WordPress wallpapers

Posted by download in Software on 27-03-2023

Has your desktop been looking a bit drab lately? If so – or if you’d just like to show a little WordPress love – we’ve got just the remedy: 30 one-of-a-kind WordPress desktop wallpapers to breathe new life into your backgrounds.

The wallpapers

Download and install

To add a wallpaper to your desktop:

  • Click on any image to open a fullscreen carousel
  • Right-click the image if you’re using Windows or Linux, or command-click on a Mac
  • Save the wallpaper to your favorite folder
  • And set it as your desktop wallpaper (Windows / Ubuntu / MacOS)

About the wallpapers

The wallpapers are a homage to some of our favorite artists, with a nod to the freedom, innovation, and creativity of open-source software. 

We put these together with an entirely open-source AI tool called Stable Diffusion. Like WordPress, Stable Diffusion is all about helping more people to create, experiment, and share, while having the freedom to access and contribute to the code making it all happen.

Over to you

We’d love to hear what you think, and if you have any favorites. Of course, please feel free to remix, use these on your blog, or share your work in the comments!

WP Briefing: Episode 52: Workflows and Phase Three Visioning with Special Guest Héctor Prieto

Posted by download in Software on 27-03-2023

On Episode fifty-two of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and special guest Héctor Prieto as they discuss phase three and why it’s more than just collaborative editing!

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

Credits

Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

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

Show Notes

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and 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 Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

I have with me today Hécto Prieto. You all may know him from the WordPress Slack. He recently was, I believe, a release coordinator, maybe for the last release. Was that for 6.1?

[Héctor Prieto 00:00:51]

Yes. It was for 6.1 and also 6.0, in fact.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:54]

All right. Well, welcome to the WordPress Briefing today. How are you doing?

[Héctor Prieto 00:00:59] 

Well, I’m excited to be here. I’m a longtime listener of the podcast since the first episode. So I’m super excited to be here with you today.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:06]

Yes. Longtime listener. First-time caller. All right, well, we’re gonna have a topic that just dumps you right in the soup, as they say in the United States. So we are actually here to talk about phase three of Gutenberg. It’s been a long time coming, and there are a lot of questions that folks have about what’s going into it and what’s not going into it.

And as someone who works really closely with our Gutenberg technical architect, Matías Ventura, I figured you would be exactly the right person to come and talk about your favorite things. From your perspective, what is going to be the biggest enhancement that we start to approach in phase three?

Like which thing, which API is gonna take the most work, do you think?

[Héctor Prieto 00:01:53]

Well, the most work, that’s a very hard question to answer because we are still we are going to start an exploration phase to determine how far we want to go with each of these APIs. So, in general, all these APIs and these products are standalone projects. And some of them are shorter, and some of them are longer.

I would say, in general, the real-time collaboration sounds the most technically challenging because of what it represents and all the changes needed to how we interact with WordPress from async to sync, basically. That would be the hardest part. I think there are also already a few prototypes working, but we need to see how that scales, for example.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:32]

Yeah. So speaking of a few prototypes, I know that there are two or three different prototypes specifically for collaborative editing, but do we have people or groups, working groups in the community that have built any other prototypes? Or is it just kind of first passes at collaborative editing that we’ve seen?

[Héctor Prieto 00:02:52]

Well, apart from Riad Benguella’s exploration, there’s a public repository with that exploration, there are a few plugins trying the same, trying real-time collaboration.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:03]

Yeah, I can think of co-blocks and as blocks, and then I feel like there was a third one.

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:09] 

Yeah.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:09]

We’ll find the links to all these

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:12]

Yeah. Let’s add them to the show notes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:14]

Excellent. So that’s going to be the biggest one. Is there, of the list of APIs, and this is based on the post that Matías sent out last week. If you all haven’t seen that, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. But from the APIs that Matías sort of helped us to identify last week, is there any one that you are particularly excited about for fixing things in WordPress or just generally like an interesting topic of development for you?

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:42]

Well, I would say all of them and how they all play together. But, if I need to pick one of them…

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:48]

Everything’s the best! 

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:50]

I’ll cheat anyway, and I will going to pick two out of them because they solve issues at different levels. I’m very excited about visual revisions. I think it helps a lot of users, and it affects even non-technical users.

So it’s one of the projects that lower how hard or complex WordPress can be to use sometimes. It’s going to be a huge improvement. It’s going to, I mean, bringing blocks to the revision system. I mean, it’s just a dream come true for me. I’m also going to highlight the search everywhere or quick search feature Matías already opened an issue in the GitHub repository right now. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:28]

Mm-hmm.

