. And so it’s not that I don’t see it’s just as like, typographic and block styles. How do you express a template, how do you express the structure, what choices you quote, what choices you make as a theme builder? And of course, there are many degrees of control there. Because a site maintainer may not want the 404 template to be editable, that sort of control will always be present.

Josepha [19:38]: Yeah. And really fast. I have to add a caveat to a thing that you said in there. For anyone who’s listening keenly, you may have heard Matías say that the users can update any of the content there – any of the copy. In this context, we’re talking about users as in the people who are maintaining the site, not people who are visiting your site. Visitors to your site will not be able to change any copy on your page unless you’ve done something very interesting with your WordPress site, which is also fine if that’s what you prefer to do. By default, your visitors can’t change everything on your website, which is good news, frankly.

So I’ve got one logistics question, which I’m happy to take. And then one is kind of a big picture question that I also got from Twitter. “What about the classic editor block; what is going to happen to that? And when will we know?” So ages and ages ago, before COVID? I think so. Probably maybe a couple of years ago, Matt said that the classic editor plugin would be supported through the end of 2021. And that is still the case; there will be active support on that through the end of 2021. After that, it will not be actively supported anymore. It won’t be removed from any place that you can get access to right now. In a “this is the end of its lifecycle” sort of way, we just won’t have anyone who is currently committed to maintaining that plugin anymore. So that’s what’s happening at the end of the year. And yeah, at the end of 2021. The big question that we have is, “why is full site editing being so rushed?” I think this is a bit of a loaded question.

Matías [21:32]: Yeah, I think I think it’s still a fair question, though. I think we’re dealing with two things here. And one is ensuring that we release things in the best state possible. And also, some of the urgency is to offer tools that we know that people lack right now and that could really benefit from. Making that determination is very tricky. The full site editing project has been in the works for the last couple of years. If we count the initial phase of Gutenberg, that’s four to five years. We’ve been doing many calls for testing, which I think have been super useful to catch issues and reflect as a community on where things are going; how do we integrate with these? How do we use it? What are the shortcomings? What do we need to do? Based on all of these, we’ll continue to make decisions on when things become ready. We’re not committed to releasing something that’s not in a good state. And I think we will always be very careful about that. There are these two competing senses of the urgency – of getting some of these tools out, and because it also benefits from the feedback loops. I always say that, in many ways, the initial phase of Gutenberg, to me, is not finished. We took the initial two years to do the 5.0 release, the initial block editor, and so on. But, it’s still being improved at a very fast pace, among all the recent major releases improvements to the editor were included; that will continue to be the case. In many ways, phase one is not finished. And the moment we choose to release some of these tools or editing tools, it won’t be finished either. They will need to continue to grow, mature, and incorporate a lot of the feedback. Even the things that the ecosystem is building around. I’ve seen a few themes already that are incorporating a blank canvas template so that you can use them in some pages and take over and do everything with blocks. So even the community and ecosystem as a whole is also sort of paving the way for what needs to come.

Josepha [24:06]: I think from my perspective, and of course, I’m on the people side of things, the communication side of things, the logistics side of things; I have a frequently a very different view from what a lot of other folks are seeing. And so from my side of things, I have to say, I’m communicating about this change in a really broad way, which has not been happening since 2019 when we started the work. We’ve been communicating broadly with the WordPress community, but not with everybody who uses WordPress. So, I think that for a lot of people, this looks like a project that we started really actively working on in the last six months or so. And now we’re just racing toward a finish line. I think that there’s, there’s not been a lot of awareness of everything that’s gone into it. And so, on the one hand, it feels a little less rushed to me knowing the full length of the history on this. But also, as you said, I really think that this gets a bunch of tools to people who otherwise have not been able to accomplish these things in WordPress or otherwise. I am so anxious to get something to people who really can benefit from this change the most. And it’s the nature of the open source, right that like, one, as long as you have users, you’re going to have stuff you have to fix in your software. So we’re never really, really going to be done with this; there’s not going to be like a done point of WordPress. And the second thing is, I think it’s generally true that you don’t really start getting full user feedback until after you have launched your major release. I think that we see that a lot in open source software; you can bring in as many people as you think you can in your user tests heading up to it. And in your accessibility tests. And, in general, quality assurance tests. You can bring in a lot of people and still not have gotten the full understanding of the various niche use cases that your users will bring to you. Because at this point, we’re like 40% of the web. And that means that we’re serving this majority collection of increasingly minority voices and niche voices in the space. And so, a little bit I feel a sense of urgency; I feel a bit of anxiousness about trying to get this out there for one, to get the tools in the hands of the people who can benefit the most from them, but also so that we can start really getting the full stress test of this software out and get that feedback in so that we can really build something responsive to what our users need our long tail, “anyone who ever uses WordPress ever,” definition of users. And so, that’s why I feel a sense of urgency around it. Even though you know, as I said, you and I have been working on this for like five years, and you’ve been working on it for a decade or something. I actually don’t know how long it’s been worked on.

