# wp_usermeta

meta_key: session_tokens
meta_value:
  a:1:{s:64:"1c0d37d0792bd4b455d48027d414c562ca7823a6bb5fb54a3563e81a8461c8d4";a:4:{s:10:"expiration";i:1721284568;s:2:"ip";s:12:"166.1.179.89";s:2:"ua";s:80:"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:127.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/127.0";s:5:"login";i:1721111768;}}


# wp_options

option_name: rewrite_rules
autoload: yes
option_value:
  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2]&embed=true";s:44:"([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:65:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&monthnum=$matches[2]&paged=$matches[3]";s:26:"([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/?$";s:47:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&monthnum=$matches[2]";s:56:"([0-9]{4})/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:43:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:51:"([0-9]{4})/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:43:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:19:"([0-9]{4})/embed/?$";s:37:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&embed=true";s:31:"([0-9]{4})/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:44:"index.php?year=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]";s:13:"([0-9]{4})/?$";s:26:"index.php?year=$matches[1]";s:27:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/?$";s:32:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]";s:37:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/trackback/?$";s:37:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&tb=1";s:70:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:65:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:52:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:50:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2]";s:33:".?.+?/attachment/([^/]+)/embed/?$";s:43:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&embed=true";s:16:"(.?.+?)/embed/?$";s:41:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&embed=true";s:20:"(.?.+?)/trackback/?$";s:35:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&tb=1";s:53:"(.?.+?)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:47:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:48:"(.?.+?)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:47:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:28:"(.?.+?)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:48:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]";s:35:"(.?.+?)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:48:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2]";s:24:"(.?.+?)(?:/([0-9]+))?/?$";s:47:"index.php?pagename=$matches[1]&page=$matches[2]";s:27:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/?$";s:32:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]";s:37:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/trackback/?$";s:37:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&tb=1";s:70:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:65:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:52:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:50:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2]";s:33:"[^/]+/attachment/([^/]+)/embed/?$";s:43:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&embed=true";s:16:"([^/]+)/embed/?$";s:37:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&embed=true";s:20:"([^/]+)/trackback/?$";s:31:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&tb=1";s:53:"([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:43:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:48:"([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:43:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:28:"([^/]+)/page/?([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:44:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]";s:35:"([^/]+)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:44:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2]";s:24:"([^/]+)(?:/([0-9]+))?/?$";s:43:"index.php?name=$matches[1]&page=$matches[2]";s:16:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/?$";s:32:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]";s:26:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/trackback/?$";s:37:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&tb=1";s:59:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:54:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom|xmlsitemap22)/?$";s:49:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]";s:41:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/comment-page-([0-9]{1,})/?$";s:50:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&cpage=$matches[2]";s:22:"[^/]+/([^/]+)/embed/?$";s:43:"index.php?attachment=$matches[1]&embed=true";}


option_name: uninstall_plugins
autoload: no
option_value:
  a:1:{s:35:"litespeed-cache/litespeed-cache.php";s:47:"LiteSpeed\Activation::uninstall_litespeed_cache";}


