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This month we feature Huanyi (Eric) Chuang, a front end developer from Taiwan, who helps connect local groups to WordPress and the worldwide open source community. He is part of the team helping to make the first WordCamp Asia a success in 2023.

The People of WordPress series shares some of the inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global network of contributors.

Discovering WordPress and the benefit of child themes

Huanyi’s first footsteps in WordPress began in 2017 when he worked for a firm that built blogs and developed ad content for clients.

After building a few sites using the platform, he discovered child themes and through them opened up a world of possibilities for his clients. To this day, he uses child themes to deliver truly custom designs and functionality for clients.

Later in his career, Huanyi moved into digital marketing, integrating sites with massive ad platforms like Google and Facebook. This led him to learn to work with tracking code and JavaScript. He also began his learning journey in HTML, CSS, and PHP, to be able to improve his development skills and customize child themes.

Meetups bring together software users to learn together

When Huanyi had a problem with a client’s site, he looked to WordPress meetups near where he lived in Taipei to help find the solutions.

“When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard.”

Huanyi Chuang

At the meetup, he met more experienced WordPress users and developers there, who answered his questions and helped him learn.

“When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard. That was my original connection with the local community,” Huanyi said.

The WordPress community gave Huanyi a chance to connect with people, feed his curiosity about the software, and join a circle of people he could share this interest.

At first, he thought meetups were an opportunity to source new clients, and he took his business cards to every event. However, he soon found that these events offered him the opportunity to make friends and share knowledge.

From then on, Huanyi started focusing more on what he could give to these events and networks, making new friends, and listening to people. This led him to share as a meetup speaker his own commercial website management experience.

The road to WordCamp

It was going to his first meetup and then getting involved with WordCamps that changed Huanyi’s whole relationship with WordPress.

In 2018, he took the step to help as an organizer, having joined the Taoyuan Meetup in Taiwan. He played several parts across the organizing team, and the welcoming feeling he got in every situation encouraged him to get more involved.

He recalls meeting new friends from different fields and other countries, which gave him a great sense of achievement and strengthened his passion for participating in the community.

When the team started this meetup, numbers were much lower than in the group in the city of Taipei, but they were not disheartened and gradually grew the local WordPress community.

They created a pattern of ‘multiple organizers,’ which spread the workload and grew friendships. 

“Being connected to and from meetups is the most valuable part of the community. Having these friends makes me gather more information. We share information and benefit from others’ information, and thus we gain more trust in each other. With such credibility, we share more deeply and build deeper relations.”

Huanyi Chuang

Before the pandemic, the meetup met every month and grew to become the second largest meetup in Taiwan. Huanyi also contributed to the WordPress community as an organizer of WordCamp Taipei 2018 in the speaker team and lead organizer of WordCamp Taiwan 2021.

So why should you join the community?

According to Huanyi, you will always have something to take home with you. It might be new information or experiences. It might be plugins or theme ideas. But most of all, it is the chance to meet fascinating people and make new friends.

Huanyi’s message to other contributors:
“Keep participating, and you will find more you can achieve than you expect.”

He added that long-term participation will ‘let you feel the humanity behind the project’.

Localize: the road ahead for WordPress

Huanyi believes WordPress has the power to break down the barriers between designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and publishers. In Taiwan, he said WordPress is ‘a common protocol’ that lets people from all of these disciplines work and communicate together more easily than they ever have before.

That is why he works on and encourages others to localize plugins today. He believes localization of the software is the foundation for the extension of the WordPress community as it enables people to ‘Flex their Freedom’ in a language they speak!

He has helped to organize online events around previous WordPress Translation Day events.

Huanyi said: “I think it’s important to localize WordPress because its very concept of ‘open source’ means that people can access it freely. In another way, free from the monopoly of knowledge and speech. To achieve it, it’s important that people can access it with their own language.

“Localization is the foundation of the extension of WordPress community because it helps people using different languages to access the project and lowers the hurdle to understand how things work.”

Share the stories

Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

Contributors

Thank you to @no249a002 for sharing his adventures in WordPress.

Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Mary Baum (@marybaum), Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), Adeeb Malik (@adeebmalik) for research, interviews, and contributing to this feature article.

The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support.

In the forty-fourth episode of the WordPress Briefing, our host Josepha Haden Chomphosy highlights the role of major and minor releases in the WordPress open source project.

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

Credits

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

References

Twelfth Man
State of the Word

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 

Hello everyone! And welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. 

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:27] 

At the top of November, a new major release for WordPress shipped. That was WordPress 6.1. I know I talked about it basically nonstop. Then two weeks later, there was a new minor release for WordPress. It was WordPress 6.1.1, which I did not talk about at all. Way back in episode four of this podcast, I dug into the overall release cycle and what someone could expect from a high-level logistics aspect.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:05] 

And today we’re gonna take a quick look at minor releases in particular. Just as a general heads up, I always want to lean into sports metaphors when I’m talking about releases, and I think it’s because of the words major and minor. And so, I’ve done my level best to not include that in any of my explanations today.

But I do have one, I do have one that’s a sports thing. So just if you don’t like sports, know that it’s just one little bit and we’ll try to be carefully quick around it together. All right, so minor releases. You may have noticed that I don’t mention minor releases nearly as often as I mention major releases. And yet, most of the time, when we have a major release of WordPress, there’s a minor release that gets started almost immediately after.

So first major versus minor. Major releases in WordPress happen roughly three times a year, give or take a release. Inside a major release, you will find that we include features, so– brand new abilities, enhancements, which you can generally call improvements to existing abilities, and also any bug fix that we can find, big or small, we’ll take ’em all.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:16] 

So minor releases in WordPress happen about four or five times a year on average. Minor releases include patches for issues introduced in the major release and any bug fix that doesn’t add or change functionality. 

If you’re with me so far, you probably have noted that there’s basically always at least one minor release per major release. And you might have also noted that I said minors include patches for issues we introduced in a major.

Now, if I were hearing this with fresh ears, the first thing I would wonder is, okay, so if you start working on the minor right after you release the major to deal with issues you know you introduced in the major– why just not ship the major while there are bugs in it? Great question. I’m glad you asked. So there are a few things worth knowing here.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:09] 

Firstly, there is this concept of “ship and iterate,” which is present in both agile and open source. The idea is that we ship software as soon as we have confidence that what is in the release is non-breaking and represents our best guests at a better experience for our users.

Once that is out there, we use feedback on the initial release to quickly iterate and ship another release. That way, we don’t hold back any good features. And since we already planned the immediate minor, any major issues that show up can be fixed in as little as two weeks. Secondly, there is the concept that with many eyes, all bugs are shallow, which is primarily present in open source.

The idea here is that with enough people looking at a problem, that problem doesn’t stand a chance. So when a release is shipped in a workable state but with interactions that could use some refinement, the fastest way to find those refinements is to take it to the community of WordPress users and developers and invite them to co-create this CMS with us.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:10]

Which touches on my final thought. The concept of the user as co-creator.

If we think about the development and evolution of our software as a team effort, then we can think of the people who use our software as what’s called the “Twelfth Man” That’s in quotes, and I will, I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes as well. 

In sports, this refers to the fans. And if you’ve ever been to a live sporting event or played in any, you will know that the cheering and jeering from fans turns into this distinct motivating entity all its own. As a whole team or individual member, you know what you have to do. You know what you need to do in a game, but there’s something about that chaotic, loud roar of feedback that just brings life to what you’re doing, and that’s how I see our community of users.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:02]

So at the end of the day, the answer to the question of ‘why so many releases’ and the follow-up question of ‘why tolerate stable imperfection’ is largely the same. To get features into the hands of our users quickly so that we can always be breathing life into this CMS we care so much about.

I hope that answers your questions about our release cadence, and if you didn’t come into this podcast having any questions about release cadences at all, I hope this new information brings a little extra light to the complexity of working in open source. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:32] 

That brings us now to our small list of big things.

