The earlier reported outage has been resolved. Twitter is working again for Jetpack Social and all other functionalities that depend on Twitter. All Jetpack Social connections to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be used as usual.
We are working with Twitter directly to ensure this service keeps running without interruption.
On April 3, Twitter suspended WordPress.com’s access to the Twitter API without warning. As a result, Jetpack Social — the built-in tool that we use to auto-share your posts to social media — is currently broken for Twitter. This means that auto-posting to Twitter via WordPress.com is not actively working.
Thankfully, this issue is isolated to Twitter, which means that Jetpack Social connections to other platforms are unaffected. Rest assured that you can continue sharing to Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn without interruption.
You’re most likely to encounter this when publishing a new post. You’ll see this alert in the pre-publish sidebar:
Reconnecting won’t work at this time, nor will trying to establish a new connection.
We want you to know that we’re on top of this and working hard to find a solution. We’ll keep this post updated as we get more information.
In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out Tumblr recently, now is a great time to do so! While some social media companies have made recent decisions that adversely affect users’ experience, we’re constantly adding great new features and amping up what’s possible on Tumblr.
We know that social sharing is vitally important for spreading the word about your work, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes. Thank you for your patience as we work to get everything back up and running.
March saw the arrival of the first major release of 2023, WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy.” Planning for the project’s 20th anniversary continues with new celebratory updates and commemorative swag. Read on for the latest happenings in the WordPress space.
WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” was released on March 29, 2023. Named after the acclaimed jazz multi-instrumentalist and composer Eric Allan Dolphy Jr., the latest version of WordPress further enhances the site editing experience with significant updates.
Highlights include a reimagined Site Editor interface, a more intuitive way to manage menus, and a distraction-free writing mode. A new Block Inserter design adds integration with Openverse, allowing you to easily browse and insert free, openly-licensed images and audio files into your content.
Whether you’re a content creator, designer, or developer, WordPress 6.2 has something for you. Check out the full announcement post for an overview of what’s new and the Field Guide for detailed developer notes.
WordPress 6.2 is one of the last major releases planned for Phase 2 of the project’s development roadmap and was made possible thanks to more than 600 contributors.
Show your WordPress excitement with limited edition 20th anniversary merchandise—now available at the official WordPress Mercantile store. If you prefer to create your own swag, you can use these WP20 downloadable assets.
The 20th anniversary website lists celebrations as organizers announce and schedule them. Check back regularly to see if there’s an event in your area to join or help organize one to celebrate this milestone with your local community.
Enter the Wapuu Coloring Giveaway by April 17, 2023, for a chance to win some commemorative WP20 swag!
Two new versions of the Gutenberg plugin have shipped in the last month:
Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.
Tune in to Episode 52 of WP Briefing to learn more about the visioning behind Phase 3, Collaboration.
Members of the Core Team are looking for user experience (UX) feedback on the Plugin Dependencies feature plugin.
WordCamp Torino, Italy, on April 14-15, 2023
Wordcamp Vienna, Austria, on April 15-16, 2023
WordCamp Paris, France, on April 21, 2023
WordCamp Sofia, Bulgaria, on April 22-23, 2023Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she discusses the benefits of routine and what role it plays in the WordPress project.
Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.
The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @bsanevans, @cbringmann, @eidolonnight, @rmartinezduque, @sereedmedia.
Say hello to WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy,” named for the woodwind jazz wiz, the multi-instrumentalist—Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. Dolphy is acclaimed for having brought the bass clarinet to prominence in the jazz scene, creating a place for the flute and extending the lexicon of the alto saxophone. In a career that spanned continents, his artistry was at the forefront of pushing improvisational boundaries, ensemble work, and partnerships with well-respected artists like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane.
This latest version of WordPress reimagines your site editing experience, introduces more ways to style your site, and offers a new distraction-free way to write. Discover improvements that give you more control and freedom to express your creative vision. There’s something for everyone, whether you’re a content creator, developer, site builder, or designer. Let the music of Eric Dolphy delight you as you take in all that 6.2 has to offer.
WordPress 6.2 is the first major release of 2023, covering over 900 enhancements and fixes. It’s also a transition point in the WordPress project’s development roadmap, shifting focus from customization to early exploration of workflows and collaboration.
Ready for you to dive in and explore: 6.2 is your invitation to discover what the next generation of WordPress—and block themes—can do.
Now out of beta, the Site Editor has an updated interface, giving you a new way to interact with your entire site. Explore full previews of your templates and template parts, then jump in and get to editing your site from wherever you choose.
Add, remove, and reorder menu items faster—with a new sidebar experience that makes editing your site’s navigation easier.
A refreshed design gives you easier access to the content you need. Use the Media tab to quickly drag and drop content from your existing Media Library. Find patterns faster with a split view that lets you navigate categories and see previews all at once.
Your block settings sidebar is better organized with tabs for Settings and Styles. So the tools you need are easy to identify and access.
Discover a new collection of header and footer patterns. Use them with any block theme as a quick, high-quality starting point for your site’s templates.
Openverse’s library catalogs over 700 million+ free, openly licensed stock images and audio—and now it’s directly integrated into the WordPress experience through the Inserter.
For those times you want to be alone with your ideas. You can now hide all your panels and controls, leaving you free to bring your content to life.
Get a complete overview of how every block in your site’s library looks. All in one place, all at a glance, directly in the Site Editor.
Perfect the design on one type of block, then copy and paste those styles to other blocks to get just the look you want.
Power up your site any way you wish with design tools and custom CSS for another level of control over your site’s look and feel for maximum creativity and artistry in your designs.
Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, courses, and other resources for the latest features in WordPress. Or join a free live interactive online workshop.
Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of the latest release. Read the 6.2 release notes for additional technical details about this release, including installation information, updates, fixes, file changes, and more.
6.2 is made possible by the many folks who have enthusiastically helped keep the release on track and moving forward:
WordPress 6.2 couldn’t be here without the countless effort and passion of more than 600 contributors in at least 50 countries. A special thank you to the 178 new contributors who joined a release for the first time. Their collaboration helped deliver hundreds of enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
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By release day, 70 locales had translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.2 in their language. Community translators are hard at work ensuring more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps to make WordPress 6.2 available in 200 languages.
Six point two, so new
Shiny and ready for you
Congrats on hard work!
* Portrait of Eric Allen Dolphy Jr. discovered via Openverse. Colorization by D. Pountain; Original by F. Wolff.
“eric dolphy” by dick_pountain is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Are you taking your first steps in selling a product or service online and don’t know where to start? Be sure to register for our upcoming WooCommerce 101 webinar, where our expert Happiness Engineers will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up an online store with WooCommerce and WordPress.com managed hosting.
Whether you’re an e-commerce veteran or this is your first business, join us for the inside scoop on launching a store that’s fully customizable, completely yours, and ready to grow from the start. In this live webinar, our Happiness Engineer will demonstrate how to:
No previous e-commerce experience is necessary, but we recommend a basic familiarity with WordPress.com to ensure you can make the most from the webinar. A Q&A session will follow the walkthrough, so be sure to bring any questions you might have!
Seats are limited, so register now to reserve your spot. See you then!
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.
To add a wallpaper to your desktop:
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.
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!
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 Interactive Videos to any WordPress page or post. They are not limited to courses or lessons.
Learn more about Interactive Videos.
In addition to the Interactive Videos, Sensei also comes with interactive and educational content blocks, including:
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.
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.