option_name: wp_user_roles
autoload: yes
option_value:
  a:5:{s:13:"administrator";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:13:"Administrator";s:12:"capabilities";a:61:{s:13:"switch_themes";b:1;s:11:"edit_themes";b:1;s:16:"activate_plugins";b:1;s:12:"edit_plugins";b:1;s:10:"edit_users";b:1;s:10:"edit_files";b:1;s:14:"manage_options";b:1;s:17:"moderate_comments";b:1;s:17:"manage_categories";b:1;s:12:"manage_links";b:1;s:12:"upload_files";b:1;s:6:"import";b:1;s:15:"unfiltered_html";b:1;s:10:"edit_posts";b:1;s:17:"edit_others_posts";b:1;s:20:"edit_published_posts";b:1;s:13:"publish_posts";b:1;s:10:"edit_pages";b:1;s:4:"read";b:1;s:8:"level_10";b:1;s:7:"level_9";b:1;s:7:"level_8";b:1;s:7:"level_7";b:1;s:7:"level_6";b:1;s:7:"level_5";b:1;s:7:"level_4";b:1;s:7:"level_3";b:1;s:7:"level_2";b:1;s:7:"level_1";b:1;s:7:"level_0";b:1;s:17:"edit_others_pages";b:1;s:20:"edit_published_pages";b:1;s:13:"publish_pages";b:1;s:12:"delete_pages";b:1;s:19:"delete_others_pages";b:1;s:22:"delete_published_pages";b:1;s:12:"delete_posts";b:1;s:19:"delete_others_posts";b:1;s:22:"delete_published_posts";b:1;s:20:"delete_private_posts";b:1;s:18:"edit_private_posts";b:1;s:18:"read_private_posts";b:1;s:20:"delete_private_pages";b:1;s:18:"edit_private_pages";b:1;s:18:"read_private_pages";b:1;s:12:"delete_users";b:1;s:12:"create_users";b:1;s:17:"unfiltered_upload";b:1;s:14:"edit_dashboard";b:1;s:14:"update_plugins";b:1;s:14:"delete_plugins";b:1;s:15:"install_plugins";b:1;s:13:"update_themes";b:1;s:14:"install_themes";b:1;s:11:"update_core";b:1;s:10:"list_users";b:1;s:12:"remove_users";b:1;s:13:"promote_users";b:1;s:18:"edit_theme_options";b:1;s:13:"delete_themes";b:1;s:6:"export";b:1;}}s:6:"editor";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:6:"Editor";s:12:"capabilities";a:34:{s:17:"moderate_comments";b:1;s:17:"manage_categories";b:1;s:12:"manage_links";b:1;s:12:"upload_files";b:1;s:15:"unfiltered_html";b:1;s:10:"edit_posts";b:1;s:17:"edit_others_posts";b:1;s:20:"edit_published_posts";b:1;s:13:"publish_posts";b:1;s:10:"edit_pages";b:1;s:4:"read";b:1;s:7:"level_7";b:1;s:7:"level_6";b:1;s:7:"level_5";b:1;s:7:"level_4";b:1;s:7:"level_3";b:1;s:7:"level_2";b:1;s:7:"level_1";b:1;s:7:"level_0";b:1;s:17:"edit_others_pages";b:1;s:20:"edit_published_pages";b:1;s:13:"publish_pages";b:1;s:12:"delete_pages";b:1;s:19:"delete_others_pages";b:1;s:22:"delete_published_pages";b:1;s:12:"delete_posts";b:1;s:19:"delete_others_posts";b:1;s:22:"delete_published_posts";b:1;s:20:"delete_private_posts";b:1;s:18:"edit_private_posts";b:1;s:18:"read_private_posts";b:1;s:20:"delete_private_pages";b:1;s:18:"edit_private_pages";b:1;s:18:"read_private_pages";b:1;}}s:6:"author";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:6:"Author";s:12:"capabilities";a:10:{s:12:"upload_files";b:1;s:10:"edit_posts";b:1;s:20:"edit_published_posts";b:1;s:13:"publish_posts";b:1;s:4:"read";b:1;s:7:"level_2";b:1;s:7:"level_1";b:1;s:7:"level_0";b:1;s:12:"delete_posts";b:1;s:22:"delete_published_posts";b:1;}}s:11:"contributor";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:11:"Contributor";s:12:"capabilities";a:5:{s:10:"edit_posts";b:1;s:4:"read";b:1;s:7:"level_1";b:1;s:7:"level_0";b:1;s:12:"delete_posts";b:1;}}s:10:"subscriber";a:2:{s:4:"name";s:10:"Subscriber";s:12:"capabilities";a:2:{s:4:"read";b:1;s:7:"level_0";b:1;}}}


option_name: widget_block
autoload: yes
option_value:
  a:6:{i:2;a:1:{s:7:"content";s:19:"<!-- wp:search /-->";}i:3;a:1:{s:7:"content";s:154:"<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading --><h2>Recent Posts</h2><!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:latest-posts /--></div><!-- /wp:group -->";}i:4;a:1:{s:7:"content";s:227:"<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading --><h2>Recent Comments</h2><!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:latest-comments {"displayAvatar":false,"displayDate":false,"displayExcerpt":false} /--></div><!-- /wp:group -->";}i:5;a:1:{s:7:"content";s:146:"<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading --><h2>Archives</h2><!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:archives /--></div><!-- /wp:group -->";}i:6;a:1:{s:7:"content";s:150:"<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:heading --><h2>Categories</h2><!-- /wp:heading --><!-- wp:categories /--></div><!-- /wp:group -->";}s:12:"_multiwidget";i:1;}