Big thing number one is that the State of the Word has been announced and is scheduled for December 15th. It’s a little earlier in the day than in past iterations, so I hope we get a new crew of listeners tuning in at the same time. I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes, or you can pop over to wordpress.org/news to see the announcement for yourself.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] 

Big thing number two is that team rep nominations are open on most teams right now. So if organization and people wrangling are high on your list of ways you can give back to WordPress, head on over to the team you contribute to and see how you raise your hand for that. 

Then big thing number three is that big-picture goals, hopes, and timelines are being gathered, and I will ship those shortly after the start of the new year.

It will give us all an idea of where we want to focus our attention to ensure that WordPress continues to grow toward the future. You can keep an eye out for that on make.wordpress.org/project. 

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.

You’re already familiar with WordPress.com, but did you know we’re part of a larger family of amazing products? Automattic provides a range of online solutions, from ecommerce shops to course-creation software to audience survey tools, and much, much more. No matter what’s on your website wishlist this year, we’ve got you covered.   

After all, the best Black Friday deal isn’t a disposable gadget or a trendy clothing item; it’s something that will help you grow, and will grow along with you. Your website isn’t just a website — it’s the foundation for everything you hope to achieve.

Below you’ll find all the deals we’re offering across our online ecosystem.     

WordPress.com: 40% off 2-year plans 

Best-in-class WordPress hosting. Unparalleled support. All the SEO, security, and design features you need, built right in. For a limited time, get 40% off any new 2-year plan — just use the code blackfriday2022 at checkout to take advantage of this discount. (Be sure you’ve selected the “Two year” option from the dropdown menu on the checkout page.)

Built By WordPress.com: Free 1-year plan

Whether you want to build an online store or completely redesign your website, Built By WordPress.com is here for you. Click on the link below to tell us more about your project or business. Don’t forget to mention “Black Friday 2022” to get the first year on our Business plan for free! 

Built By WordPress.com Express: 30% off 

No need to stress the details: Our WordPress experts can build your site for you from the ground up. Take 30% off a website build and get your site launched in 4 business days or less. Use the code blackfriday22 at checkout.

Domains: Up to 90% off popular extensions 

Want a new domain? Enjoy incredible savings of 50% to 90% off for the first year. We have many great extensions to choose from, all priced at $5 USD or below for Black Friday. 

Choose from .blog, .me, .art, .store, .link, .click, .online, .shop, .life, .live, .world, .guru, .today, .info, .pro, .agency, .boutique, .directory, .run, .solutions, .wtf, and many more!

WooCommerce: 40% off all themes and extensions 

Now’s the perfect time to launch or level up the online store of your dreams. With 40% off all WooCommerce themes and extensions, you can turn your WordPress site into a powerful platform for ecommerce. 

Jetpack: 20% off all products and bundles 

There’s never been a better time to secure your website with real-time backups, automated malware scanning, and powerful spam protection. This weekend, get 20% off all Jetpack products and bundles. 

Fun fact: If you’re a WordPress.com customer, Jetpack is already built into your site at no additional cost!  

Crowd Signal: 50% off plans and upgrades 

Gather feedback and insights from your customers with polls, surveys, feedback buttons, quizzes, and more. Get 50% off new plans and plan upgrades through Monday. 

Sensei: 40% off all products 

Create and sell courses that would make your favorite teacher proud. Get 40% off all Sensei products, including Interactive Blocks, Sensei Pro, and Sensei Agency.

WP Job Manager: 30% off

A job board plugin like no other. Get our Add-on Bundle for 30% off to collect resumes, promote job listings, and more.

With the end of the year fast approaching, the WordPress project has not slowed down. Read on to learn more about the latest major release, WordPress 6.1, and the State of the Word 2022 live event, among other exciting news. It’s time to catch up on all things WordPress!

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Say hello to WordPress 6.1 “Misha”

The third and last major release of 2022, WordPress 6.1 “Misha,” shipped on November 1, 2022. Named after jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin, this release comes packed with many improvements that refine the site-building experience introduced earlier this year in WordPress 5.9 and 6.0, as well as accessibility and performance upgrades.

WordPress 6.1 is also bundled with a new default block theme, Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3), that features 10 style variations designed by WordPress community members. These intentionally unique designs ensure that you can change the visual details of your site with ease—and within a single theme.