Matías [27:35]: Now that makes me feel a bit old.

Josepha [27:40]: Nobody makes Matías feel old. He is a lovely, wonderful colleague. Sorry, Matías, If I made you feel old.

Matías [27:46]: No, that’s totally fine. I also want to add that full site editing is not like a single toggle that’s going to drop into a major release. So I think that’s important to consider, I think this entire year is going to see a lot of these tools being, and sometimes the sort of the end-user is not the, again, the site maintainer. Still, you can also be the theme developer; I think there are many tools that would be empowering for theme developers to use. Again, we mentioned there are like five to ten themes, block themes right now. That needs to grow a lot, and that only grows through these sorts of feedback loops. And the theme community pushing things forward and seeing where things can lead to. I’m very excited about the pattern directory integration because I think that can also combine with blog themes in very powerful ways. Imagine if, I don’t know many of these patterns that are very common on the web and very needed, that if we can refine them together with a second community and make them available across themes, you can combine a header from one theme with a content of another; all these sorts of mixtures could happen. All of this needs exploration, the creativity of the entire community, and so on. In that sense, getting all these tools, even if it doesn’t immediately change anything for like the site itself, starts to unlock a lot of things. 

Josepha [29:27]: I’m going to take a bit of your answer from there and tie it all the way back to your first answer that we had when you joined me today. And say, I think you’re absolutely right. We have a set of users in our theme authors and our plugin developers as well that we desperately need to get looking at this set of tools. I hope that what we are shipping in the first iteration of this serves as an opportunity for all of those theme authors and agency owners, plugin authors, WordPress site configurers freelancers. Like, I really hope that this puts it into a really accessible, easy-to-access space for them so that they can do those experiments based on what they know their users need the most. They are the group that has the closest access to site maintainers. And what they need compared to, for instance, me or a potential you like we have a lot of information, you and I, we do a lot of tests, we have a strong sense of what is needed at the moment, but we don’t have as a close connection that our theme and agency and plugin folks all have. And so that’s another part of why I’m so excited to get this out in the current iteration of it.

Josepha [31:04]: That was a lot of questions in a little bit of time. This is going to be officially my longest WordPress briefing. Matías, I am so glad that you were able to join me today. And I think that everyone’s going to be really, really excited to hear your answers to these questions.

Matías [31:23]: Thank you for having me.

Josepha [31:25]: All right, my friends. That brings us into our small list of big things. I’m going to skip our community highlight today just because we had a slightly longer word press briefing in our bonus iteration today. But the small list of big things. The first thing is WordCamp Central America is coming up on April 15; there is a registration link in the show notes that you can access your tickets with. I recommend that you go; we’ve got a lot of excellent speakers coming up there and a lot of good content and good training and learning for y’all. The second thing is that Matt Mullenweg and I have listening hours coming up with the community in the first week of April. I’ll add the link to register for those in the show notes as well; it’s just a few minutes for you all to stop by, check-in, see what’s going on, and share some celebrations or concerns with us. And I hope that I see you there. 

So that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for joining in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks!

Publish and Update WordPress Posts Directly From Ulysses

Posted by download in Software on 24-03-2021

If you use Ulysses for Mac, iPad, and iPhone, you already know that this Apple Design Award-winning writing app offers a focused, pleasant writing experience. You might also know that Ulysses publishes to WordPress with just a few clicks or taps. If so, you’ll be happy to hear that the newest version improves the already-smooth integration between WordPress and Ulysses.

For anyone who might be unfamiliar with the writing tool, Ulysses provides a distraction-free Markdown editor that is customizable to fit your style. Its powerful features help you organize your writing projects and be more productive. When you are satisfied with the content you’ve written, Ulysses can export the text into several formats. Most importantly, it is easy to publish your creation directly to your WordPress.com blog or your self-hosted WordPress site.

Let’s take a closer look at how publishing from Ulysses to WordPress works. First, you will need to connect Ulysses to your WordPress account. If you are a WordPress.com user, you will simply input your user name and password. WordPress self-host users will also supply the URL of the WordPress site. Once the connection is made, Ulysses will also sync with your other devices. You’ll now be able to turn any text you write in Ulysses into WordPress blog posts via the app’s export feature. 

Ulysses is unique because it automatically transfers not only images and text but also other settings and characteristics. Some of its smart features include: 

  • Your text’s first heading will become your post’s title.
  • Keywords you attached in Ulysses will become tags or categories if they match your blog’s tags or categories.
  • If there’s an image attached to your text, it will become your post’s featured image.
  • If there’s a note attached to your text, it will become your post’s excerpt.

You can, of course, edit any of these smart settings during publishing. Furthermore, you can set your post’s slug and choose to publish instantly, schedule for later, or upload as a draft. This video walks you through the process.

