Let’s meet at WCUS 2021! WordPress.com will be there and we hope to see you there as well!
Although we’d love to be at an in-real-life WordCamp right now, we’re still excited about attending the online version of WordCamp US this year.
What is WordCamp US 2021?
WordCamps are informal events that are organized and hosted by the WordPress community. WordCamp US 2021 is a one-day online event for the US WordPress community to attend sessions, network with one another, participate in WordPress-related workshops, and more. Of course, it’s not only for US residents – everyone is invited to attend!
Reminder: It’s free to attend, but you need a ticket so get yours now.
WordCamps are welcoming places for all WordPress businesses, users, bloggers, and enthusiasts to gather. No matter where you host your WordPress site, no matter how big or small your site might be, WCUS 2021 is the place to be.
How is WordPress.com Involved?
As a hosted version of the open source software, WordPress.com is also a part of the WordPress community, so we wanted to participate in this event in a big way. We are proud to be one of several sponsors of WordCamp US 2021 (WCUS 2021). Be sure to visit our sponsor page here, which includes WordPress.com-related facts you may not be aware of. For example, did you know that WordPress.com is a hosted version of the open-source software WordPress, delivered on a fast, secure managed WordPress hosting platform?
What Can You Expect at WCUS 2021?
There are sessions throughout the day, all carefully selected to appeal to the varied interests of WordCamp attendees. Take a look at the schedule and plan ahead so you don’t miss the sessions that interest you the most.
Maybe you’re interested in eCommerce or accessibility. Perhaps you are curious about the future direction of WordPress. Or are you hoping to learn more about community-building? You can delve into these topics and more at this event.
There will also be plenty of time to network with other attendees, and even hang out and enjoy some music during the day.
So will we see you there tomorrow? If you see us around, be sure to say hello.
Let’s meet at WCUS 2021! WordPress.com will be there and we hope to see you there as well!
Although we’d love to be at an in-real-life WordCamp right now, we’re still excited about attending the online version of WordCamp US this year.
What is WordCamp US 2021?
WordCamps are informal events that are organized and hosted by the WordPress community. WordCamp US 2021 is a one-day online event for the US WordPress community to attend sessions, network with one another, participate in WordPress-related workshops, and more. Of course, it’s not only for US residents – everyone is invited to attend!
Reminder: It’s free to attend, but you need a ticket so get yours now.
WordCamps are welcoming places for all WordPress businesses, users, bloggers, and enthusiasts to gather. No matter where you host your WordPress site, no matter how big or small your site might be, WCUS 2021 is the place to be.
How is WordPress.com Involved?
WordPress.com is a part of the WordPress community as well, so we wanted to participate in this event in a big way. We are proud to be one of several sponsors of WordCamp US 2021 (WCUS 2021). Be sure to visit our sponsor page here, which includes WordPress.com-related facts you may not be aware of. For example, did you know that WordPress.com is a hosted version of the open-source software WordPress, delivered on a fast, secure managed WordPress hosting platform?
What Can You Expect at WCUS 2021?
There are sessions throughout the day, all carefully selected to appeal to the varied interests of WordCamp attendees. Take a look at the schedule and plan ahead so you don’t miss the sessions that interest you the most.
Maybe you’re interested in eCommerce or accessibility. Perhaps you are curious about the future direction of WordPress. Or are you hoping to learn more about community-building? You can delve into these topics and more at this event.
There will also be plenty of time to network with other attendees, and even hang out and enjoy some music during the day.
So will we see you there tomorrow? If you see us around, be sure to say hello.
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.
To coincide with International Translation Day and the final day of the 2021 WordPress Translation celebration, we feature the story of a WordPresser who has made a major impact in the polyglots team.
Beyond software, meeting the WordPress community
For Yordan Soares from South America, finding WordPress also meant discovering friends, community, and opportunities. He had not expected to find a whole global movement behind the web development software.