Learn more about what’s in 6.1:

• WordPress 6.1 “Misha” Announcement
• WordPress 6.1 Field Guide

Following WordPress 6.1 “Misha”, a 6.1.1 maintenance release landed on November 15, 2022. This minor release includes about 50 bug fixes.

Download WordPress 6.1.1

State of the Word 2022 is coming on December 15

State of the Word 2022, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 15, 2022. The event will take place in person in New York City and live-streamed via various WordPress.org social media platforms.

You can also host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends.

Learn more about State of the Word 2022

What’s new in Gutenberg

Two new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month:

• Gutenberg 14.4 was released on October 26, 2022, with support for a distraction-free mode that allows a more focused writing experience. Other notable highlights include a redesigned pattern inserter, content locking to the Navigation block, and improvements to fluid typography.
• Gutenberg 14.5 sets the groundwork for future releases with code quality improvements and bug fixes. This version introduces a new “Document Overview” panel for easier access to the list view and document information, expands margin and padding support, and improves spacing visualizers. It was released on November 9, 2022.

Explore some of the latest enhancements to the writing experience in this Core Editor Improvement post.

Team updates: Documentation Contributor Day, WordPress.org redesign updates, and more

• After a lively discussion around the site editing terminology, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that the term “Site Editor” will be used going forward in reference to the suite of site editing tools.
• Last month, the Docs Team successfully held its first online Contributor Day to collaborate in real-time, help onboard new contributors, and work on backlog tasks.
• Progress and next steps for the WordPress.org website redesign were shared in this post. The following pages that will get a refreshed look and feel soon include Showcase and Documentation (HelpHub).
• The WordPress.org Theme Directory introduced a new feature that allows visitors to preview style variations in block themes.
• Inspired by the Community Team’s efforts to reactivate meetup groups, the Polyglots Team is looking to start a Polyglots outreach project and welcomes help.
• The Training Team shared an overview of some of the new Learn WordPress courses they have been recently working on.
• Openverse’s catalog now includes more than one million audio records!
• The WordPress Photo Directory also reached a significant milestone by surpassing 5,000 photos! Check out this celebratory retrospective from the Photos team.
• Speaking of Openverse and the Photo Directory, don’t miss the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast—it covers the differences between these two resources, and how they work to further openly-licensed media.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress features Raghavendra Satish Peri.

Enjoy a spooky Halloween Mad Libs story completed by community contributors in Episode 42 of WP Briefing.

Feedback & testing requests

• The Plugin Dependencies feature plugin is available for testing. Provide your feedback by December 1, 2022.
• What does a genuinely sustainable WordPress community look like to you? Share your vision and thoughts in this discussion post.
• The new WordPress developer blog is in public beta and ready for feedback.
• The Core Team requests assistance with testing a new Rollback Feature in WordPress core.
• Version 21.2 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing.

Were you involved in WordPress 6.1? Share your thoughts on the release process by December 15, 2022.

Event updates & WordCamps

• The WordCamp Asia organizing team is collaborating with WordCamp Central to bring the WordCamp Asia Diversity Scholarship. In addition, the team recently announced the first round of speakers.
• Preparations for WordCamp Europe 2023 are underway.
• Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps:
  • WordCamp São Paulo, Brazil on November 26, 2022
  • WordCamp Kolkata, West Bengal, India on December 17-18, 2022

Boost your speaking confidence in WordPress events. Register for the How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events online workshop happening December 7, 2022.

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Have a story that 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 edition of The Month in WordPress: @rmartinezduque, @webcommsat, @santanainniss, @dansoschin, @eidolonnight.

Hello, WordPress! 

Mark your calendars; it’s almost time for State of the Word 2022!

State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event shares reflections on the project’s progress and the future of open source. Expect this and more in this year’s edition.

This year’s event will take place in person in New York City and live-streamed via various WordPress.org social media platforms. 

Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2022, the latest WordPress releases, Site Editor advancements, and a return to in-person events around the globe, among other topics.