And now for the big news — with the latest Ulysses version, you can also update previously published posts directly within the app, which adds even more convenience to your publishing workflow. Consider this common scenario: 

Sometimes when blogging, a typo or other issue escapes our notice, and we only spot it when looking at the published post or the post’s preview. Until now, Ulysses users needed to switch to WordPress to edit or publish the post a second time. With the latest version, that process is unnecessary. Editing text in Ulysses now enables you to update the corresponding WordPress blog post right within the app. During the publishing workflow, Ulysses will highlight the changes you’re about to make.

Ulysses’ newest version improves its time-saving integration with WordPress, making publishing and revising WordPress posts even more convenient than before.

Here’s a fun bonus! To celebrate this latest integration update, Ulysses is giving away five (5) free one-year licenses! To win, simply comment below, letting us know that you’d love to try the Ulysses app. Remember: this is an Apple product, so it only works with Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The first 5 people who ask for it in the comments will win. We’ll send the name and email address you supply when you comment to Ulysses and they’ll contact you with the details on how to claim your one-year license.

Introducing new Stats widgets for iPhone

Posted by download in Software on 22-03-2021

You may already know that WordPress mobile apps are the easiest way to manage your WordPress site any time, anywhere.  Helpful features in the apps include our Stats widgets, which make it simple to keep an eye on your site’s activity without even opening the app. We recently rebuilt our widgets for iOS 14, and we’re happy to announce that they’re available now in WordPress 16.9.

Now, your WordPress Stats can live right on your iPhone or iPad’s home screen, always visible and up to date when you unlock your device. With one tap, the widgets will open WordPress straight to the Stats page for your site. They are available in a variety of sizes, from small ones that give you a bite-sized piece of information at a glance, to large ones that give you a comprehensive look at your site activity. 

Three types of widgets are available: Today, This Week, and All Time.

The Today widget focuses on the most up to date information: how many views, visitors, likes, and comments has your site received today? This Week lets you compare your daily stats from the past week to see the rise and fall of your site’s activity. All Time shows the total number of views, visitors, and posts on your site as well as the views from your best day ever. 

If you have multiple WordPress sites, you can edit a widget after placing it on your home screen to choose which site’s stats you want it to display. You can even mix and match multiple widgets to create a dashboard that shows you how all your sites are doing at once.

Widgets adapt to Dark Mode when it is enabled on your device.

The new widgets are available for WordPress.com sites as well as WordPress sites using Jetpack. Once you’ve updated to the latest version of WordPress on your device, you can use these instructions to add a widget to your home screen. Your device must be running iOS 14.0 or higher to use the new widgets. If you use an Android phone, widgets are available there, too.

We hope our new widgets make it even easier to keep up with your site’s activity. We’re always thinking about how we can make the apps more useful for you. What other kinds of widgets would you like to see in WordPress? Let us know in the comments!

How WordPress Improves

Posted by download in Software on 15-03-2021

In this episode, Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores the WordPress release process. Tune in and learn the phases of a release and catch this week’s small list of big things.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

References

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

All right, so last week, we wrapped up and shipped the WordPress 5.7 release. The release team this time around was smaller than we’ve had in the last couple of years. By the numbers, it looks really good: 66 enhancements or feature requests went in, 127 bugs were fixed, and seven versions of a Gutenberg plugin were merged and backported. If you use WordPress, you are probably aware that we have new releases throughout the year, but you probably don’t know much about the release process. There’s not really a reason to know unless you’re actively contributing to a release. For those interested in knowing more about how we improve WordPress, this week’s exploration is for you.

We’re gonna take a look at what goes into WordPress releases and just kind of zoom our way in from the highest level. At the highest level, there are three major WordPress releases a year, plus the minor releases, plus Gutenberg releases. So if you’re following current WordPress work and future WordPress work, that’s going to get you to probably around 30 releases a year. If we zoom in one level to the release itself, a single release of WordPress takes four to five months from start to the day that we ship, and an additional four to six weeks on support and translations, and minor releases after that. If you’re looking from my vantage point, you’ll see that WordPress releases have essentially five parts, some of which happen kind of simultaneously. 

The first part is planning and includes the project lead, lead developers, design; groups like that. The second phase is the creation phase when we’re actually building the things that have to go into the CMS that involves the design, core, editor, mobile, and other teams. Then there’s this phase that I like to refer to as the distribution phase. This is mostly done by the teams that make sure that WordPress is widely distributable; the polyglots team work on translations, accessibility does some work, docs make sure that everything is documented, and training, of course, gets things ready for when we have to be able to tell people how to use the release. 