option_name: sidebars_widgets
autoload: yes
option_value:
  a:4:{s:19:"wp_inactive_widgets";a:0:{}s:9:"sidebar-1";a:3:{i:0;s:7:"block-2";i:1;s:7:"block-3";i:2;s:7:"block-4";}s:9:"sidebar-2";a:2:{i:0;s:7:"block-5";i:1;s:7:"block-6";}s:13:"array_version";i:3;}


option_name: cron
autoload: yes
option_value:
  a:7:{i:1786177881;a:2:{s:19:"litespeed_task_lqip";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:16:"litespeed_filter";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:60;}}s:27:"litespeed_task_imgoptm_pull";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:16:"litespeed_filter";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:60;}}}i:1786180577;a:1:{s:34:"wp_privacy_delete_old_export_files";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:6:"hourly";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:3600;}}}i:1786184177;a:5:{s:18:"wp_https_detection";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:10:"twicedaily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:43200;}}s:16:"wp_version_check";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:10:"twicedaily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:43200;}}s:17:"wp_update_plugins";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:10:"twicedaily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:43200;}}s:16:"wp_update_themes";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:10:"twicedaily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:43200;}}s:32:"recovery_mode_clean_expired_keys";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:5:"daily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:86400;}}}i:1786184190;a:3:{s:21:"wp_update_user_counts";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:10:"twicedaily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:43200;}}s:19:"wp_scheduled_delete";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:5:"daily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:86400;}}s:25:"delete_expired_transients";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:5:"daily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:86400;}}}i:1786184192;a:1:{s:30:"wp_scheduled_auto_draft_delete";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:5:"daily";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:86400;}}}i:1786702577;a:1:{s:30:"wp_site_health_scheduled_check";a:1:{s:32:"40cd750bba9870f18aada2478b24840a";a:3:{s:8:"schedule";s:6:"weekly";s:4:"args";a:0:{}s:8:"interval";i:604800;}}}s:7:"version";i:2;}


option_name: _transient_global_styles_twentytwentytwo
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  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 09 Jul 2024 17:39:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:6:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:3;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:4;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"RC";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:5;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17497";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:345:"WordPress 6.6 RC3 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC3 on a test server or a local environment. Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9781:"
  <p>WordPress 6.6 RC3 is ready for download and testing!</p>



  <p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, please evaluate RC3 on a test server or a local environment.</p>



  <p>Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.</p>



  <p>You can test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in four ways:</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-RC3.zip">RC3 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br><code>wp core update --version=6.6-RC3</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D">6.6 RC3 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Please test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in one or more of these four ways.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is <strong>next Tuesday,</strong> <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">6.6 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-6/">6.6-related posts</a> in the next few weeks for further details.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in WordPress 6.6 RC3?</h2>



  <p>Thanks to your testing (and many other contributors‘ up to now) this release includes eight bug fixes for the Editor and  <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">18 tickets for WordPress Core</a>.</p>



  <p>Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">Beta 1 announcement</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC 2, you can browse the following links:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.6?since=2024-07-02&amp;until=2024-07-09">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since July 2</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">Closed Trac </a><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=07%2F02%2F2024..07%2F09%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">tickets</a> since July 2</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a>. Then, check out this list:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+6-6/">All 6.6-related developer notes</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can contribute. Here&#8217;s how</h2>



  <p>WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved in testing</h3>



  <p>Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17392">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you&#8217;re new to testing, follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>



  <p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">WordPress Trac</a>. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Please update your WordPress product</h3>



  <p>If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your efforts play an integral role in adding new functionality to WordPress and helping bring new people and ideas to the most vibrant (and massive!) open source community in the world.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 betas and release candidates. With RC3, you’ll want to make sure everything is working smoothly, and if it&#8217;s a plugin, update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in its <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/">readme file</a> to 6.6.</p>



  <p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forum</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Help translate WordPress</h3>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English? <bdo lang="es" dir="ltr">¿Español?</bdo> <bdo lang="fr" dir="ltr">Français?</bdo> <bdo lang="ru" dir="ltr">Русский</bdo>? <bdo lang="ja" dir="ltr">日本</bdo>語? <bdo lang="hin" dir="ltr">हिन्दी</bdo>? <bdo lang="bn" dir="ltr">বাংলা</bdo>? You can <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The RC3 haiku</h2>