What: State of the Word 2022

When: December 15, 2022, 1–2:30 P.M. EST (18–19:30 UTC)

How: If you’re watching from the comfort of your home or local watch party, the live stream will be embedded in this post and available through the WordPress YouTube channel.

Would you like to join the in-person audience? Request a seat by completing this survey.

Have a question for Matt?

State of the Word will include a Q&A session. If you want to participate, you can either send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask during the event in the live stream chat on YouTube.

Given the volume of questions that are usually submitted, please note that it may not be possible to answer all of them in the live Q&A. A follow-up post will be published after the State of the Word to answer those not covered at the event.

First time attending State of the Word? Check out previous years’ recordings on WordPress.tv to get a sense of the event.

See you in person or online on December 15!

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Join a State of the Word Watch Party near You

Can’t make it to New York? No problem, organize or join a watch party in your community in person or online. Like last year, the Community team has resources available to help! Check out this handbook page, which includes event templates, information on requesting a Zoom account, and how to get some swag.

Gather together to look back on how WordPress has grown in 2022 and what is ahead for 2023. Stay up-to-date as a group on the latest happenings in the WordPress world and collaborate together on any questions you might have for Matt!

We will be compiling a list of State of the Word watch parties in this post, which will be updated regularly as the event approaches. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here in the next few weeks, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one.

If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word and have questions, please email support@wordcamp.org. A member of the WordPress community team will assist you in the best way possible.

Have you used Patterns on your site yet? 

These prebuilt, customizable templates combine professionally-designed blocks for specific uses like stylized quotes, contact page layouts, and product listings. But that’s just the beginning. All told, we have more than 275+ Patterns you can insert into your pages and posts at the press of a button.

If you’ve never used Patterns before, they’re like any other site element: Access them by hitting the “+” button at the top left of the page or post you’re working on, then selecting the “Patterns” tab. You can also click on the “Explore” button to bring up our entire library of Patterns, organized by category. 

Think of them as sophisticated slices of web design for your posts and pages. You can drop them in as-is, or customize them to your liking. Even better, we’re adding more all the time.

Here are just a few of the most recent arrivals to the Pattern library.

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Newsletter Subscriptions

WordPress.com has newsletter capabilities built right in. All you need to do is add a Subscribe Block! Readers who enter their email address will get notified when you publish new posts. To make those Subscribe Blocks look a bit jazzier, we’ve added a number of newsletter-focused patterns to our library.

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Link in Bio

We’ve added a handful of visually stunning Patterns for your link-in-bio pages and sites. Pick one, customize as desired, add your links, and you’ve got a brand new way to let your readers know what’s new.

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Wireframes

Wireframe patterns are those that have less of a design element built-in and allow you to start with a blank slate. Your imagination can run wild this collection of patterns. (Remember, though, every pattern is fully customizable.)

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Explore All of Our Patterns!

Even if you don’t have a specific need in mind, take a look around the full Patterns library. We have options for featured products, menus, events, coupons, footers, and more.

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Patterns can be an incredibly useful resource for your design toolbox. Customize, experiment, and turn inspiration into eye-catching reality.

If you need help with Patterns, check out our more detailed guide. 

And be sure to let us know in the comments how you’ve used Patterns on your site and any ideas you have for new ones. We’re always working on more — so stay tuned!

WordPress 6.1.1 is now available

This minor release features 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor. WordPress 6.1.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. You can review a summary of the key updates in this release by reading the RC1 announcement.

The next major release will be version 6.2 planned for 2023.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.1.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information, check out the version 6.1.1 HelpHub documentation page.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

The WordPress 6.1.1 release was led by @desrosj, @mamaduka, and @jeffpaul.