[Héctor Prieto 00:04:28]

So the idea for this product is to have a power user shortcut that opens searching, an Alfred-like or Spotlight-like interface for those familiar with MacOS operating systems.

When you can type anything, any place you want to go, or you want to search for any specific text in a document. And it’s supposed to be your power user command tool. So that you can do most things there.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:53]

Oh, and I mean not only power user command tool, but also there are some applications there for folks who have mobility issues, people who are using primarily keyboard as opposed to keyboard and mouse, all that kind of stuff, right?

[Héctor Prieto 00:05:07]

Exactly. And just thinking long term with the rise of AI, it could be possible even to add some natural language processing to this interface so that users could just write in, in plain text, in natural language, what they want to do, and WordPress would provide the action for them.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:23]

Very nice. My two favorites, since you gave two favorites and I can’t just give one at that point, my two favorite projects, which are also probably really, really hard projects, are those explorations around fixing notifications. That is a really big project. And one that I think that, in general, the WordPress project is going to be really excited to have some input on. 

And so that’s one that I really will have an eye on. And the other one that I’m going to definitely have my eye on is the media gallery redesign. I realize that this shows, between you and I, that shows our two specific focuses. Because, of course, you work directly with guiding all of our developers. And I am very much like our user advocate. And WordPress “everyman.”

I don’t know if that’s a term that makes sense outside the US. But I do a lot of advocacy for folks who are using WordPress from the user side as opposed to from the developer side because, of course, we have a lot of excellent developers. So y’all don’t need my help with your advocacy.

But yeah, that really shows that you and I have different focuses, which I think is good too.

[Héctor Prieto 00:06:32]

Yes. Also, it’s worth noting that at the end of the day, any improvement we make for developers is so that developers can build better things for users. So, at the end of the day, everything is in the best interest of the users.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:45] 

That’s right. That’s definitely a good point. Yeah. So, a final question about this particular thing because we’re trying to keep it a little brief and also because we’ll have a few other podcasts that are specifically about phase three as our explorations get going. Final question here: If you felt like there was one API or one project in particular that could benefit from a lot of community involvement which would you guess that was?

[Héctor Prieto 00:07:20]

I don’t think I can single out any of them. I think getting user feedback is going to be a vital part of this phase, as always. So I would encourage our listeners to just participate in discussions and provide feedback as we start releasing the first prototypes in the Gutenberg plugin. I don’t think I can pick one of them for you, completely honest.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:43] 

Yeah. My guess for that is going to be the rework of the dashboard, the admin, WP admin. I think that a lot of people are gonna have a lot to say about what they use it for, what they would like to be able to use it for, how to make it look more modern, how to make it feel more modern. I think that that probably is going to benefit from a lot of early testing and possibly some specific user testing around the concepts of design in there.

And so that’s one that that I think probably is going to take a lot of feedback from the community. And community, in this case, I think, is not only our developers and designers and copy folks who are working to build the CMS, but probably also all of our folks who are extending WordPress, everybody who is working in agencies, things like that.

[Héctor Prieto 00:08:35]

Hmm, well, if I need to pick one, I would say the publishing flows could use also lots of feedback and testing because we are going to implement editorial requirements and customized user flows. And, of course, there are many, many different workflows out there that we might not be able to think of ourselves.

So just imagine the sheer amount of different use cases. There’s going to be, or there currently is with customizations of third-party plugins. So, yeah. I would like to listen to how people would like the publishing flows to be. What are the specific use cases? 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:09]

So really, just everything, we need a lot of user feedback on everything.

[Héctor Prieto 00:09:13]

Yes. That’s the summary.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:15]

I don’t think that’s a bad summary. I know that we talk a bit about how WordPress is made better by the activity of our co-creators, the people who are using the software and testing the software, and telling us how it could be better. Those are the groups of people that make sure that we are the best version or headed in the best direction on any of our things with the software.

And so I guess it’s probably not super unusual for everyone to hear like we need your feedback on everything because that’s probably what we do half the time.

[Héctor Prieto 00:09:44]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:47]

So the publishing workflows, that reminds me that there has been a little bit of a conversation lately around the naming of this phase, basically.

And I know that the phases don’t necessarily need names. Like that’s why they’re numbered, and that’s a great idea. Like numbers are wonderful ways to reference things, but it also is just easier to reference it in kind of general conversation.

So the first phase was easier editing, and it really focused on the editing experience itself. The second one was customization, and now the third phase has been called collaboration for quite a bit of time.

But as we got closer and closer to this phase and we had more and more conversations that were coming out of phases one and two, it became really clear that really what we’re looking at here is more around workflows. And I love that that is an option for how to refer to this. Probably that’s how I will refer to it for most of the time that I talk about it as we are looking at phase three.