Yordan, who is from Venezuela, South America, said: “The first time I used WordPress, I had no idea what was going on behind the software or beyond it. I knew there was someone making it all work, but I couldn’t even remotely imagine all the people who were making WordPress not just a tool for developing websites, but a whole movement that comes together to share, build, and help make the world better.”
Turning your hobby into your job
Initially, Yordan earned his income from computer technical support and installing networks for small and medium-sized businesses. Back in 2005, web development and code-writing was just a hobby. When he discovered the concept of CSS and how it could make everything dynamic. This opened up a whole new career pathway for him.
In 2010, an introduction to WordPress through a friend opened up a future he had not imagined. He stopped using any other content management system (CMS) and wanted to explore how much he could do with the platform.
Three years later in 2013, he was able to take his WordPress journey further by starting a small advertising agency with some of his friends. During this time, they crafted commercials for local radio and TV stations. Through WordPress, they found it easy to build more than 15 websites for businesses in a market that previously had not valued the importance of having an online presence.
He said: “We were working for almost four years until at the end of 2017 the economic crisis in Venezuela became too acute, and we decided to close the agency when we stopped making profits. Taking stock of that period, I think we changed the way merchants saw the Internet business in the city.”
Working full time as a freelancer
One year on in 2018, Yordan began to freelance full-time as a web developer. His first clients were primarily agencies and friends who had emigrated to other countries. Later, he expanded into freelance marketplaces.
At that time, getting started as a freelancer was quite a challenging task in Venezuela. The first hindrance was getting a fair level of recompense. Additionally, the deteriorating conditions in the country with constant blackouts and internet connection failures complicated matters.
At the time, Yordan was living in Guarenas, where the situation was relatively better. He managed to get a reasonably uninterrupted electricity supply with adequate internet speed, which was just good enough to complete his projects.
Meeting the WordPress community
“Surely if I hadn’t met the community, I would have continued to work on my own, like a lone wolf, doing the ordinary work of solving problems for occasional customers and paying my bills,” he said.
Living in Guarenas, Yordan began to experience stability in his career and made new friends and contacts. He began looking for co-working spaces or technology communities nearby, and that’s when he met the WordPress community in Caracas.
He quickly signed up for the first face-to-face event. As soon as the event concluded, he went to talk to the co-organizer and offered his help. He was inspired to help with designing promotional pieces, managing social networks, and organizing events.
Through such events, he met and connected with several people living in nearby cities.
A few months later, with other WordPress users in the area, the idea emerged to start a new Guarenas-Guatire meetup group. The idea became a reality by December 2019, when they applied to the WordPress community team.
Once the final approvals came in, the team started scheduling the activities. The WordPress Guarenas-Guatire Meetup was officially recognized!
During the first quarter of 2020, just before the pandemic, Yordan and colleagues organized five face-to-face events. With the worldwide lockdown, in-person community engagements came to a halt. However, the Guarenas-Guatire community was eager to continue meeting.
To keep the community active and motivated, and with the support of sponsors, they started organizing online events under a format called “WordPress a la medianoche” (WordPress at midnight).
The format of these events was inspired by Alexis Arnal, who suggested meeting at midnight to make the most of the internet speed that would usually improve somewhat after that time!
At the time of writing, Yordan and the team have organized 16 WordPress a la medianoche events with an attendance of up to 50 people per online gathering. An impressive audience which enabled a comparatively small meetup to keep communications flowing at a difficult and unprecedented time.
One positive of such events, is an opportunity to invite people from other countries and run sessions in partnership with others. An example was a special translation event with Javier Esteban, a member of the translation team from Spain. The meetup also invited contributors from Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia who were happy to participate.
Strengthened by the community
Yordan (pictured bottom left) speaking at the WordPress Translation Day 2020 events
Yordan believes that he would have continued to work on his own had he not met the WordPress community.
