During WordCamp Europe this past Wednesday Matt and I gathered to discuss the latest developments of Gutenberg and to share a video with some of the current and upcoming highlights. The video is wonderfully narrated by @beafialho and it was a great opportunity to celebrate all the incredible work that contributors are doing around the globe to improve the editing and customization experience of WordPress. For those that weren’t able to attend live it’s now available for watching online.
Matt also opened a thread for questions on his blog, so be sure to chime in there if you have any!
WordPress 5.8 Beta 1 is now available for testing!
This software is still in development, so it is not recommended to run this version on a production site. Instead, we recommend that you run this on a test site to play with the new version.
You can test the WordPress 5.8 Beta 1 in two ways:
Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
The current target for the final release is July 20, 2021. This is just six weeks away, so your help is vital to ensure this release is tested properly and as good as it can be.
So what’s new in this 5.8? Let’s start with some highlights.
Highlights
Handpicked Patterns
Patterns can now also be recommended and selected during block setup, offering powerful new flows. Pattern transformations are also possible and allow converting a block or a collection of blocks into different patterns.
New collection of Patterns and an initial integration with the upcoming Pattern Directory on WordPress.org.
Powerful Blocks
Discover several new blocks and expressive tools, including blocks for Page Lists, Site Title, Logo, and Tagline. A powerful Query Loop block offers multiple ways for displaying lists of posts and comes with new block patterns that take advantage of its flexibility and creative possibilities.
Interacting with nested blocks has been made easier with a permanent toolbar button for selecting a parent. Block outlines are shown when hovering or focusing on the different block type buttons. Block handles are now also present for drag and drop when in “select” mode.
Introduces the List View, a panel that can be toggled and helps navigate complex blocks and patterns.
Reusable blocks have an improved creation flow and support for history revisions.
A cool new duotone block adds images effects which can be used in media blocks or supported in third-party blocks. Color presets can also be customized by the theme.
Better Tools
New template editor that allows creating new custom templates for a page using blocks.
Themes can now control and configure styling with a theme.json file, including layout configuration, block supports, color palettes, and more.
New design tools and enhancements to existing blocks, including more color, typography, and spacing options, drag and drop for Cover backgrounds, additions to block transformation options, ability to embed PDFs within the File block, and more.
Includes improvements to how the editor is rendered to more accurately resemble the frontend.
Internet Explorer 11
Support for Internet Explorer 11 is ending in WordPress this year. In this release, most of those changes are being merged so use the Beta and RC periods to test!
Looking for a change and can’t find it! There are more improvements listed after the break.
How You Can Help
Do some testing!
Testing for bugs is an important part of polishing the release during the beta stage and a great way to contribute.
If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.
Full Site Editing Coming at the end of year But first, Beta 1
Improvements in this Release
Improvements to Reusable blocks, Cover block, Table block, List View, Rich text placeholder, Template Editing Mode, Block Inserter, and Top Toolbar
Query loop block that uses a query/filter to create a flexible post list based on templates. Best used with patterns.
Parity refinement between editor and frontend, Standardization to block toolbars organization
Block widgets in the Customizer
Introducing the Global Styles and Global Settings APIs: control the editor settings and available customization tools and style blocks using a theme.json file.Template editor opens inside an iframe to more accurately resemble the front end.
Ability to transform Media and Text into Columns
Embedded PDFs within File block
Spacing options for Social Links and Buttons, Spacer block width adjustments
Twemoji has been updated to version 13.1, bringing you many new Emoji.
Editor performance improvements
Hide writing prompt from subsequent empty paragraphs
More descriptive publishing UI
Added capability to set the default format for image sub-sizes as well as WebP support
Added widgets block editor to widgets.php and customize.php
Added block patterns to default themes
Added ability to mark a plugin as unmanaged
Enable revisions for the reusable block custom post type
Enqueue script and style assets only for blocks present on the page
Abstracted block editor configuration by deprecating existing filters and introducing replacements that are context-aware
New sidebars, widget, and widget-types REST API endpoints
Added support for modifying the term relation when querying posts in the REST API
Site Health now supports custom sub-menus and pages
Themes now display the number of available theme updates in the admin menu
For the past eight years, Review Signal has published its WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks, and 2021’s results are in.
We’re happy to report that not only did WordPress.com earn Top Tier status once again, but we were proven to be the fastest WordPress host in any pricing tier.