Because I remember that when we were first building the prototypes of Gutenberg, one of the big flags that I had was that breaking changes are not just about what we can see or any sort of visual regressions or what causes the white screen of death. Also, some of the things that are breaking changes should be considered in those workflows when we change where things are or how you accomplish a task.

And our users weren’t ready for it. That is something that is breaking for them, right?

[Héctor Prieto 00:11:25] 

Yes. As you mentioned, this phase was referenced as collaboration, real-time collaboration, for a long time, but if we think of how this collaboration looks, it’s much more than just editing at the same time. A very big part of collaboration is also asynchronous collaboration by adding in-line comments and improving these notifications when you have a comment in your draft. I think the power of this phase is how everything comes together. These individual pieces come together.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:11:51]

Yes, and I don’t know where that first flag that sparked the discussion around, like, okay, but collaborative editing is not quite big enough and also means a bunch of different things for a bunch of different people. It depends on the size of your organization or the type of content you’re writing.

Like, I don’t know where that conversation started. My guess is, you know, some WordCamp somewhere, and an attendee was like, did you, did anybody ever think about these problems? And then they kind of worked their way around the Make Core site or otherwise made their way around to Matias’s ears.

But yeah, I think that was a really smart choice. And you’re exactly right, collaborative editing; that can refer to the synchronous kind or the asynchronous kind, and both of those types of collaboration are equally valuable and probably equally used.

[Héctor Prieto 00:12:40]

Yes. And one important point to note here is that this editorial flows, and this collaboration is crucial to implement multilingualism going into phase four. We need to think that as soon as we have posts and pages in different languages, there are going to be requirements in terms of how to translate these pieces of content.

So this will need collaboration, all forms of collaboration.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:13:02]

Yeah, absolutely. This maybe was before your time with the project, but I was team multilingual-first for a long time. Or at least thinking that we could do the multilingual part of this work alongside the collaborative editing part of the work. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand what we think is going in phase three versus what probably we need to be able to do as far as having native multilingual support in the project.

And I have softened my very hard position on that. You know, we’re big fans of strong positions loosely held, strong opinions loosely held. And this was one of those moments where I had that really strong opinion that we could just do them concurrently. We can do them at the same time.

And I think it was a conversation that you and I were having when you were pointing out the complexities of translating WordPress at all, let alone being able to translate all your content as well. And it makes a lot of sense, and you’re right. I think that there are a lot of interactions, a lot of workflows that we’re gonna have to kind of refresh or redesign or rebuild before it really makes sense for us to help make that a nice streamlined option for multilingual offerings.

[Héctor Prieto 00:14:17]

Yes, absolutely. As a Spanish-speaking person, I’m super excited about having multilingual in Core, but I also understand that we need some tooling ready before implementing multilingual in Core. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:14:29] 

There are no, there really are no easy problems left in WordPress, right? Like, we all agree on this now?

[Héctor Prieto 00:14:36]

That’s correct. And we’re creating something incrementally. If we look at the phases, they are ordered sequentially. But that doesn’t mean that when we start phase three, we are, finishing phase two completely in the same way. We have not finished phase one.

That will be like saying, when is WordPress finished, when is the development finished? So it’s an incremental project, and it’s always going to be to need refining. So it’s of course, multilingual needs to come after collaboration because we need those tools.

But that doesn’t mean we need to finish the collaboration phase or have it very advanced phase three before we can start phase four. That will be determined in the next month as we start explorations.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:15:17] 

So if you all, which I know you are, are interested in better workflows, more streamlined ways of working inside WordPress, and or interested in how we are gonna get multilingual settled in the future, this is a great time to get involved in this project and in the community. Like I said, we’ve got that post up that Matías shipped last week, which, again, if you have not read it, go read it because it’s got excellent, excellent information in there for you. 

Héctor, before we head out, is there anything that you wanna make sure that you let the listeners know, either about phase three or just about WordPress in general?

[Héctor Prieto 00:15:57]

Well, tomorrow is WordPress 6.2 release day. So happy 6.2, everybody!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:16:04]

Happy 6.2. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which means today is the dry run; probably in three hours, we’re doing the dry run.

[Héctor Prieto 00:16:14]

Depends on when we’re listening to this, but yes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:16:18] 

Oh, that’s a good point. Right? Not everybody listens to this the second it becomes available. Time zones. That’s right. Oh, man. Look at us being a global project and just pretending like everybody listens to this particular thing the moment that it’s available.