He said: “Fortunately, this was not the case and I have been able to live a lot of transforming experiences that have shown me the meaning of the words ‘community’ and ‘volunteerism’.”
Yordan felt empowered by the community and it led him to volunteer for many other roles and activities, including Locale Manager for Spanish Venezuela, a moderator for WordPress.tv, and as a support contributor in the forums helping people with technical issues. He has also developed free plugins for the official WordPress directory and spoken at community events including WordCamp Spain 2020.
All this has a boomerang effect, Yordan explains. These experiences helped him grow personally and professionally, as it’s always rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem.
He also likes being able to directly help people when they need it and feels it is a two-way learning process.
“At first, when I told my family and friends about the community and the work I was doing, they would ask me ‘what do you get in return?’ Perhaps they expected me to tell them a specific amount of money, but the answer is more complex,” he said.
“It’s rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem, the tool you use to work and put food on the table.”
During his journey, Yordan has met many wonderful people with common interests and values, and the best part is that many of these people are now his friends, business partners, or customers.
At the same time, he has learned new skills and gained experience, which have given him a significant confidence boost in facing difficult situations that may come in life.
This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. The initiative highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard. Meet more WordPressers in our People of WordPress series.
An exciting update to the Gallery Block gives you more ways to show off images in your posts and pages. While this change won’t be available for most folks until WordPress 5.9’s launch in December, we wanted to share some of what’s to come to get you excited about the future.
Style individual images
You can now use the same tools that are available for individual image blocks on each image in the Gallery Block! This added flexibility means you can do more customization – from adding links to each individual image, inline cropping to edit on the fly, apply unique styles for more visually compelling images, and apply an array of duotone filters.
Add custom styles
For more advanced folks who like to go a bit deeper in their customizations, you now have the option to add custom CSS styles per image. This is thanks to the ability to assign CSS classes to each image.
More accessible and intuitive
With this change comes the benefit of improved keyboard navigation and the ability to add alt text right within the block sidebar. You can also drag and drop to rearrange images.
Next steps
This will be available in December with the release of WordPress 5.9. You can check it out now if you’re using the Gutenberg plugin on any of your sites. Read more about becoming an early adopter if you’d like to get ahead.
After Kyla Marie Charles grew a successful blog on Blogger for 10 years and made her mark as an influencer, she realized her website was no longer able to support her needs. She began the search for her next platform and discovered WordPress.com.
“I started to become limited by the features that Blogger offered since starting my own podcast and my growing community with #MomChatMonday,” she writes. When she started out, she needed a platform that was quick and simple to navigate: her own corner of the web for her sporadic recipes. As her site and audience grew, she needed a better solution for her blossoming online community, as well as ecommerce options to help her expand even more. “After all that time and hard work, I didn’t want to keep stifling the ideas that I finally felt capable of taking on professionally.”
Leaving her old platform, Kyla transitioned to WordPress.com — on the WordPress.com Business plan — and discovered she now has infinite possibilities. She has a home for an official #MomChatMonday community, her podcast, and a variety of blog content from recipes, DIY projects, and posts on motherhood. As she ponders her future, she isn’t certain what her next steps are, but she’s excited to do it on WordPress.com. “My new blog,” she writes, “is up for the challenge.”
Building and launching your website can be an incredibly exciting time, whether you’re a blogger sharing your ideas and establishing your brand or a business owner selling your products and services worldwide. But what happens when you’ve outgrown your current platform? Here’s how you can make the switch to WordPress.com, and a few features to consider as you build your new online home.
Import your content: People come to WordPress.com from different places on the web, and we have various importers that do much of the heavy lifting for you. Coming from Blogger like Kyla? Here’s the Blogger importer guide.
Set up essential pages: Have some fun drafting a new About page like Kyla. Find inspiration from pre-designed page layouts built with blocks to build other evergreen pages like a Services or FAQs page, or a simple Contact page to connect with your audience or start generating leads immediately.