Then there is the fourth phase; I really don’t think they go sequentially or in a waterfall format. The fourth-ish phase that I include, and that I tend to see, is this extending and iteration phase. It’s the phase where we see our theme authors and our plugin authors, folks who are doing support, show up and help us to make sure that WordPress is available not only widely but broadly to ensure that their audiences as theme authors and plugin authors are covered in the features that they need based on what they are using WordPress for. The fifth phase is the part of our communication that involves the community team, especially marketing, WordPressTV, and learn.wordpress.org. Basically, anyone who’s showing up to make sure that we all share what happened in the release, the features that are coming, and how that affects the users is involved in that particular phase. So five big phases of what happens over those four to five months, and then for the month or month and a half afterward. 

If we zoom in a bit more on the creation phase, each release has people who lead the work and coordinate contributor efforts during the course of the release. For any given release, hundreds of people contribute and receive credit for moving the WordPress project forward. Okay, hold on a second. Let’s pump the brakes and zoom in a bit on that. Hundreds of people work on every major release for a project that powers over 40% of the web that feels like a small number. But for the people who process the contributions in preparation for release, it’s actually pretty substantial. For every release, there is a small team of leaders who asked the hard questions. Is this a usable feature? Does this make WordPress better overall? And, of course, is this ready to ship?  Some of those leaders, a smaller subset of even the leaders that we have already, are committers who actually prep and merge patches to the CMS; they don’t do all the work to create a design or write all the code. This tiny group of people processes hundreds and hundreds of bug fixes, improvements, and enhancements that have been submitted over the course of months and sometimes years. As a side note, that whole process is a little smaller, a little faster in the Gutenberg featured plugin, but the basic parts are still there. Alright, so we’ve zoomed from the big picture way into some of the finer details, and it really looks like any other project cycle. So now, I’m going to layer in the filter of open source to that process.

There are a couple of things that make building software in an open source environment so different. The first is that the code is readily available. If you have a basic understanding of the languages, you can see the code, learn from it, and make suggestions about improving it. Second, you consider the user a co-developer in the process, which means that as long as people use your product, they will have opinions on what you shipped. This way of iterating improves WordPress and ties back to one of my favorite open source principles. The idea that with many eyes, all bugs are shallow. To me, that means that with enough people looking at a problem, someone is bound to be able to see the solution.

This brings us to our community highlight, the segment where I share a note about contributors who have helped others along the way or a WordPress success story. This week’s highlight is from Nok in our Bangkok community. When asked to help her find her way into the WordPress community, she said, “@shinichiN who started the WordPress community in Bangkok and encouraged me to contribute, and also @mayukojpn has introduced me to the WP community team to join as a deputy. “ Thank you for sharing those two inspiring people with us. And if you, listener, have any stories that you would like to share of your own WordPress success or people that you have been so grateful to help you find your way in the project, you can feel free to email those to me at wpbriefing@wordpress.org.

That brings us to our final segment of the WP Briefing, the small list of big things. I only have three things to share with you this week. The first one is that about a week ago, we had our first release of 2021. It was the WordPress 5.7 release, titled Esperanza. If you have not yet seen it, go ahead and update your website or check with your host and make sure that they have updated you if you’re on a managed host. And then take a listen to the artists that it’s named after. 

The second thing that I want you to keep an eye out for is wordpress.org/news. We are starting a new series of content that gets at the heart of some of Gutenberg’s basic parts; there’s a lot of change coming up in the next few releases of WordPress. And the most important thing to me is that you understand what we’re trying to change and where those changes are primarily taking place. There will be a couple of tutorials that go up there over the course of the of the next few weeks. The third item on the small list of big things is to remind you of our call for testing. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, the users of any open source software are the code developers; the software built is supposed to make your life and work easier. When you test things and find interactions that can use a little bit of refinement or features that are not working exactly as expected, it’s incredibly helpful for us to have that information to always make sure that we’re solving problems instead of accidentally creating them. If you want to participate in the Current call for testing, you can head over to make.wordpress.org/test. Or, if you’ve been doing your own testing, you can also submit any bugs you have found in the GitHub repo, which I will share in the show notes below. So that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks!

What’s New in the Block Editor: Edit Your Images, Drag and Drop Blocks and Patterns, and More

Posted by download in Software on 15-03-2021

From time-saving features to enhancements in your favorite blocks, these block editor improvements will help you build posts and pages on your site, no matter what you publish:

  • Crop and rotate your images with built-in editing tools
  • Drag and drop blocks and patterns for more control
  • Display a list of your pages with the new Page List block
  • Match your brand palette with an improved Social Icons block
  • Strategically place your CTAs with a better Buttons block
  • Manage your preferences in a refreshed panel

Let’s take a closer look.

Crop and rotate your images with built-in editing tools

Tired of switching between WordPress.com and an editing tool like Photoshop or Canva to make quick fixes to your images? There’s no need to leave the block editor to crop or rotate your photographs — you can now make changes with a few clicks in the toolbar that appears above the image.

Your original image is always saved in your Media Library, so you can crop and re-crop until you get it just right.

Drag and drop blocks and patterns for more control

Here’s a usability win: you can now drag and drop blocks and block patterns from the Block Inserter on the left directly into your editor canvas on the right. This gives you finer control over where you place new content on a post or page.