I apologize to everybody who’s listening to it after the release or in the middle of the release party or whatever you’re doing. Regardless, tomorrow, if you’re listening to it today, is the WordPress 6.2 release, and it’s gonna be great.

Well, Héctor, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed having you on, and thanks for letting me interview you.

[Héctor Prieto 00:16:59]

Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure to be here.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:17:10]

So that brings us now to our small list of big things, and as is frequently the case, it’s actually kind of a big list of big things. So we’re gonna hop right in here. As Héctor and I mentioned in the episode, the release WordPress 6.2 is coming out tomorrow, depending on when you’re listening to this. If you listen to it on the 27th, it comes out on the 28th of March. 

If you have a chance to drop by the release party. I would encourage you to; they’re pretty interesting just to get an idea of everything that it takes to build WordPress. It is, of course, the last few hours before a release, and so you don’t get a full scope.

But it’s always nice to see the way that everybody in the community works together, especially there in that last moment when we’re trying to package something and test it in a bunch of environments all across the world. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:18:00] 

I love attending those. And so I encourage it. The next episode of the WordPress Briefing is going to have the release rundown.

I’ll go through the key features and highlights that finally made it into 6.2. The reason we don’t do those beforehand is just in case we have to remove anything at the last minute from a release. It doesn’t happen too often, but it does happen sometimes. And so, next episode of WP Briefing, that’s what we’ll be talking about.

The next thing on my list is a new developer blog. So there is a brand new developer blog. It was launched last Wednesday. It’s a great resource for WordPress developers to stay up to date and hear the latest in the WordPress development world. And also, we had been hearing some feedback from our developers in recent years that if you are like exploring how to extend WordPress, if you’re in that group of extenders, people who are building themes or building plugins, you’ve kind of feel like you’ve lost a place where you can have those exploratory conversations. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:19:00] 

This is gonna be one of those places. We’ll put a link in the show notes. So far, the content that’s planned, I think, is really interesting.

Next thing on our small list, big list, of big things is WordCamp Europe’s Contributor Day.

So registration for Contributor Day is now open, and it does require a separate registration than regular attendance at WordCamp Europe. So if you are registered for WordCamp Europe, you already have your ticket for that, but you are not registered for Contributor Day, click the link in the show notes and come on down to spend a little time giving back to the WordPress Project.

And the last thing on our list today is that we have a WP20 Wapuu coloring giveaway. So put on your little party hats, and grab your crayons. The 20th anniversary Wapuu coloring giveaway is here. There is an opportunity to color in your own community-driven Wapuu and tweet it to us using #WapuuWP20 for your chance to win a sweet haul of WP20 swag items.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:20:00]

You can check out the full rules at the link in our show notes.

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

Introducing the WordPress Developer Blog

Posted by download in Software on 22-03-2023

With much activity happening in the WordPress development space every day, keeping up-to-date with the latest updates can be challenging. The new WordPress Developer Blog is a developer-focused resource to help you stay on top of the latest software features, tutorials, and learning materials relevant to the open source project.

This blog is the culmination of a community effort that began last year. Formed by experienced WordPress community members and developers, the editorial group has since worked on a wide range of content already available—from theme and block development tutorials to tips and tricks for leveraging WordPress in the site editing era.

A new home for developers

As a complementary resource to the WordPress documentation, the Developer Blog aims to provide a shared space to stay informed of development-related updates, keep up with ongoing discussions and ideas, and explore cutting-edge use cases.

In other words, consider it as a central hub for developers and extenders of different backgrounds and skill levels to learn with quality content from reliable sources, share knowledge, and drive WordPress development forward.

True to the open source way, the blog will likely evolve. As its editors and readers learn and create more content, it will adapt in response to the needs of community members like you.

Everyone is welcome to chime in on-topic discussions, share ideas or contribute. Learn more about how to get involved.

What about the content?

Content on the WordPress Developer Blog covers many topics, including tutorials on theme development, plugins, and block development. You can also expect posts on WordPress APIs, best practices for working with WordPress, updates on upcoming releases, and learning resources for beginners and seasoned developers.

These articles offer a good hint at what’s already in store for you:

Sounds interesting?

Subscribe to the Developer Blog to keep up with the latest content in the WordPress development space.

Props for content and peer review @chanthaboune @rmartinezduque @mburridge @marybaum @bph @greenshady @webcommsat.

WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 3

Posted by download in Software on 21-03-2023

It’s the final countdown: the third (and last) scheduled release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.2 is ready!

The WordPress 6.2 release is scheduled for March 28, 2023—just one week away! Now is your last opportunity to test it before the general release. 