WordPress.com … had perfect 100% uptime on both monitors, zero errors across both load tests and the fastest WP bench of any company in any price tier this year. – WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks 2021
The goal of the WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks is to run unbiased, data driven performance tests to determine how well different WordPress specialized hosting companies could handle a lot of traffic.
Although testing WordPress hosting performance is complex and imperfect, Review Signal’s methodology is extensive, transparent, and as close to reliable as one could reasonably expect. The tests are designed to measure peak performance and consistency. Review Signal describes this process this way:
Peak performance is measured using load testing services (LoadStorm and K6) which emulate large numbers of users visiting a website and watching how well the hosting responds under these stressful conditions. Consistency is measured using uptime monitoring to make sure that the servers remain available for a longer duration of time.
But WordPress.com’s hosting performance didn’t stop there. Review Signal also runs a separate WooCommerce test, and WordPress.com dominated that category as well.
WordPress.com earned Top Tier status [again this] year. Perfect uptime. The second fastest K6 average response time. A solid Load Storm test. They also absolutely showed off on the WebPageTest results taking 10/12 fastest response times. The fastest WP Bench I’ve ever seen and the second fastest PHP Bench. A definite Top Tier performance.
In both tests, WordPress.com had “the fastest WP Bench”. In the WordPress hosting test, WordPress.com rated as “the fastest WP Bench of any company in any price tier this year“, and in the WooCommerce tests, WordPress.com nailed it with “the fastest WP Bench I’ve ever seen and the second fastest PHP Bench“.
We couldn’t be more proud of our WordPress.com Systems Engineers, including our PerfOps team, and everyone who contributes to making WordPress.com the best, fastest WordPress host in the world.
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, Joseph Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40
For anyone who has ever organized something, whether it’s a social event, a school project, or an annual family gathering, you know that there are many different opinions. The more opinions you have, the more likely people don’t see eye to eye. And before you know it, you’ve got some disagreements. Some things make disagreements worse, like imbalance of information, lack of showing your work, and sometimes just “too many cooks in the kitchen,” to use a regional phrase. Frankly, sometimes it seems like the second you have more than one cook in your kitchen, you’re going to get some disagreements. But I think that’s a healthy thing. WordPress is huge. And there are huge numbers of people contributing to WordPress or any other open source project you want to name. So there’s a lot of stuff available to disagree about. If we never saw anyone pointing out an area that wasn’t quite right, there would probably be something wrong. If you, like me, think that a healthy tension of collaborative disagreement can be useful when approached thoughtfully, then this quick start guide is for you.
Step one, prepare to host a discussion. This is, by the way, just the hardest step out there. You have to take a little time to figure out what problem you’re solving with the solution you’re suggesting, any goals that it relates to, and then figure out what the bare minimum best outcome would be and what the wildest dreams magic wand waving outcome would be. And you have to be honest with yourself.
Step two, host the discussion. The venue will be different for different discussions, but you see a lot of these on team blogs or within the actual tickets where work is being done. Wherever you’re hosting it, state the problem, state your idea for the solution and ask for what you missed. If you’re hosting a discussion in person, like in a town hall format, this can be hard. And generally, hosting discussions in an in-person or voice call or zoom call kind of way is hard. So if you have an opportunity to start doing this in text first and level your way up to in person, that’s my recommendation.
Step three is to summarize the discussion and post a decision if possible. So organizing a big discussion into main points is a really good practice for the people you’re summarizing it for and yourself. It helps you to confirm your understanding, and it also gives you the chance to pair other solutions with the problem and goals you outlined in step one. If a different solution solves the same problem but with less time or effort, it’s worth taking a second look with less time or effort. There’s something that I say to WordPress contributors frequently, and that is there are a lot of yeses. There are a lot of right ways to do things and only a few clear wrong ways to do things. So be open-minded about whether or not someone else’s right way to do things could still achieve the goals you’re trying to accomplish with your solution. A note on step three where I said, “and post the decision if possible.” Sometimes you’re the person to make that decision, but sometimes you are not the person who can give something the green light, and so you’re preparing a recommendation. Whether you’re making a decision or a recommendation, sometimes you may experience a little decision-making paralysis. I know I do. So here are a few of the tools that I use.