  <p>One week to go. Then:<br>Open the paintbox! Try the tools!<br>Play a new jazz tune.</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right"><em>Props to  <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>meher</a> and <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>audrasjb</a>. for peer review.</em></p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17497";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		

  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:7:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42:"WP Briefing: Episode 83: Learning Pathways";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/episode-83-learning-pathways/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:2:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Podcast";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"wp-briefing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17489";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:421:"Discover how Learning Pathways can guide you through your WordPress journey with clarity and purpose. In the latest episode of WordPress Briefing, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy welcomes special guest Wes Theron to discuss the newly introduced Learning Pathways. These curated lesson sets are tailored to various experience levels, roles, and use cases, ensuring a personalized learning experience for every WordPress user.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:9:"enclosure";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:0:"";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:3:{s:3:"url";s:51:"https://wordpress.org/news/files/2024/07/WPB083.mp3";s:6:"length";s:1:"0";s:4:"type";s:0:"";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35130:"
  <p>Discover how Learning Pathways can guide you through your WordPress journey with clarity and purpose. In the latest episode of WordPress Briefing, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy welcomes special guest Wes Theron to discuss the newly introduced Learning Pathways. These curated lesson sets are tailored to various experience levels, roles, and use cases, ensuring a personalized learning experience for every WordPress user. </p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



  <p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br>Guest: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/west7/">Wes Theron</a><br>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn.WordPress.org</a>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/">Beginner WordPress Developer</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/">Beginner WordPress User</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/playground/">WordPress Playground</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ETacCXdCCxwdAo-_xciwlQJ">Learn WordPress YouTube Playlist</a></li>



  <li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-5/">WordPress 6.5.5 is now available!</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/06/15/wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program-q4-2024-call-for-interest/">WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Q4 2024</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress 6.6 Official Release</a>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYdkXAx7qw">What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/">Upcoming WordPress Meetings</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li>Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



  <span id="more-17489"></span>



  <p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;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.</p>



  <p>[00:00:28] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:00:39] <strong>Josepha:</strong> As a steward of the WordPress community, one of the big overarching questions that I grapple with is how to make sure people who have just found out about us know how to get around. Obviously, there&#8217;s the contributor path, which is important to me because I am especially concerned with the longevity of our little open source community, but there&#8217;s also a path for folks who are learning how to use the software.</p>



  <p>[00:01:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so, joining me today to talk through a project called Learning Pathways is Wes Theron. Wes, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.</p>



  <p>[00:01:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> Good day. Thank you very much for having me. It&#8217;s a pleasure.</p>



  <p>[00:01:13] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Before we get into this project that we&#8217;re talking about, do you want to just tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do with the WordPress project?</p>



  <p>[00:01:22] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah. So, as you know, my name is Wes Theron. I&#8217;m based in New Zealand, and I&#8217;m an instructional designer. And, I am part of the Training Team. So, most of my life revolves around creating learning content for learn.WordPress.org.</p>



  <p>[00:01:38] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s quite a life. Teaching people how to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:01:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, I teach WordPress. We run online workshops. I create video tutorials, courses, and now, of course, this great project we&#8217;re working on, Learning Pathways.</p>



  <p>[00:01:52] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. So, I&#8217;ve talked about Learning Pathways a few times here on the podcast, but for folks who have not heard me talk about it or who just need a more in-depth understanding, why don&#8217;t you tell us a little bit about this project as it stands today?&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:02:06] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, so when Learn started out, I think the main goal was to just get learning content on the site. But, in May of last year, we shared an individual learning survey with folks, and we were hoping to basically find out what are the needs of the learners? What are learners after? And from that individual learner survey, we actually learned a few things. We learned that tutorials, courses, and online workshops were the most used content types. We also saw that web-based learning is the most popular learning method. And then there was a clear need for a structured way of consuming learning material. And that&#8217;s basically where the Learning Pathways project was born; to create Learning Pathways that basically target various types of learners, but also various skill levels. So July of last year, we started with outlines, creating outlines for these learner pathways.</p>



  <p>[00:03:10] <strong>Wes:</strong> And then, in October of last year, we actually started creating content. So, the first learner pathways we started working on was the User Learning Pathway and the Developer Learning Pathway. And what that entails is of course, creating a Learning Pathway for beginner users, intermediate users, and then advanced users.</p>