Just tuning in now? Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details in the WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement.

Thanks to all the Beta and RC testers who have assisted in this release. Since RC2 was released on March 14, there have been about 21 issues resolved in Trac and GitHub.

Your feedback and help in filing bug reports keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s critical work and a great way to contribute to the project. 

How to install RC3 for testing

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site. 

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC3 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 2: Direct download the RC3 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC3

A shout out to plugin and theme developers

Your products are the reason WordPress does so many things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC3, make sure you update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for more details about the major changes in this release.

Help translate WordPress

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

Keep WordPress bug-free—help with testing

Without your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide can help you get started. 

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Release the haiku

Wow, we’re oh so close
Test, test. Get it out the door.
Please no RC 4.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle @marybaum @audrasjb @cbringmann @webcommsat

Sell Courses and Create Interactive Content on WordPress.com

Posted by download in Software on 20-03-2023

One of the biggest benefits of our Business and Commerce plans is that you can add additional WordPress plugins to enhance the functionality of your website.

Below, we’re highlighting two of the newest additions to our plugin marketplace, now available at a hefty exclusive discount for WordPress.com users.

Create courses with Sensei Pro

Automattic, the same company behind WordPress.com, creates Sensei LMS. We’ve collaborated to bring our Learning Management System and course creation tools to WordPress.com sites in one seamless experience.

With Sensei Pro, you can create online courses with quizzes, certificates, cohorts, and detailed student reports. Lessons are edited just like WordPress posts or pages, so you will already know how it works.

You can enable the distraction-free Learning Mode to provide students with an optimized mobile-friendly learning environment that keeps your course content front and center.

Learn more about Sensei Pro.

Sell courses with WooCommerce integration

Selling courses can be a lucrative way to generate revenue for your blog or business. Sensei LMS integrates deeply with our WooCommerce suite of tools to make selling access to a course a breeze. 

You can also take advantage of WooCommerce extensions to handle coupons, memberships, subscriptions, and more. 

Learn more about WooCommerce and Sensei integration.

Publish interactive and private videos

Videos are often a big part of online courses. WordPress.com sites also come with our VideoPress service, which lets you upload videos directly to your site without dealing with a third-party tool or embed codes. Especially important for video courses, you can mark a video as “private” to ensure it won’t be downloaded or linked to, and will only be available to course students.

Even better, with Sensei’s Interactive Videos block, you can create pause points with additional content to any video. For example: 

  • Add a quiz question in the middle of a course video. 
  • Add a contact form to the end of a sales video.
  • Show links to additional resources to a blog post video.

Add Interactive Videos to any WordPress page or post. They are not limited to courses or lessons.

Learn more about Interactive Videos.

Engage with interactive blocks

In addition to the Interactive Videos, Sensei also comes with interactive and educational content blocks, including:

  • Quiz questions
  • Accordions
  • Image hotspots
  • Flashcards
  • Task lists

Using these blocks, you can craft compelling content that captivates and keeps your readers engaged. Whether writing an educational blog post or creating a sales landing page, you can add these blocks to any WordPress page or post. 

Learn more about Interactive Blocks.

Getting Sensei Pro and Sensei Blocks

For existing sites on WordPress.com, you’ll find Sensei’s plugins in the plugin marketplace. WordPress.com users receive a 30% discount on Sensei Pro automatically.

  • Sensei Pro — all course creation tools and interactive blocks included. Get Sensei Pro here.
  • Sensei Interactive Blocks — interactive videos, accordions, image hotspots, flashcards, and task lists. Creating courses is not needed to be able to use these blocks. Get Sensei Interactive Blocks here.

Or, create a brand new site with Sensei Pro bundled here.

Making the Social Web a Better Place: ActivityPub for WordPress Joins the Automattic Family 

Posted by download in Software on 17-03-2023

We’re excited to announce that Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, has acquired the popular WordPress plugin ActivityPub

This innovative plugin brings a whole new level of social networking to your website by integrating it with the wider federated social web. When installed, the plugin allows you to easily share your content and interact with users on Mastodon and other platforms that also support the ActivityPub protocol

Just as Automattic aims to do with all of our products, this plugin helps to decentralize the web, break down silos, and foster a more connected online ecosystem. 

Why you should use the ActivityPub plugin

If you’re a blogger or content creator who wants to reach a wider audience, the ActivityPub plugin is perfect for you. Just as Jetpack Social — another one of our great plugins! — automatically shares content to large social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, ActivityPub automatically allows anyone on a federated network to follow your blog’s posts, which will show up in their Home feed. The federated networks include:

Responses on those platforms show up in your WordPress post’s comments, allowing you to interact directly with readers across the fediverse, streamlining engagement and creating a more cohesive online presence. 