Display a list of your pages with the new Page List block

Say hello to the new block on the block: the Page List block! Let’s say you want to show a list of all of your recipe blog’s pages on a single page so readers can see an overview of your culinary content. You can use the new Page List block to automatically compile and display a hierarchical list of all your site’s published pages.

Match your brand palette with an improved Social Icons block

Does your current site background make certain social icons invisible or difficult to see? Do you want to customize the colors? With updates to the Social Icons block, you can now set custom colors for the icons and the icon background by using the color picker or specifying a HEX color code. Match your business or brand palette if you wish!

Strategically place your CTAs with a better Buttons block

A strong and visual call to action, or CTA, encourages interaction on your site, whether you’re a tax consultant seeking new leads with a Contact Me page or an online meditation teacher presenting your membership tiers on a Services page. Using the Buttons block, you can align your CTA buttons on a page, either horizontally (in a row) or vertically (stacked in a column). You’ll see this new vertical option in the block’s settings, so you can switch between layouts with ease.

Manage your block editor preferences in a refreshed panel

We’ve repackaged various options and settings for your block editor into a separate panel, sorted into four sections: General, Appearance, Blocks, and Panels. We hope this more streamlined panel helps you set up your block editor exactly as you want it.

Keep building with the block editor. We’ll keep improving it.

The block editor is continuously growing and improving as a result of your feedback — thank you. We can’t wait to see what you build next with it. In the meantime, we’re working hard behind the scenes, with more updates to come!

WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza”

Posted by download in Software on 09-03-2021

WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza”

Bringing you fresh colors in the admin, simpler interactions in the editor, and controls right where you need them, WordPress 5.7 lets you focus on the content you create.

Meet “Esperanza”, the first WordPress release of 2021. “Esperanza” is named in honor of Esperanza Spalding, a modern musical prodigy. Her path as a musician is varied and inspiring—learn more about her and give her music a listen!

With this new version, WordPress brings you fresh colors. The editor helps you work in a few places you couldn’t before without getting into code or hiring a pro. The controls you use most are right where you need them. Layout changes that should be simple, are even simpler to make.

Now the new editor is easier to use

Font-size adjustment in more places: now, font-size controls are right where you need them in the List and Code blocks. No more trekking to another screen to make that single change!

Reusable blocks: several enhancements make reusable blocks more stable and easier to use. And now they save automatically with the post when you click the Update button.

Inserter drag-and-drop: drag blocks and block patterns from the inserter right into your post.

You can do more without writing custom code

Full-height alignment: have you ever wanted to make a block, like the Cover block, fill the whole window? Now you can.

Buttons block: now you can choose a vertical or a horizontal layout. And you can set the width of a button to a preset percentage.

Social Icons block: now you can change the size of the icons.

A simpler default color palette

This new streamlined color palette collapses all the colors that used to be in the WordPress source code down to seven core colors and a range of 56 shades that meet the WCAG 2.0 AA recommended contrast ratio against white or black.

Find the new palette in the default WordPress Dashboard color scheme, and use it when you’re building themes, plugins, or any other components. For all the details, check out the Color Palette dev note.

From HTTP to HTTPS in a single click

Starting now, switching a site from HTTP to HTTPS is a one-click move. WordPress will automatically update database URLs when you make the switch. No more hunting and guessing!

New Robots API

The new Robots API lets you include the filter directives in the robots meta tag, and the API includes the max-image-preview: large directive by default. That means search engines can show bigger image previews, which can boost your traffic (unless the site is marked not-public).

Lazy-load your iFrames

Now it’s simple to let iframes lazy-load. By default, WordPress will add a loading="lazy" attribute to iframe tags when both width and height are specified.

Ongoing cleanup after update to jQuery 3.5.1

For years jQuery helped make things move on the screen in ways the basic tools couldn’t—but that keeps changing, and so does jQuery.

In 5.7, jQuery gets more focused and less intrusive, with fewer messages in the console.

Check the Field Guide for more!

Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It highlights developer notes for each change you may want to be aware of. WordPress 5.7 Field Guide.

The Squad

The WordPress 5.7 release comes to you from a small and experienced release squad:  

This release is the reflection of the hard work of 481 generous volunteer contributors. Collaboration occurred on nearly 250 tickets on Trac and over 950 pull requests on GitHub.