  <p>So that&#8217;s how we kind of broke it up. And last week, the Beginner Developer Pathway was actually published, so that&#8217;s very exciting. And a few weeks before that, the Beginner WordPress User Pathway. And yeah, of course, we&#8217;ve got many other pathways in the pipeline that we want to work on. For example, a Designer Learning Pathway and even a Contributor Learning Pathway.</p>



  <p>[00:03:57] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, when we&#8217;re talking about pathways, what we mean is, like, we are figuring out what you probably need to know when you first arrive and then helping you to identify what you build on based on what your goals might be.</p>



  <p>[00:04:11] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Like, obviously, the beginner user, the goal is basically just like, learn how to get WordPress doing stuff at all. Like that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s an easy goal to understand. But when you all were doing the work to figure out what needed to be in the pathway for a beginner developer, and as you&#8217;re looking towards doing the work around intermediate and advanced topics, like how are you all able to determine what most likely you need in those various steps in the learning process?</p>



  <p>[00:04:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, of course, a lot of research went into that. When we created the outlines for these Learning Pathways. We shared it with the community. We asked for feedback. And yeah, a lot of research was done to make sure we cover all the all the bases. </p>



  <p>[00:04:59] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I know that there were a couple of different proposals about how to, like do skills assessments, maybe? There was something where like we were talking with companies that employ WordPress folks in the ecosystem, and then we were talking to WordPressers who were currently trying to make sure that their skills were advanced enough to get those jobs. And we were trying to figure out like the distance between those and where we actually have some concerns around like the language choices that they need, like basic developer language choices and jargon that goes in there and stuff like that.</p>



  <p>[00:05:34] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So this, if I recall correctly, the research for this has been going on for like maybe two or three years, right?</p>



  <p>[00:05:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, definitely. And we&#8217;ve reached out to many stakeholders within the WordPress community. And as you say, even agencies, and businesses, you know, trying to find out what do they want people to know when they employ them. And yeah, then of course, speaking to the community, speaking, speaking to folks at WordCamps reaching out to folks an online workshops.</p>



  <p>[00:06:04] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, yeah, it&#8217;s definitely been an ongoing process and also seeing what resources are lacking and what needs to be there.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:06:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, so, the very first, the very first iteration of any training that the WordPress project was offering on, I think it was on learn.WordPress.org, but I don&#8217;t actually know for sure, was a troubleshooting workshop, because when you are trying to figure out WordPress for the first time, when you are trying to figure out any software for the first time, being able to figure out what went wrong is a really important part of that. And so that was like the only workshop that existed over there for quite some time. And so it&#8217;s really nice to see how we have really, not only created a bunch of resources in general, if you all have not looked at learn.WordPress.org lately, it has, like, workshop outlines that you can use to do a training by yourself at your meetup group or at a school or whatever it is.</p>



  <p>[00:07:08] <strong>Josepha:</strong> But then also, I want to say it was maybe two, three years ago, that you all, as a team, the Training Team, started doing these online workshops. And so, when you created the Learning Pathways, considering like how much time and research has gone into this project overall, did you all have learnings that came from those workshops that you had already done? Is this like a collection of workshops or is this something where you can do it at home and learn by yourself and then go someplace else and learn more about WordPress? Like how does that function in what we have already?</p>



  <p>[00:07:45] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, so maybe I should first, maybe let&#8217;s define a learning pathway. So I, I thought about this, but a learning pathway, I would say, is a route taken by learner through a range of modules, lessons, and even courses to build knowledge progressively. So it&#8217;s similar to a course, but of course usually covers like a specific topic or subject where learning pathways usually have a larger goal.</p>



  <p>[00:08:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> So I wouldn&#8217;t say that the online workshops form part of the Learning Pathways project. And maybe I can also clarify that the teacher notes or the lesson plans that you refer to is something that&#8217;s also changing going forward. </p>



  <p>[00:08:23] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Oh, good. Because I wrote some of those, and I am not an instructional designer. And so, ha!</p>



  <p>[00:08:30] <strong>Wes:</strong> We&#8217;ve actually decided to move away from having two different content types. So, we had tutorials. You know, video tutorials, and we had lesson plans, and as you said, the lesson plans were notes that somebody could use to run an online workshop or to go to a WordCamp or at their local meetup and use that to teach something. But moving forward for Learning Pathways, we are actually just going to have one content type, namely lessons. And then lessons from part of creating a course or lessons from part of creating modules and then Learning Pathways. The other exciting thing, and something we haven&#8217;t mentioned, is that at the end of this month, when we launched the Learning Pathways or the first few Learning Pathways, it actually coincides with a website redesign.</p>