Moreover, in using ActivityPub for WordPress, you’re supporting the open source movement, promoting transparency and collaboration, and empowering users to take control of their online experience and contribute to a more diverse and inclusive internet landscape.

How to install ActivityPub for WordPress

Installing the ActivityPub plugin is a breeze, even if you’ve never added a plugin before. 

1. From your dashboard’s left-side menu, navigate to the plugin marketplace and search “ActivityPub” (all one word). Alternatively, you can click here and go directly to the plugin page. 

2. Click “Install and activate.” 

3. Once activated, you can click “Manage plugin,” which allows you to choose the type of content that will show up in fediverse feeds — if you’re not quite ready for that, you can always access it later under “Settings” → “ActivityPub.” 

At Automattic, our philosophy has always been to democratize publishing and make the web a better place. In our acquisition of ActivityPub for WordPress, we’re doing that for the social web.  

A Social Experience Anchored by Your Domain

Posted by download in Software on 14-03-2023

WordPress.com is an organization — like others within Automattic — that is heavily invested in Open Source and the democratization of the web. We genuinely believe that everyone should have control over their presence, their data, and even their social experiences. That’s why we’re really excited about some of the work Bluesky is doing.

What is Bluesky?

We’re building a new foundation for social networking which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience.

blueskyweb.xyz
Screen show of the bluesky.xyz website and its three column feature list: Federated social, Algorithmic choice, Portable accounts

Think about all of the different pieces tied to any one of your social accounts:

  • Your username – how people identify you in that platform
  • Your connections/network
  • The content you’ve created
  • The media you’ve uploaded
  • The conversations you’ve had with others
  • Your connections to influencers, brands, and businesses
  • Purchases within a specific platform

Now, imagine being able to bring all of that with you when you get frustrated with changes on one social network and rediscover the magic of one you had *almost* forgotten about. 😉

This is exactly what Bluesky is trying to accomplish with its AT Protocol, and we can’t way to see how it evolves.

That’s so cool! Why is that cool?

So glad you asked!

We’re all probably familiar with the “blue checkmark of officialness” used across may social platforms. It’s essentially a way for users to identify the real accounts for famous and notable people/brands/things.

Bluesky lets you claim a domain that you own as your username/handle, and they automatically verify it by checking your domain for a simple text record. That may sound complicated, but it’s actually quite simple — especially on WordPress.com.

Think of it like any kind of certificate you might get, which often requires a signature from you as well as from some sort of official before it’s considered a verified document. It’s just like that, except that instead of collecting dust, this unlocks a digital superpower: a consistent way for anyone to find the real you (potentially) anywhere on the web.

How do I add a text record to my domain?

I’ll cover some simple steps for those of you who manage your domains here on WordPress.com. If you have domains registered elsewhere on the web you will have to check that registrar’s documentation. If you’d rather just manage it here, you can check out the steps to transfer it over.

Note: You will need an invitation to join to the private beta of Bluesky before you can set up an account and use this feature.

6 easy steps

Step 1: Navigate to the site that your domain is associated with on WordPress.com — if you only have one site you can simply go to WordPress.com.

Step 2: Use the left hand menu to navigate to Upgrades/Domains.

Step 3: Identify the domain you want to use and click on the vertical elipses on the right. Click “view settings.”

Step 4: Click on the arrow to the right of “DNS Records” to expand the information. Click on “Manage.”

Step 5: Click the “+ Add Record” button at the top of the screen.

Step 6: Change the record type from “A” to “TXT.”

Step 7: Add the Bluesky information to your record.

  • Add _atproto in the “domain name (optional)” field.
  • Add the Bluesky “Value” in the “Text” field.

Step 8: Click the “Add DNS record” button.

I’m always pleasantly surprised by how fast our DNS is. In this case, I was able to verify the record in the Bluesky app less than 30 seconds after I saved it on WordPress.com. Here’s what the app looks like while you’re setting up, after it’s verified, and after you officially update your handle.

If you made it this far, you’re at least a little bit interested. Let us know what piqued your interest in the comments!

WordPress 6.2 Release Candidate 2

Posted by download in Software on 14-03-2023

Here it is: the second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.2 is ready! 

WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for release on March 28, 2023—which is only two weeks away. Now is your perfect opportunity if you haven’t tried it out yet. Your feedback and help filing bug reports are what keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s important work and a great way to contribute to the project. 

Thanks to everyone who tested the Beta and RC releases so far. Since RC1 was released on March 9, there have been about 36 issues resolved in Trac and GitHub

Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details, in the WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement.