WordPress 6.1.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of more than 105 people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver several enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

10upsimon, Aaron Jorbin, Aaron Robertshaw, Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, alexstine, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, Andre, Andy Fragen, Ari Stathopoulos, azurseisme, Ben Dwyer, Bernie Reiter, Bethany Chobanian Lang, Birgit Pauli-Haack, bjorn2404, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, Clayton Collie, codesdnc, Colin Stewart, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, David Smith, David Vongries, Dilip Bheda, Dion Hulse, Dominik Schilling, Ella, Eugene M, Felix Arntz, fpodhorsky, franzaurus, gamecreature, Gary Pendergast, George Mamadashvili, gisgeo, glendaviesnz, Innovext, ironprogrammer, Isabel Brison, James, Jan Thiel, Javier Carazo, Jb Audras, jchambo, jeffpaul, joelmadigan, Joen A., John Blackbourn, John Watkins, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jonny Harris, jsh4, Juliette Reinders Folmer, K. Adam White, kacper3355, Kai Hao, Konstantin Obenland, konyoldeath, larsmqller, Lena Morita, Leo Milo, lozula, Marco Ciampini, Marin Atanasov, Marius L. J., Matt Keys, Michal Czaplinski, Miguel Axcar, Miguel Fonseca, Mukesh Panchal, mw108, Namith Jawahar, Nick Diego, Nik Tsekouras, Nithin SreeRaj, nuvoPoint, oakesjosh, ockham, Oliver Juhas, Pascal Birchler, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, petitphp, pkolenbr, pypwalters, ramonopoly, Riad Benguella, rjasdfiii, Robert Anderson, rodricus, Ryan Kienstra, Sarah Norris, Sergey Biryukov, stentibbing, Stephen Bernhardt, Subrata Sarkar, Sybre Waaijer, Timi Wahalahti, Timothy Jacobs, Tonya Mork, Torsten Landsiedel, and vtad.

How to contribute

To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-1-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

In the forty-third episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores two resources for openly licensed media in the WordPress project– Openverse and Photo Directory– and how they differ from one another!

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

Credits

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

References

Photo Directory Make Page
Submit a Photo to the Photo Directory
Openverse Make Page
Openverse Call for Contributions: Block Editor Integration
Download WordPress 6.1
Docs Team Contributor Day Recap Post
Hallway Hangout Block Themes (Video)

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. 

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 

About 18 months ago, the Openverse project became part of the WordPress open source project, and at roughly the same time, we also welcomed the Photo Directory.

Since that time, we’ve seen growth in teams supporting both of these initiatives. But if you’re not involved in the day-to-day, it can be hard to know how those two things fit together or if they fit together at all.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] 

Today, let’s take a brief tour of those two projects and why they came to be. 

In my timeline, work on the Photo Directory started before the work on Openverse, so that’s where we’ll start.

For as long as I can remember, the WordPress community has raised the need for WordPress-first ways to have and host GPL-compatible photos for use in themes, site builds, and marketing efforts as a whole. As recently as 2016, that was still coming up as a question at various flagship events and among the career photographers that contribute their time to WordPress.

So in 2017 and 2018, as attention started to turn toward rebuilding the CMS using blocks, it dropped down the list of priority items. But it never really went away as a thing that people were hoping we could do for the project as a whole. So in 2019, it was becoming clear that having open source-first tools of all varieties for people whose businesses were built on our software would help broaden the availability of the open source freedoms we believe in.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] 

This began the work on the Photo Directory with the intention of providing a GPL-friendly, community-driven repository of images. It has since launched, and we have photos in it now. We have a whole team around it. It’s wonderful. But that is how that all kind of came to be. 

Openverse, on the other hand, was launched as CC Search in 2019 with the laudable mandate to increase the discoverability and accessibility of open access media.

Late in 2020, while work on the Photo Directory was underway, Matt shared with me that the team was looking for a new project home. When I first met with them, they shared an overview of the product, which they shorthanded as an open source search engine that searches openly licensed images. We were working on a repo of openly licensed images, so clearly, this was all written in the stars. And so you might be asking yourself at this point, great, how does it work together?

I think for most of us, the timeline there kind of covers the question of what is the difference between these two things. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] 

But because I never know which of you will want to strike up a conversation about open source on an elevator, I’ve also got the elevator pitch version. 

Openverse is an open source search engine that searches, indexes, and aggregates copy left media from across the web using sources such as WordPress’s Photo Directory, Flickr’s CC Tagged Media, and Wikimedia, to name just a few. 