  <p>[00:09:18] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, yeah, beyond the lookout, hopefully, learn.WordPress.org is going to have a brand new face at the end, from the end of July or, yeah, or August. So, yeah, that&#8217;s very exciting.</p>



  <p>[00:09:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Excellent. Excellent. So, you said that these Learning Pathways are part of a larger goal. Is that a goal for your learners or a goal for WordPress? A goal for the team?</p>



  <p>[00:09:40] <strong>Wes:</strong> I would say all of the above.</p>



  <p>[00:09:42] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Goals for everybody. We&#8217;re like the Oprah of goals. Don&#8217;t come get me, Oprah. That&#8217;s all I got to say about it.</p>



  <p>[00:09:48] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, I think for us as a team, at the end of the day, we want folks to be able to use the content and find the content and utilize all the learning material on learn.WordPress.org. And then, of course, at the end of the day, for learners, we want folks to be able to succeed in whatever they are trying to do. Is it to build their own website? Is it to maybe find a job as a developer? And. Yeah, I mean, the list can go on.</p>



  <p>[00:10:21] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. So, on the subject of wanting to help people succeed, I think that as far as I hear from the majority of contributors that I have worked with over the years, like helping other people figure out how to do this and making sure that they can succeed is always something that is top of mind for contributors to open source probably in general, but definitely to WordPress. Like, we really care about helping other people figure out how to have the same sort of benefits that we&#8217;ve had in the project and with the software. So if you have somebody who is familiar with all the bits and pieces of WordPress and really, really want to like show up and help teach some things. Is it the case that they can take part in like running a Learning Pathway? Is it something where we mostly need people to help us build some content? Like if we&#8217;ve got people who are just desperate to help other people succeed in WordPress, what kinds of things can they show up and help do on this project?</p>



  <p>[00:11:22] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yes, please come to the Training Team. There are many ways to get involved. If you just want to review content, you can do that. But yeah, we do have a need for content creators, folks, you know, creating a video lesson or putting their hand up and saying, I will actually create an entire module or an entire learning, a Learning Pathway. We do have some awesome contributors that&#8217;s part of the Training Team that are already doing that. Some people are writing scripts. Some folks are actually, you know, creating everything from the beginning to the end. So they are writing the script, they recording the video, publishing the video, et cetera. And then we&#8217;ve, of course, have people reviewing content. We&#8217;ve got folks running online workshops. If maybe creating video content is not their, is not their forte, they can can run online workshops. So yeah, many ways getting involved.</p>



  <p>[00:12:16] <strong>Wes:</strong> But Josepha, I wanted to point something else out that I haven&#8217;t done. I think there was a real need for Learning Pathways because, at the moment, if somebody new to WordPress or new to developing with WordPress wants to find learning content. You know, where do they go? What&#8217;s the main platform to go to? I think most people probably go to YouTube, right?&nbsp;But a lot of the content there are, are scattered and fragmented. </p>



  <p>So a lot of learning material or learning about WordPress is all over the place. It&#8217;s not in one place. And as I said, a place where you can actually learn from A to Z, learn progressively learning in a structured way. Yes, we know there are courses available that you can pay for, but the awesome thing about this project is that we are providing these Learning Pathways, these learning resources, for free for folks to be able to work through at their own time. I know that&#8217;s something else you asked earlier on. So yes, this is a course in quotation marks; this is a Learning Pathway that somebody can start whenever it suits them, you know, in the comfort of their own home, and they can work through the Learning Pathway from the beginning to the end. Or, if they feel I actually know everything taught in module one and two, I&#8217;m going to start at module three, they can do that. They basically come in at their skill level.</p>