How to install RC2 for testing

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC2 on a test server and site. 

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC2 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 2: Direct download the RC2 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC2

A shoutout to plugin and theme developers

Your products are the reason WordPress does so many more things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC2, make sure you update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for more details about the major changes in this release.

Help translate WordPress

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

Join the bug hunt—test, test, test

Without your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide can help you get started. 

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Release the haiku

Listen, we are close
One step to final RC
Breathe, and keep going

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle @marybaum @audrasjb @cbringmann

Haiku by @sereedmedia

WP Briefing: Episode 51: Is Routine a Rut?

Posted by download in Software on 13-03-2023

On Episode fifty-one of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she makes a case for why routine is a good thing– in life and in the WordPress project.

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

Credits

Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and 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 Haden Chomphosy 00:00:29]

All right, my WordPress wonders; it’s time to join me for one of my gentle rants on basic leadership principles. Today we’re talking about the importance of routine and predictability in everyday life. But don’t worry, I’m gonna tie it all together with WordPress, too. So by now you’re probably aware that I don’t really consider myself one of those “born leaders.” 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] 

Over the years, I’ve put a lot of effort into researching characteristics of good leaders and general leadership methods overall. But one of the things I encountered early on in my leadership learning journey was the concept of routine.

As with most leadership practices I hold, routine has more than one purpose. From a very pragmatic standpoint, routines provide predictability and the more predictable something is, the lower the cognitive load becomes, which in turn lets you use your thinking power for something better. For instance, if you know that in every check-in with your team lead, she’s gonna ask you what you were proud to have shipped last week, what you want to ship next week, and what things stand in the way of your plans, then you know that that is what you have to prepare for. 

The knowledge work, the thinking part. The thinking part stops being, what is my team lead going to ask me and starts being what is the problem that she can help me solve? 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] 

But from a more human standpoint, that kind of predictability helps us to understand when something that happened is out of the ordinary. Whether it’s a notification of a comment left on your blog or syntactical highlighting that lets you know that you’ve written something that’s out of voice or against grammar standards, it just lets you know that something is unusual there and deserves your attention. 

Now for me, this has a lot of applications across the WordPress project. There are the obvious things like the cadence of our major release cycles or our notification system, which honestly could use a bit of TLC, a little bit of elbow grease.

But there are also less obvious things that this idea still applies to simply because of the way our brains work, the information architecture on our sites, for instance. It should make sense visually and semantically because that makes it easy for us to skim and predict where the highest value content is for us. Or the user interface across the back end of our software. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] 

Having familiar tasks or actions across any type of content or area of content makes it easier for a site maintainer to flow from one area of a site to the next, fixing things as they find them without necessarily having to stop and put down their hammer and pick up a screwdriver or whatever metaphor works for you. Or if you’re doing more nuanced work, like put down your timpani mallets and pick up your xylophone mallets. 

So, yeah, consistency. Consistency is the topic of today’s gentle rant. I get really worked up about it because I feel like consistency ends up being this euphemism for being boring. But I honestly believe that it’s the consistency and the dependability that make it clear what is supposed to be exciting, the things that are different enough that they merit our attention.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:38] 

Which, fortunately, now brings us to our small list of big things. It’s actually a pretty big list today and also a bunch of pretty big things. So first thing to know, there was an additional beta added to this release cycle.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] 

It was beta five; it came out last week, I think. There was a bit of a regression that we worked our way through. And so RC1, release candidate one, is going to be postponed a little bit because of that. But don’t wait until RC to start testing, obviously RC is tomorrow, so that means you get to test, like, today!

The second thing on our small list of big things is that we have the WordPress 20th anniversary coming up. That’s May 27th. And you can join in the celebrations. So at WordPress’s 10th anniversary and 15th anniversary, we had like a big, ongoing global set of parties, like Meetup events got together and made cakes, or did a concert, or did a hackathon for various reasons.

Like they all got together on May 27th or thereabouts and did some really fun, like celebration of how far WordPress has gotten them and how far they hope to be able to go with WordPress. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] 

So if you are from the before times WordCamp kind of organizing timeframe, you know that we always consider WordCamps to be like an annual celebration of the excellence of your community and how much you all come together and how different you are as part of this overall big WordPress-y thingy. 