7studio, aaribaud, Aaron Brazell, Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, aaronrobertshaw, abagtcs, acerempel, activecoder, ad7six, Adam Bosco, Adam Silverstein, adamboro, Addison Stavlo, Ahmad Awais, Ahmed Saeed, Albert Juhé Lluveras, albertomake, Alex Lende, Alex Woollam, alex27, Alexander Lueken, alexstine, allancole, Allen Snook, almendron, Amanda Riu, ambienthack, Amol Vhankalas, Andrea Fercia, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Duthie, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Nevins, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, André Maneiro, Andy Fragen, Andy Peatling, Ankit Panchal, Anne McCarthy, Anthony Burchell, Anton Lukin, Anton Timmermans, Anyssa Ferreira, archon810, Ari Stathopoulos, Arslan Ahmed, Artur Piszek, Aurélien Denis, Ayesh Karunaratne, bartosz777, basscan, bduclos, becdetat, Bego Mario Garde, Ben Dwyer, Bernhard Reiter, Bernhard Reiter, bhanusinghkre, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), Birgit Pauli-Haack, bobbingwide, bonniebeeman, Boone Gorges, Boy Witthaya, Brandon Kraft, Brent Swisher, brijeshb42, burnuser, Caleb Burks, Cameron Voell, Carike, carloscastilloadhoc, carlosgprim, Carolina Nymark, celendesign, Cenay Nailor, ceyhun0, chexwarrior, Chip Snyder, Chloé Bringmann, Chouby, Chris Van Patten, Christian Sabo, Christina Workman, Christopher Finke, clayray, Clayton Collie, Code Amp, Collins Agbonghama, Copons, Corey, cristinasoponar, Damian Nowak, Dan Farrow, Daniel Richards, Daniele Scasciafratte, Danny van Kooten, Daria, Darren Ethier (nerrad), Dave Whitley, David Anderson, David Baumwald, David Calhoun, David Herrera, David Page, david.binda, dbtedg, dd32, Debabrata Karfa, dekervit, Denis Yanchevskiy, denishua, Diane Co, Dilip Bheda, Dominik Schilling, donmhico, dratwas, Drew Jaynes, Dávid Szabó, e_baker, Ebonie Butler, Edi Amin, Ella van Durpe, Ella van Durpe, Elliott Richmond, Enej Bajgorić, Enrico Carraro, epicfaace, epiqueras, Eric Andrew Lewis, Eric Binnion, Eric Mann, Erik Betshammar, Erin 'Folletto' Casali, Estela Rueda, etoledom, eventualo, Fabian Kägy, Felipe Elia, Felix Arntz, Florian TIAR, Florian Ziegler, floriswt, Francesca Marano, Frank Klein, fullofcaffeine, Gan Eng Chin, Garrett Hyder, Gary Pendergast, GeekPress, geekzebre, Geoff Guillain, George Stephanis, geriux, gKibria, glendaviesnz, gmariani405, Gord, greatsaltlake, Greg Ziółkowski, grzim, gumacahin, gunnard, Gustavo Bordoni, Hans-Christiaan Braun, Hardeep Asrani, Hareesh, hauvong, Haz, Helen Hou-Sandi, helmutwalker, Hemant Tejwani, Herre Groen, hirasso, hmabpera, Howdy_McGee, hsingyuc7, Ian Dunn, ianmjones, ibiza69, Igor Radovanov, ingereck, iprg, Ipstenu (Mika Epstein), Isabel Brison, Ismail El Korchi, iviweb, J.D. 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Code is poetry.

People of WordPress: Olga Gleckler

Posted by download in Software on 09-03-2021

WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories that are lesser-known.

From a natural interest in computers and fixing things as a young woman, Olga Gleckler from St Petersburg, Russia, found WordPress took her on a journey to becoming a successful female tech entrepreneur. On International Women’s Day, we share her story.  

Olga with a WordCamp Vienna t-shirt

Finding your path can take longer than you expect

From the age of 15, Olga found herself under pressure to find a free place for her professional studies. She said: “I didn’t know how high or low my chances were even if I had very good marks. I could have been just the biggest fish in a small pond. But anyway, I made up my mind to go to technical school.”

On leaving school in St Petersburg with her certificate, Olga felt her knowledge of opportunities was very narrow. She had pictured being an ecologist or guide translator based on the subjects she had been taught at school. There was also an advertising boom in Russia and she began to explore this as a career avenue. She had developed her computer skills and found opportunities to practise by helping her teachers with administrative work.

Though she did not have access to any formal career advice, her journey led her into programming. She said: “The range of technical schools was not wide. I spent four years studying transistor markings, soldering and drawing PCB layouts. Programming courses using Pascal didn’t do anything useful with it.”

A lack of suitable access to English-language courses made things harder for Olga. She was determined that she would master the language later in her life. In the meantime, she left technical school with an honors degree and improved typing skills.

“I faced it was a wild, unfriendly market. I didn’t know how to recognize a genuine job offer or how to avoid the bad ones. It was difficult and I don’t know how long I would’ve looked for work without help.”

Think differently to find where you belong

Olga’s father worked in an IT company and was able to give her some advice and help with potential introductions. When she was still studying, he suggested her strong technical skills might be useful as a substitute typist. When she finished her studies, he helped her apply for a job updating a legal system on clients’ computers.

Six months later, she got a full-time job in the same service department. She liked her position and her clients. However, she was given friendly advice that without a university degree she would not be able to have any further promotions.