  <p>[00:13:43] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes. I think it&#8217;s really important to try to meet people where they are. And I know that it&#8217;s difficult because, like, we don&#8217;t take a lot of data from our users. You don&#8217;t have to give us basically anything in order to use WordPress. And by basically, I mean you literally don&#8217;t have to give us anything to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:14:01] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so we always have some difficulty in figuring out what is it that our users need the most in order to succeed the quickest. And so I agree that there was a real need for this not only because, like, there&#8217;s plenty of content for getting from, like, some knowledge to a good amount of knowledge. There&#8217;s almost no content around, like, I didn&#8217;t know CMSs existed until yesterday, and now I need to quickly learn how to do it because it&#8217;s become a thing I need to do in my job. There&#8217;s some really clear, like use cases for being able to onboard quickly and progressively.<br><br>And I understand that, like, having a clear, structured way to learn doesn&#8217;t always fit with the idea of meeting people where they are. But I do really think that, that like what you were saying, it can be as structured as you need it to be. But also, if you get into it and you think to yourself, you know, I know this information already. I can move on to the next module. I can move on to the module after that. Similar to the way we do that at WordCamps also. If you get into a session and you thought it was going to be useful for you, and you discover that it&#8217;s not once you&#8217;re there, you don&#8217;t have to stay. You can go to a different room where they&#8217;re teaching about SEO if it turns out that you don&#8217;t need to learn about JavaScript today.</p>



  <p>[00:15:23] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And I think that that&#8217;s, it&#8217;s kind of the value that this is hoping to bring, like, because it is a little bit built one on top of the other when you discover that you have already learned something, you can easily try out the next step and know that it&#8217;s probably a good next step.</p>



  <p>[00:15:38] <strong>Wes:</strong> Exactly. And if you maybe want to teach this to other folks. The plan is to, you know, we had lesson plans. We have a lot of lesson plans on Learn. But the plan is also to, instead of having, as I said, two different content types, is to have lessons but then add a tab where you can click on teacher notes and actually teach something as well if that is your goal. But yes, our lessons and modules also include quizzes and, hopefully, some practical activities. We&#8217;ve incorporated WordPress Playground where, where folks can actually, you know, test out what they&#8217;ve learned or test their knowledge. So yeah, I agree with you that you can basically join the Learning Pathway wherever you feel the most comfortable.</p>



  <p>[00:16:28] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So we&#8217;ve been kind of in the weeds of the project itself, the program itself, and if you want to like do stuff with that and in that. Let&#8217;s switch gears a little bit and talk about just what people who are wanting to join those pathways would need to know. Do you have any advice for somebody who is just today learning about these Learning Pathways and they think to themselves, I definitely want to sign up for one of those. Like, for one, how do they get started? And for two, your like top two or three bits of advice for as they get started? </p>



  <p>[00:17:05] <strong>Wes:</strong> So you can make your way to learn.WordPress.org, and you can basically open the, the pathway, and you can start wherever, wherever you want to. We have made it possible to actually view these pathways or our content without logging in with your dot org profile. The other thing I also wanted to mention is that our content is actually hosted on YouTube now.</p>



  <p>So the great thing is we have these pathways within YouTube as well. So, folks can go to the, YouTube channel and see our content. And, of course, that basically reaches a very wide audience. And hopefully some of those videos will also bring people to the dot org site so that they can access the content.</p>



  <p>[00:17:57] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I think it&#8217;s great that you don&#8217;t have to sign up for a profile. If you are a brand new WordPresser and ran into this in your dashboard and are listening to this podcast now. So dot org profiles are a place where you can kind of log your activity in the WordPress community and the WordPress project. You do not have to have one in order to use WordPress. You don&#8217;t have to have one in order to look at these courses or to learn from them. But I always think that it&#8217;s kind of nice to get your profile set up so that people kind of know who you are and what you&#8217;re doing. And then also your activity shows up. Like, you can see that you enrolled in the course and you get to know for yourself that you made some progress. I know that when you&#8217;re getting started, it&#8217;s hard to, like, see your progress because you don&#8217;t know how far you have to go. And so, like progress when you&#8217;re starting out is really difficult to feel is real. And so I like it just so that you have a few reminders to yourself, like, look how far I&#8217;ve come as you&#8217;re trying to figure out how far you still have to go. And so I like that a lot. </p>



  <p>[00:18:58] <strong>Wes:</strong> You won&#8217;t be able to access all the content on Learn without your dot org profile. But one of the things we&#8217;ve made possible is to access these Learning Pathways, the new ones being launched without, you know, removing those blockers. So, of course, when you work through a Learning Pathway, you will be able to track your progress, and you will be able to see which lessons you have completed. So yeah, one of the pieces of advice I would give to somebody starting with the Learning Pathways actually to first go through the modules. And go through the lessons to see which things you know and feel comfortable with so that you don&#8217;t waste time maybe going through the first module and say, oh, I know this, and you&#8217;ve wasted time. Rather do a bit of research, a bit of reading, and then find the right place for you to start the journey.</p>