Take advantage of our ecommerce features: Collecting monthly payments? Offering writing workshops? Thinking of setting up a premium service? Kyla, for example, has pondered the idea of launching a book club, offering exclusive access to members. Once your site is migrated and you’re ready to earn money, you can use the Payments block on a site with a paid WordPress.com plan.
In addition to this episode’s small list of big things, Josepha Haden Chomphosy reviews the upcoming 5.9 WordPress release and its Full Site Editing features.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.
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, Joseph Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40
Today I’m going to take you through a quick look at the final WordPress release of 2021. It will be WordPress 5.9. And there will be a ton of things in it, including a fresh new default theme. And there are a few things that you need to know about it right now. The target release date is December 14, 2021, which means some of our milestones happen around Thanksgiving in the US. And a few significant commercial dates globally, days, like Giving Tuesday and Black Friday, etc. I’ll include a link to the post with all the target dates in the show notes so that you can plan with those in mind. And also in the show notes. I’ll include a link to Matías Ventura’s post that includes the target features for the release. When you look at that post, you’ll notice that you can sort of group things into two big buckets. The two buckets that I grouped them into are themes plus tools, and also better tools.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:31
So bucket number one themes and all their tools. Three things were important for me as I was reading through them. Number one is that there is a default theme. As of the time of this recording, I’ve seen the early concepts for the theme, and I love them. Hopefully, by the time this podcast is published, the post that showcases the look and feel will also be up on make.wordpress.org/design. If it is, I’ll include a link in the show notes to make it easy for everyone to reference.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:04
The second thing is block themes in general. So WordPress 5.8 brought to core WordPress a lot of the infrastructure needed to create block themes. And in this release in WordPress 5.9, much of that infrastructure will be made available for folks who don’t always feel comfortable working in the code. That’s mostly UX and UI changes. So user experience and user interface changes are based on user feedback that we’ve gathered over the last six to eight months. But it also will include the long-awaited navigation block.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:37
The third thing that shows up for me in this first bucket, in the themes and all their tools bucket, is the UX and interface for theme.json. The user interface that we’re making available for theme.json is a major step forward in this project has been referred to as global styles for a few years. And it kind of is what it sounds like on the box, a way for users to tap into that powerful management tool that we have built through theme.JSON.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:09
Bucket number two, which I am calling publicly “tools for days.” But also, I refer to it as design tools, block tools, and pattern tools. I had this whole vision of a Wizard of Oz, “lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!” moment, but I couldn’t make it work. So “design tools and block tools and pattern tools Hoorah!” That’s as close as we’re getting. So that’s my first big number two bucket for you.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:37
For most of these tools, the best way to describe it is quality of life improvements, lots of streamlining of what’s there, lots of building what’s not. But there’s one that’s substantial and worth digging into a bit more. And that’s the gallery block refactor. The dev note for this already exists. Like before we had the planning round-up post, the dev note was created. And so I will put a link to that in the show notes. But the headline is that this refactor will make the creation and maintenance of image blocks and the gallery block work the same way. If you are a theme or plugin developer, head on over to the dev notes that I have linked below and take some time to get familiar with it.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:20
And then the final thing, which has a bunch of small things in it, but will make a huge impact for all of our users overall, is that we’re working on more intuitive and responsive tools on blocks. That has come up frequently in our user testing again over the last six to eight months. And we are going to chip away at that long list of needs that we have in those particular toolsets. And that’s it. So that’s a really big broad look at what we’re trying to get into the final release of the year.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:58
I know that when I say like this is our hoped for stuff. This is our best guess at the moment. Sometimes it can feel like we should know that already — I should know already what’s going into the release. And on the one hand, yes, I believe in this list of things that we’re going to put into the release, I think they’re going to be good. But I always refer to it as like the hoped-for things, the things that are on the roadmap, our best targets, because I know that I don’t ever want to ship something that is going to be a worse experience for users. And so I always like to save the space to be able to remove a feature or remove an enhancement, a little bit closer to the time of the release, just to make sure that what we are offering is the best that we can offer. However, as it says right there in the 19 learnings of open source, “if there’s a bug, there’s a job,” right? There’s a lot of tolerance in open source software for shipping, slightly imperfect work. And that’s good. When we ship software that’s a little bit imperfect, it makes it clear how everyone can participate, how everyone could participate, if they could find this WordPress community that supports the CMS.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:20