All right. Third item that we have is that, I know that I mentioned this in the last WP Briefing as well, but we have another session of the diverse and inclusive WordPress events coming up that’s happening on March 16th. So coming up really fast, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

And the final thing, I don’t remember what list number we’re at, but the final thing is that there is a proposal out there right now to modify the events and news widget that we use inside the WordPress dashboard. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a place where all of the local-to-you Meetup events get listed.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] 

It’s where all of the news items from various WordPress media outlets get published. We just have a link to it there. And so, we would like to make some changes to that so that we’re able to include not only specific location types of events but also events that are location agnostic because they’re online but might have a specific, identifying niche that you particularly find interesting.

So it might be for Spanish speakers or for women in particular, or whatever it might be. There’s a proposal out for that. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. 

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

What’s New on WordPress.com: Fresh Buttons, Sticky Headers, and Time-Saving Shortcuts

Posted by download in Software on 10-03-2023

At WordPress.com, we’re always pushing our platform to do even more so that you can create, design, and publish amazing things with ease. Our newest features go a little deeper into the settings, making them particularly suited to those who call themselves tinkerers. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a pro, get in there and play around anyway! You’re more capable than you think, and if you break something our team can always get it back — we’ve all been there. 

And in this case, a little experimentation can reap big rewards. All it takes is a small change or two to make a huge difference in how people see (and interact with) your website. 

Let’s jump in and take a look.

Make your site’s buttons pop 

Giving your buttons a shadow effect is an easy and powerful way to give your pages some extra panache. Now, new preset options available in the Styles menu let you apply that across your site. 

From the Styles sidebar, click “Blocks,” and then “Buttons.” From there, you’ll see four options for how to style your buttons. This feature is only available on block themes. 

Screenshot of the Shadow option for Button Blocks.

When to use this feature: You’re a master of the CTA (call to action) and you put a button at the end of every blog post asking readers to watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, or buy a book. You’ve been thinking that those buttons are looking a little stale and flat. Use the new shadow presets to invigorate your default buttons with a depth and freshness that wasn’t there before. 

Reuse a beautiful design 

Not only can you copy and paste text from one block to another, you can now copy the entire styling of a block — colors, typography, and anything else — and paste it to another block of the same type. 

From a block’s settings menu, select “Copy Styles.” Then once you add a new block, select “Paste Styles” from the settings menu to transfer all those design goodies.  

Screenshot of the Copy Styles button on a Quote Block.

When to use this feature: You’ve spent some time playing with gradients and type settings to make a Quote Block look really nice, and it’s paid off — now you want to bring that primo styling over to a Quote Block on a different page. Rather than recreating the steps you took, simply use “Copy Styles”/”Paste Styles” and get a gold star for efficiency. 

Give readers a sticking point 

A “sticky” component on your website is a piece of content (often a header + menu, though not always) that stays stuck at the top no matter how far down you scroll through a page or post. It’s a handy feature for visitors to your site, especially on mobile, where scrolling back up to a menu can be annoying. 

There are other uses as well, such as an important announcement or promotion that you want visible at all times. 

However, only a group can be made sticky rather than any individual template part. So you’ll first wrap your desired sticky blocks in a group, select that group, then access the “Sticky” option from the settings sidebar. 

When to use this feature: Your website features long pages or posts that require a lot of scrolling. Maybe you’re a baby name consultant and have numerous lengthy lists of names. Utilize a sticky header and menu so that visitors don’t have to scroll all the way back up in order to quickly access the next category of names to peruse. 

Twice as nice: copy your entire site! 

Are you a professional in the web-building space? We’ve launched a new feature that allows you to easily copy the entirety of a site. Once you create your base template site, you’ll be able to spin up new client sites without starting entirely from scratch.

An important note: copying a site creates a new plan as well. For instance, copying a business site creates a new business plan at the same time.  

From the wordpress.com/sites dashboard, click the three-dot menu, hit “Copy site,” go through a couple confirmation steps, and you’ll be set. This feature is available on Business and Commerce plans with Hosting Features active.

Screenshot of the "Copy site" button.

When to use this feature: You’re a solopreneur website builder and you often use previously built sites as inspiration for current builds. If you’re working on a new site and thinking about using a framework or feel that you’ve already created, copy the site with a single click and start the project with some of the work already done. 

In Case You Missed It

If you missed our other recent updates, below is a quick snapshot.

A new mobile experience for WordPress.com

Our new and improved Jetpack mobile app offers everything you need to WordPress on the go.

Professional design, without a designer

This primer on Styles gives you the lowdown on making your website pop in just a few clicks.

A new home for WordPress.com courses

Our courses have a new home at WordPress.com/Learn. The best part? All the courses are totally free and there’s no registration needed.

A more diverse stock photo library

Cocoamattic ERG, an employee resource group at Automattic, partnered with Nappy.co to release a collection of 90+ beautiful photos of Black people interacting with technology.