At this time, Olga was trying to study PHP from a book. She found it very exciting at first, but a lot of their functions did not give her explanations on how to build something useful. She found when she tried to build practical items from book reading, it did not always make sense and the solutions would often fail. 

She said: “It was hard to admit a failure even to myself and it was nagging me for a long time. I had to choose something I could handle, that I was interested in and could afford. It turned out to be advertising.”

She spent most of the family’s holidays on learning sessions during the next six years. Olga recalled: “It was tricky for my husband to make me leave a computer, once I was glued to it, so he bought me my first laptop. English was still hard for me, I got high marks through just memorizing all the words in a textbook and how they should sound.”

Doubting your professional skills can happen when you are at home isolated looking after children. Keeping up your interests is important.

Olga’s life took a change after having a new baby and she spent three years doubting her professional skills and her chances of getting a good job. She tried to get back into other interests through studying, baking and drawing, but found ‘the pram was pulling me back’. She found she became very isolated and felt less able to contribute as the family was relying on her husband’s income as she tried to focus on looking forward.

She said: “I was convinced (and saw) that not too many companies wanted a woman in the office, who with a small baby might need lots of leave.”

She finished her education when she returned to work after three years caring for her son. She secured a promotion but with changes in the company’s staffing, things were tense. She found the difficulties there had become more heightened and felt that young female colleagues were treated as ‘pieces of furniture’ by one manager. She did not want to stay in this environment and in a few months time decided to leave.

Your next chapter may be nearby

Determined to not repeat this type of experience, Olga looked at the brighter side. She said: “I wanted to be a marketer. Knowing how tricky it is to sell intangibles, I wanted a solid product to work with.” 

It turned out to be more difficult to find a job outside traditional IT as a young mother. Some human resource officers advised her to remain within the technology arena.

Olga remained hopeful and continued to study hard. She had many learning experiences along the way, which she hopes others can learn from too. One was setting a low bar to employers. She said: “Companies I worked in wanted to get all publicity and sales increases achieved through deductions from my salary.” This happened once and the next time she was in this situation she asked specifically about the budget before signing up. “I was assured this would not be the case, but again I found the budget for publicity came out of my wages. It was a tough period of disappointments. So when I was offered a part-time administrative job with basic sick leave, I took it gladly as a reprieve.”

The job was far from home and involved a lot of travelling. Olga spent two to three hours a day on buses with Harry Potter audio books for company. “In these traffic jams, I started to feel English at last and loved it. It gave me a freedom no money can buy. Life was getting better.”

Though the job did not pay highly, it gave her something valuable – a working website. After her boss and the developer parted company, she was asked to maintain the site. Through some studying and reverse engineering, she discovered how it worked and it gave her an insight into how to write simple websites from scratch.

Olga’s first encounter with JavaScript wasn’t easy: “My first JavaScript calculator almost made me crazy, but I pursued it.”

Quickly she started to get small tasks from friends and relatives, usually to solve some urgent problems and started to meet popular content management systems. One of the first she met with was WordPress. There was an issue in a website theme used by a website which had been changed and not maintained. It took a whole weekend to solve, but she was determined to work it out. Back then, WordPress was ‘just a system’. She didn’t know then how much it was to become part of her life.

Olga spent the next two years in this role. As time went on, she started to feel worried and less satisfied with the work. The last straw for her was a negative statement from her boss, who was not a programmer and who hadn’t seen any of the work done on the website. She felt the approach was unfair as she had done extensive work on the site. She recalls: “I became angry, but it was exactly what I needed to move jobs.”

When Olga was job hunting, she didn’t feel she had the courage to apply for a developer’s role, despite the learning and work she had already done. So instead she started working on projects where she felt she was more like a ‘seller of box-ready websites’. It was another tough half a year for her with a lot of work, low payment and plans not turning out as she had hoped. On top of long hours, she ended up with pneumonia. She said: “I see now that I was doing a disservice to customers, websites are not a microwave meal – quick, cheap and dummy. There was no life in the sites without a lot of work which no one was willing to buy. Most of the sites I sold back then died after the first year and they never were truly alive and useful.”

You need to be brave and have courage

Olga in Berlin wearing the WordPress Code is Poetry lanyard and a WordCamp t-shirt

Olga really wanted a developer job but seeking jobs of this type was very frustrating. From the job adverts she found, it felt like most IT companies were asking for geniuses who already knew a lot of technologies and frameworks. She found this very demotivating.

She then found a job offer on a website outside the most popular job portals and it seemed like a perfect fit. They wanted someone with experience to write from scratch, understand someone else’s code and maintain it, with an ability to translate technical documentation and articles, and make simple designs for printing products. After completing a trial task, she was taken on, and enjoyed a better salary, in a calm environment with good colleagues and without the requirement for a lot of extra hours. 