If you’re avoiding the decision, use the 10/10/10 rule; it can help you figure out if you’re stuck on a short-term problem. If there are too many good choices, use the Eisenhower Matrix that can help you to prioritize objectively. If there are too many bad choices, use the Maximin strategy. It can help you to identify how to minimize any potential negative impacts.
Okay, so you’ve considered your position. You’ve discussed everything. You summarized the big points. Maybe you also worked your way through to a recommendation or a decision. What about everyone who disagreed with the decision? Or have you made a recommendation, and it wasn’t accepted? How do you deal with that? That’s where “disagree and commit” shows up. This phrase was made popular by the folks over at Amazon, I think. But it first showed up, I believe at Sun Microsystems as this phrase, “agreeing, commit, disagree and commit or get out of the way.”
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:34
Disagree and commit as a concept works pretty well when everyone agrees on the vision and the goals, but not necessarily how to get to those goals. We’ve had moments in recent history where folks we’re not able to agree, we’re not able to commit, and so then left the project. I hate when that happens. I want people to thrive in this community for the entire length of their careers. But I also understand that situation shows up in the top five learnings of open source when you no longer have interest in the project and handed it off to a competent successor. So there it is – disagreements in open source in WordPress.
As with so many of the things I discuss on this podcast, this is incredibly complex and nuanced in practice. Taking an argument, distilling facts from feelings, and adjusting frames of reference until the solution is well informed and risk-balanced. That is a skill set unto itself. But one that increases the health of any organization. I’ll share that list of references and general materials in the show notes, including a link explaining each of those decision-making tools that I shared. I’m also going to include the contributor training module on decision-making in the WordPress project. It’s got excellent information. It’s part of a series of modules that I asked team reps to take and sponsored contributors. I don’t require it from anyone, but I do hope that it is useful for you. Also, speaking of useful for you, if you are just here for leadership insights, I included some hot takes after the outro music for you. It’s like an Easter egg, but I just told you about it.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:33
And that brings us to our small list of big things! First off, WordCamp Europe is happening this we; I hope that everybody has an opportunity to attend. If you still haven’t gotten your tickets, they are free, and I think there are still a few left. I will include a link in the show notes as well. There’s going to be a little demo with Matt Mullenweg and Matias Ventura on the WordPress 5.8 release that’s coming up. And then kind of a retrospective discussion between Matt and Brian Krogsgard. I encourage you to join; I think it’s going to be very interesting.
There’s also WordCamp, Japan coming up June 20 through 26th. I mentioned it last time – it has a big section of contributing and contribution time. So if you’re looking to get started, some projects are laid out, and I encourage you to take a look at that as well.
The new thing on this list, and I don’t know how new It is, in general, I hope it’s not too new to you, is that WordPress 5.8 release is reaching its beta one milestone on June 8th, so right in the middle of WordCamp Europe. I encourage every single theme developer, plugin developer that we have, agency owners that we have to really take a look at this release and dig into testing it. It’s a gigantic release. And I have so many questions about what will work and will not work once we get it into a broader testing area. We’ve been doing a lot of testing in the outreach program. But it’s always helpful to get people who are using WordPress daily in their jobs to really give a good solid test to the beta product to the beta package. And put it all through its paces for us.
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, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 10:09
Hey there, you must be here because I told you about this totally not hidden easter egg about my hot takes on organizational health; I have three for you. And if you’ve ever worked with me, none of this will surprise you. But if you haven’t worked with me, hopefully, it kind of gives you some idea about how I approach all of this a bit differently. So, number one, critical feedback is the sign of a healthy organization. And I will never be dissuaded from that opinion. A complete lack of dissent doesn’t look like “alignment.” To me, that looks like fear. And it goes against the open source idea that many eyes make all bugs shallow.
Tip number two, a bit of tension is good, a bit of disagreement is good. The same thing that I say about women in tech, we’re not all the same. And if we were, then we wouldn’t need to collaborate anyway. But diversity, whether that’s the diversity of thought or of a person or of experience, just doesn’t happen without some misunderstandings. It’s how we choose to grow through those misunderstandings that make all the difference for the type of organization we are.