If you’ve never participated in a release and are interested in learning how it goes, you can always follow along on make.wordpress.org/core. And of course, we do a lot of our meetings in the making WordPress, community Slack, which you can find at chat.wordpress.org if you are not already in that particular instance.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:49
That brings us now to our small list of big things. I have three things on my list for you. The first one is WP Translation day slash month. For folks who’ve been following along for a bit, you probably noticed that Translation Day has been going on all month long all of September so that we can have small individual local events and bring people into the process of translating WordPress and making WordPress more usable for more people, especially when they don’t necessarily speak English as their first language. It’s a wonderful event. There’s been Translation Day at the end of September for years. And this Translation Month is working its way up to that Translation Day; I will leave a link to the event page in the notes below. And I really encourage you to drop by.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:38
The second thing is that WordCamp US is coming up on October 1. It is going to be a virtual event, as so many of our events are right now. Tickets are open. The schedule just got published last week. And so we have a good concept of who is talking about what while we’re there. I suggest you wander over to the schedule. Take a look at anything that might be inspirational to you or anyone who looks like they’re answering questions that you’ve had as you have been trying to build your WordPress business.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:08
And then the third thing on my smallest of big things. Some of you may already be aware that Andrea Middleton has left the WordPress project. She has been an absolute fixture in the WordPress open source project for the last ten years. And while we will all miss her terribly, her work has been so influential and so foundational that we actually won’t really feel much like she’s gone. We will see the evidence of her work in everything she does and everything she has done while we build a better and more inclusive WordPress after her.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:47
As a final love letter to the community, she published a series of things that she learned about contributing to open source and especially how to contribute to WordPress as an open source project. I’m going to link those in the show notes as well. For anyone who has worked with Andrea for a long time, when you read it, it will just remind you of her voice and will be like a nice warm, comforting hug as she heads on to her next endeavors. And for folks who have never worked with her before. It’s still really excellent information that I think translates into all areas of our work, especially right now as people are moving to distributed work and remote work a bit more. Now I encourage everyone to at least give one or two of them a read.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 09:38
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.
WordPress contributors around the world are celebrating the sixth Global WordPress Translation Day throughout the entire month of September! That’s 30 days dedicated to help and encourage people to translate the software and its related resources. One of the highlights is a series of exciting core global events, starting on September 17 2021 and finishing on the United Nations’ International Translation Day itself on September 30, 2021.
Everyone is welcome to watch these events live on YouTube and to share their translation stories which will be featured during the celebrations and beyond. The global events will be in English and include presentations on how and why to you should join the thousands of translators in the project, tips and tools, interviews, and much more.
There are now 205 locales translating in what is a remarkable open source effort, bringing the opportunities of the software and its community to people in their own native languages.
Inaugural session: Introduction and latest news on WordPress Translation
Friday, September 17, 2021 at 10:00 UTC We will start the global events with a panel featuring the latest update on what is happening in the world of WordPress polyglots. Panellists will include translators Petya Raykovska and Erica Varlese. There will be a video demonstration on how to translate WordPress, a short presentation on translation statistics, a run down of upcoming events, and more.
Watch the event live on YouTube (link below) – sign-up for notifications in the video stream right now so you don’t miss it when it goes live!
Right after this session at 11:00 UTC, there will be a ‘drop-in’ translation sprint on Zoom video-conferencing, open to all. Anyone can join and hang out virtually with your Polyglots friends from all around the world and translate WordPress in your own language! RSVP for the session now!