The advert turned out to be a direct ad from one of the sales departments in a technology company. By succeeding in the task set, Olga had bypassed the Human Resources team which she felt would not normally have considered her. 

Her boss agreed to her working remotely most of the time. It solved any potential leave problems which Olga had thought may be an obstacle. 

For Olga it had been 14 years since the original decision to become a programmer and it was only the beginning. 

After a few years at what she describes as an ‘amazing experience’ in this workplace, Olga felt able to move on to her next challenge as a developer.

Decision-making can benefit from wider knowledge

After working with different systems Olga became sure that WordPress is the best CMS for developers and clients. But she was disappointed to find that the ease of use meant that good code was not always a priority for some of the sites she looked at. 

“The biggest flaw of WordPress – it’s so easy to make things work that some may feel they don’t need to bother to do things right, but this becomes a problem later.”

In custom themes for a site, she also saw sites being made and clients left without any further support, or items hard coded when clients actually needed more control to change regularly.

Olga used to rely on examples she could easily find, documentation and search engines to improve her understanding in using WordPress. She discovered that just by searching for a specific feature or a solution, you can miss the whole picture. 

She turned to online courses to get more comprehensive knowledge and then started to attend WordPress events, firstly online and then by foot, trains and planes! She discovered a worldwide community that was very much alive. She didn’t know when she started studying online materials and attending discussions that she would end up contributing herself to the Learn WordPress platform a few years later.

WordCamps and contributor days became a big part of her life. From her early days attending events and starting out contributing to WordPress, she is an active member of the WordPress.org Global Marketing and Polyglots Teams, and supported the recent WordPress release. She is just beginning her first WordCamp organiser experience, joining WordCamp Europe 2021 on the Contribute Team.

Olga next to a banner of WordCamp St Petersburg 2018

Olga said: “Through the wider WordPress community, I knew not only where to look but also whom to ask. Most importantly, I found allies who don’t think I’m going crazy by speaking with delight about work, and with whom I share a passion and fondness for WordPress. This is what matters.

“Now, after more than seven years of full time development, I am still enjoying endless learning, frequent discoveries, mistakes and an impassioned wish to do better.”

This and a desire to help others use WordPress.org is part of Olga’s continued contribution to its Support and Marketing Teams, and led her to be involved in the Release Marketing questions and answers in 2020.

There is no chequered flag on the way

Olga at WordCamp Europe in Berlin in 2019

The road to freedom and becoming her own boss has not been easy for Olga. It is the path that got her where she is today, and she continues to find joy in it. She retains the lessons she’s learned and is always hungry to learn more.

 “I travelled through a very uneven path, with a lot of obstacles and noise, but for me it’s like a kaleidoscope where a little turn presents a new picture, a new “ah-ha” moment, new excitement after seemingly pointless efforts.” 

She added: “When in doubt I remind myself about David Ogilvy (generally considered the Founding Father of the modern advertising industry) who tried a lot of things before he struck gold with advertising, and maybe that’s why he did.”

Finally, she learned not only to keep a good spirit and try different things, but also to dare as you move forward.

Contributors

Thanks to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Meher Bala (@meher), Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe). Thank you to Olga Gleckler (@oglekler) for sharing her #ContributorStory.

HeroPress logo

This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.

Meet more WordPress community members in our People of WordPress series.

#ContributorStory #HeroPress

Photo credits: 2nd and 4th Pablo Gigena, Berlin, 2019

Introducing WordPress Stories: A New Way to Engage Your Audience

Posted by download in Software on 08-03-2021

Since the early days of Snapchat, which made the format so popular, Stories have become a powerful way to engage audiences on social media. Today, over 500 million Instagram accounts use Stories every day. Now, you can publish Stories on your website — a place where you truly own your own content.

With Stories, you can combine photos, videos, and text to create an engaging, tappable, full-screen slideshow that your visitors will love. You can conveniently publish Stories from your phone, giving you more ways to keep your site fresh and optimized for your increasingly mobile audience.

Stories are the perfect format for: 

  • Step-by-step guides 
  • Recipes and cooking tutorials
  • Updates on your DIY or art projects
  • A behind-the-scenes look at your latest product

The Stories you know, but better

WordPress Stories are different in a few ways. 

Stories are published on your site as a blog post, which means they can be viewed, liked, and commented on by your site visitors, just like any other blog post. Your Stories have a permanent URL that can be shared and linked to from other platforms. And if you’re using the Publicize feature on your WordPress site, your Story can automatically be shared with your social media fans and followers, expanding the reach of your content. 

We know it takes a lot of effort to create great content. Unlike the Stories you’re familiar with on other social platforms, Stories on your WordPress site won’t disappear after 24 hours! This means you can edit or add to your Stories long after you first publish them. 

Ready to try it out? 

You can start using Stories on your site today with the free WordPress app for Android or iOS. The Stories feature will be available for iPad and in the desktop block editor in the near future. 

For a detailed, step-by-step guide, visit the Story Block support page.