And hot take number three, changing your mind isn’t flip-flopping or hypocritical. I think that’s a sign of growth and willingness to hear others. I like to think of my embarrassment at past bad decisions – as the sore muscles of a learning brain. And I, again, probably won’t be dissuaded from that opinion. Although, you know, if I’m sticking true to changing your mind some flip-flopping or hypocritical, maybe I will, but you can always try to, to give me the counter-argument for that, and we’ll see how it goes. Thank you for joining me for my little public easter egg.
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.
This month to coincide with WordCamp Europe, we feature Tijana Andrejic from Belgrade, Serbia, about her journey from fitness trainer to the WordPress world, with the freelance and corporate opportunities it introduced.
As a professional manager with a college degree in Organizational Science and a certified fitness instructor, Tijana is nothing if not driven and goal-oriented.
Following her time as a fitness trainer, Tijana moved to work in IT around 2016. She first explored content creation and design before focusing on SEO and becoming an independent specialist.
Tijana was hired as a Customer Happiness Engineer for a hosting company, where she discovered the benefits of having a team. She realized that having close working relationships with colleagues is helpful for business success and accelerates personal growth.
Tijana hopes that by sharing her story, she can help others who are either starting their career or are moving roles. She describes the opportunities she discovered in the WordPress community as ‘a huge epiphany’, especially in the world of freelancing.
She highlights 5 things that helped her to start a new freelancing career. Let’s dive into them.
What motivates me?
“Why am I doing this?” is the first question that Tijana asks herself before starting anything new. This self-review and honesty, she feels, allows her to determine her priorities. She also benchmarks options around her motivations of wanting a flexible schedule and to grow professionally.
She lists the reasons to make a particular choice, like being a freelancer, to help her choose the right job, pathway, or identify alternatives.
She recommends that others can take a similar approach. If freelancing is still the best solution after examining all their goals and motivations, Tijana believes a good next step would be to learn WordPress-related skills.
Develop WordPress related skills
The next question you may ask: “Why WordPress?”
WordPress is used by more than 40% of websites in some form and offers various roles, many of which are not developer-specific. Tijana highlights a few:
web developer (coding websites, themes, and plugins)
web implementor (creating websites from existing themes without coding)
web designer (designing website mock-ups, editing images, or creating online infographics)
client support professional (helping people with their websites)
website maintenance (WordPress, themes, and plugins are maintained and backed up regularly)
WordPress trainer (helping clients with how to use the platform or teaching other web professionals)
content writer
accessibility specialist (making sure standards are met and suggesting solutions for accessibility barriers)
SEO consultant (improving search outcomes and understanding)
statistics consultant, especially for web shops
WordPress assistant (adding new content and editing existing posts)
website migration specialist (moving websites from one server to another)
web security specialist
Tijana emphasized: “Another reason why WordPress is great for freelancers is the strong community that exists around this content management system (CMS).” WordCamps and Meetups are a way to get useful information and meet people from a large and very diverse community and get answers to many questions straight away.
In the past year, these events have been primarily online. However, the contributors who run them continue to make an effort to provide an experience as close to in-person events as possible. The biggest advantage to online events is that we can attend events from across the world, even if sometimes during these difficult times, it is difficult to get enough time to deeply into this new experience. Since Tijana’s first Meetup, she has attended many WordPress community events and volunteered as a speaker.
Plan in advance
Becoming a freelancer takes time. For Tijana, success came with proper planning and following her plan to ‘acquire or improve relevant skills that will make you stand out in the freelance market.’ She strongly believes that learning and growing as a professional opens more business opportunities.
If you are considering a freelance career, she advises improving relevant skills or developing new skills related to your hobbies as ‘there is nothing better than doing what you love.’ In cases where no previous experience and knowledge can be used, she suggests choosing ‘a job that has a shorter learning curve and builds your knowledge around that.’
Tijana started as a content creator and learned to become an SEO expert. However, she highlights many alternative paths, including starting as a web implementer and moving to train as a developer.
She suggests to others: “It would be a good idea to analyze the market before you jump into the learning process.” She also recommends people check the latest trends and consider the future of the skills they are developing.
Visit the new Learn WordPress.org to see what topics are of interest to you. In this newly established resource, the WordPress community aggregates workshops to support those who want to start and improve their skills, provides lesson plans for professional WordPress trainers and helps you create personal learning to develop key skills. There is also material on helping you be part of and organize events for your local community.
Tijana highlights that there are many places for freelancers to find clients. For example, the WordPress Community has a place where companies and individual site owners publish their job advertisements – Jobs.WordPress.net.