Another key difference between the Photo Directory and Openverse is that in order to contribute to the Photo Directory, now that it’s all built, that’s mostly done by submitting photos or reviewing photos. So you don’t really need to be a developer to join in. 

Openverse is not only a developer-centric contribution opportunity, but it also uses a different tech stack than WordPress as a whole. So it’s a good place for folks to go if they’re looking to broaden their horizons.

So that’s your elevator pitch of what Openverse is and how it uses the Photo Directory. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] 

You have a couple of ways that you can get involved with these two projects. For the Photo Directory, as I mentioned at the start, you can always contribute photos, and they could always use more photo contributions.

I’ll include a link to the submission guidelines in the show notes below, and as I mentioned, it is a no-code way to give back to the WordPress project. So no code, development environments, and testing skills are required. The Photo Directory team also could always use more contributors to help with the moderating of photo submissions.

And so I’ll link to their making WordPress page in the show notes as well so that you can get started there. 

And as I mentioned before, Openverse is an aggregator, so it doesn’t host any media itself, but it is always accepting suggestions for new GPL-compatible media providers. I’ll link the area where you can leave suggestions in the show notes as well.

And if you are more code inclined, there’s an open issue for adding Openverse browsing to the block editor right now.  

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] 

So I’ll link that issue in the show notes in case you thought to yourself, gosh, that sounds like my most favorite thing to do. That is where you can go. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:12]

This leads us now to our small list of big things.

In case you missed it, WordPress 6.1 is now available. It launched on November 1st. Late, late, late in the day, and so it was easy to miss if you’re used to seeing it at a particular time. We were about six hours later than usual. But if you go to wordpress.org/download, you can get your own copy there.

The second thing on our small list of big things is that the Docs team had a contributor day. It was excellent. There’s a recap post up. I will include that in the show notes. 

And then the final thing is that there was a recent hallway hangout that talked about the site editor and block themes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] 

The video for that is also published. I will also share that in our show notes.

And 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.

This post was written in collaboration with Lauren Stein (@laurlittle) and Anne McCarthy @annezazu).

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Twenty Twenty-Three is here, alongside WordPress 6.1! The new default theme offers a clean, blank canvas bundled with a collection of style variations.

Style variations are predefined design options that give you the opportunity to alter the appearance of your site without having to change your theme. This means that you can keep your template structure but change the visual details of your site with ease.

For a truly diverse collection, Twenty Twenty-Three’s featured style variations were submitted by members of the WordPress community, resulting in 38 submissions from 19 people in 8 different countries. From those submissions, a curated collection of ten was chosen and bundled with the new theme.

This approach to style variations ushers in the next generation of block themes, able to harness the potential of the platform’s latest design capabilities and tools directly in the Site Editor. Since style variations don’t require any code experience, you’re encouraged to tweak and/or create your own.

Thank you to everyone who contributed.

Useful links:
Download Twenty Twenty-Three
Twenty Twenty-Three Documentation
Twenty Twenty-Three Project Kick Off
Twenty Twenty-Three Selected Style Variations

The library of blocks in the WordPress editor is always growing, providing websites with fresh and intriguing features on a regular basis. Our most recent update will appeal to podcasters, bloggers and Pocket Casts fans alike and we are thrilled to share it with you today.

Spread the word about your favorite podcasts and episodes with the Pocket Casts block

Are you a podcaster? Add the Pocket Casts block to any post or page on your website to let people know about your passion project and to embed the most recent episodes of your podcast. If you’re an avid listener but haven’t started your own podcast (yet, at least), you can now embed episodes and shows by other people within your own writing so that readers may listen to them without ever leaving your website.

You won’t need any special codes or embed URLs once you select the Pocket Casts block from the editor’s list of possible blocks. You will simply need to provide the episode’s or podcast’s URL.

Here’s what the Pocket Casts player will look like on your site — the example below features the latest episode on the Distributed podcast, hosted by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg:

We truly hope you give the Pocket Casts block (and app) a try. Please comment below if you have any questions or would like to provide a link to a post where you’ve already used it.