Closing Party – Why do you translate? Our finale event for 2021 with emcee Abha Thakor. It will feature highlights from some of the local and global WordPress Translation Day events, highlight important statistics from the month, and share translator’s personal stories.
It will be followed by an after party celebration for anyone who has taken place in the event or is a translator for the project. Book now for the session on Zoom.
Ideas on how to get involved this September
There’s lots of ways to take part – discover this list of ideas.
This security and maintenance release features 60 bugfixes in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.4 have also been updated.
WordPress 5.8.1 is a short-cycle security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.
You can download WordPress 5.8.1 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.
If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.
Security Updates
3 security issues affect WordPress versions between 5.4 and 5.8. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.8, all WordPress versions since 5.4 have also been updated to fix the following security issues:
Props @mdawaffe, member of the WordPress Security Team for their work fixing a data exposure vulnerability within the REST API.
Props to Michał Bentkowski of Securitum for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor.
The Lodash library has been updated to version 4.17.21 in each branch to incorporate upstream security fixes.
In addition to these issues, the security team would like to thank the following people for reporting vulnerabilities during the WordPress 5.8 beta testing period, allowing them to be fixed prior to release:
Props Evan Ricafort for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor discovered during the 5.8 release’s beta period.
Props Steve Henty for reporting a privilege escalation issue in the block editor.
Thank you to all of the reporters for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the WordPress security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked.
I really believe in WordPress’ mission to democratize publishing. And I, for one, will never stop learning about what gives people more access to the software, and what makes the software more usable, and especially how we can combine usability with accessibility in a way that puts form and function on a level playing field.
That was Josepha Haden on the “The Art and Science of Accessibility” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, talking about accessibility and exploring how it applies to the WordPress open source software. You will find that many of our updates from August 2021 tie in closely with the core principles of access, accessibility, and usability. Read on to find out more!
Join the 2021 WordPress Translation Day Celebrations in September
Join WordPress contributors around the world on WordPress Translation Day celebrations for the entire month of September! The sixth edition of #WPTranslationDay – which is a cross-team effort led by the Polyglots and Marketing Teams, has a host of fun programs aimed at helping WordPress speak all languages of the world. Want to join the fun? Here’s how.
Share what you are translating using the #WPTranslationDay hashtag on social media, to build excitement around the event! Don’t forget to amplify posts about the event on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn!
The Core Team commenced work on the next major release – WordPress 5.9. The team aims to ship some cool features such as intrinsic web design to blocks, improved block patterns, navigation menus, better design tools, edit flows for block themes, and a new interface for theme.json. Check out the WordPress 5.9 development cycle to know more. This release is set to go out in December 2021. The team is also working on shipping a minor release WordPress 5.8.1 –– its release candidate is already out and the final release will launch on September 8.
We launched Gutenberg version 11.2 and version 11.3 this month. Version 11.2 adds customizing/color options to the search block, a flex layout for the group block, and a new button for creating posts as part of the publishing flow. Version 11.3 offers a new dimensions panel (replacing the spacing panel) with more styling options, dimensions control for the feature image block, and significant performance improvements for block inserters.
Help the Marketing Team’s outreach research by filling out this 2 question survey on how you search for WordPress release information. If you have any favorite features from the latest release (WordPress 5.8) let the team know by completing this short form.
Version 18.1 of WordPress for iOS and Android are now available for testing!
The Core Team organized a hallway hangout to compare the ‘experimental’ Gutenberg navigation feature with the built-in core feature. The team decided to wait until feature parity with core nav menus, to move the feature from experiments to the main plugin.
The Diverse Speakers Training group (#WPDiversity) of the Community Team held their first “Allyship for WordPress Event Organizers” workshop on August 19, 2021. The event had 13 attendees from 6 countries who reported a 52% increase in preparedness to help create inclusive WordPress events. Stay tuned for their next workshop in November!