Hurray, it’s time to get a first freelancing job
As a pragmatic person, Tijana recommends: “Save money before quitting your job to become a full-time freelancer. Alternatively, try freelancing for a few hours per week to see if you like it. Although some people do benefit when taking a risk, think twice before you take any irreversible actions.”
She shared some possible next steps:
use a freelancing platform
triple-check your resume
professionally present yourself
fill up your portfolio with examples
use video material
“By using video material, your clients will not see you like a list of skills and previous experiences, but as a real person that has these skills and experiences and that provides a certain service for them.”
She adds: “Have a detailed strategy when choosing your first employer. Choose your first employer wisely, very wisely. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is”.
When Tijana took her first freelancing job, she considered the following:
how was the employer rated by other freelancers who worked for him previously
how does the employer rate other freelancers
how much money had they already spent on the platform
the number of open positions for a specific job and the number of freelancers that have already applied
“The first job is not all about the money. Don’t get greedy on your first job. If you get good recommendations, your second job can pay two to three times more. And your third job can go up to five times more. That was my experience.”
Take responsibility as a freelancer
Tijana reminds us: “Freedom often comes with responsibility; individual responsibility is key when it comes to freelancing.”
She advises others not to take a job if you can not make a deadline and have someone reliable who can help you.
Missing deadlines will cost your client money and affect the review the client will be willing to leave about your job, and this can have a big impact on your future opportunities or freelance jobs.
She adds: “This can start a downward spiral for your career. However, we are all humans, and unpredictable things can happen. If for some reason you are not able to complete your work in a timely manner, let your client know immediately so they can have enough time to hire someone else”.
Tijana emphasizes the importance of making expectations clear before accepting a job, both what the client is expecting and what you can expect from the client.
Lastly, she points out that if you are working from home, your friends and family should treat you the way they would if you were in an office. She advises: “Let them know about your working schedule.”
She hopes that these basic guidelines will be useful in launching freelance careers, as they did her, even though there is no universal recipe for all.
Tijana highlights: “It’s just important to stay focused on your goals and to be open to new opportunities.” Freelancing wasn’t the only way she could have fulfilled her goals, but it was an important part of her path, and it helped her be confident in her abilities to make the next big step in her life.
As a freelancer, she was missing close relationships with colleagues and teamwork, which she has now found in her current firm. Her colleagues describe her as a: “walking-talking bundle of superpowers: sports medicine and fitness professional, SEO expert, blogger, designer and a kitty foster mum”.
If you are considering starting your career as a freelancer, take the courses offered at learn.wordpress.org, reach out to companies that you would be interested in working with, and remember that there are a whole host of opportunities in the WordPress project.
Thanks to Olga Gleckler (@oglekler), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), and Meher Bala (@meher) for working on this story. Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and also to Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) who created HeroPress. Thank you to Tijana Andrejic (@andtijana) for sharing her #ContributorStory
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
After many years of a tidy, white-space filled design on WordPress.org/news it’s time to bring new life to the way we present our content. So much has changed since this site was first created: the people who read it, the type and variety of what is published, even the way WordPress works has changed.
Which means it makes sense to change our theme.
Earlier this year, Matt requested a new design from Beatriz Fialho (who also created the State of the Word slides for 2020). The design keeps a clean, white-space friendly format while incorporating a more jazzy, playful feeling with a refreshed color palette.
More detail on this modern exploration have been posted on make.wordpress.org/design. I encourage you to stop by and read more about the thoughts behind the coming updates; and keep an eye out for the new look here and across WordPress.org!
It’s really fun to contribute to something larger than yourself.
Matt Mullenweg’s words in “The Commons of Images” episode of the WP Briefing podcast exemplify the core philosophy of the WordPress project, especially as we inch closer to the next major release (version 5.8). This post covers exciting updates from the month of May.
WordPress turns 18
WordPress celebrated the 18th anniversary of its launch on May 27, 2021. To celebrate 40+ releases and WordPress’ support of 40% of the web, the team released 40 milestones to celebrate the anniversary of the software. Here’s to the next 18 and beyond!
CC Search joins WordPress and is renamed to Openverse
WordPress version 5.7.2, a short-cycle security release, came out on May 13. Get the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading it from WordPress.org.