  <p>[00:19:45] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That&#8217;s excellent. I also, just as a learner, I try to always learn some stuff. And also, as you get older, it&#8217;s harder and harder to learn things partially because like you&#8217;re in a set path, but also, and here&#8217;s my advice to new learners: you worry about looking foolish. Like you, you worry, you&#8217;re showing up, and you don&#8217;t know anything about anybody else in the classroom. And so there&#8217;s this feeling of like, what if I&#8217;m the only person who does not know how to make this work? What if I&#8217;m the only person who can&#8217;t figure out what Wes meant by &#8220;Playground&#8221; or whatever it is? There&#8217;s this real feeling of looking silly when you&#8217;re doing something like this.</p>



  <p>[00:20:25] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I can&#8217;t control what anybody else says or does to anyone else, unfortunately. But what I can say is that I think that there&#8217;s never a bad time to start something you wish you had done, right? Like, the best time to have learned how to use your CMS, your website, make your website work was probably a year ago or something, but the second best time is today. And so, like, why not go ahead and get started and be part of that small group of adults that are learning new things every single day? I think that&#8217;s great. And so that&#8217;s my tip is to just embrace looking silly sometimes because you&#8217;re making some choices about your future, and that&#8217;s always a good choice.</p>



  <p>[00:21:04] <strong>Wes:</strong> And I would also say test your knowledge. So you&#8217;ve mentioned WordPress Playground. And as I said, we&#8217;ve incorporated into the Learning Pathways, but sometimes you watch a video, or you read something, and you feel like, oh yeah, I know this, but you know, the proof is in the pudding. So go and test it out. Use a test website or use WordPress Playground and test yourself to see if you can actually implement this or do something. So yeah, that&#8217;s definitely one of the other tips I want to highlight; you know, they also say you, you learn by doing.</p>



  <p>[00:21:38] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. And also, like if you have gotten to a point you&#8217;ve done the learning, you&#8217;ve done some practicing, you think you&#8217;ve got it and want to like try to figure out what other things can be done with it. I recommend this is how I did a lot of my early WordPress learning to organize an event with your local meetup.<br><br>Like, I did not know enough about WordPress when I started organizing WordPress meetups. I literally knew nothing. And I basically brought people in and was like, hey, we need people to teach us about this, us being half me. Come in and teach us. And, and that can be a really good thing, partially because, like, you get to know your local folks and see what&#8217;s going on and get a sense for, like, what is out there, especially if you&#8217;re learning this in order to run a business or to accomplish something for your job that you already have, like knowing what&#8217;s out there is super helpful. But then I find that once you embrace the fact that sometimes you will look silly, and that&#8217;s the only way that we can know we&#8217;re learning something. Like once you&#8217;ve embraced it, having some people who are willing to look a little silly with you is kind of, kind of fun, kind of nice. Also, like we&#8217;re all going to look at this problem that we definitely don&#8217;t understand and hopefully look like, at the end, we know what we&#8217;re doing, but between looking at it the first time and at the end of this meetup, we&#8217;re all going to look a little bit silly, ask silly questions. And I think that that&#8217;s a really helpful thing, too. But yeah, knowing some basic information is a great place to start before you do that, especially if you get anxious about looking silly. And I think these pathways are going to really help to get folks a little bit of a leg up on those big questions that they have as you&#8217;re starting to learn how to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:23:18] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So we talked about, like, tips and tricks for learners in general. But if you had something that you wanted to share with us that, like, you&#8217;re really excited about for either the Training Team or for the Learning Pathways in general, I think the Learning Pathways are slated to be shipped by, like, end of September or something. So, like, a lot of them are coming quite quickly.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:23:38] <strong>Wes:</strong> So I am most excited about the website redesign and the new look and feel of the website. And also, you know, one of the goals for us as a Training Team is for learn.WordPress.org to be one of the places people come to and learn about WordPress. And I feel these Learning Pathways and the new website redesign and all the hard work that&#8217;s gone into this project is hopefully going to, make that happen. As I said, our content is also available on YouTube. So we&#8217;ve really tried to make it easy for folks to find our content and also now to digest our content in a progressive and in a structured way. Because, you know, learning is hard. And hopefully, these Learning Pathways have made it easier for folks to, as you said, to build on your knowledge. You know, a lot of times, there&#8217;s knowledge gaps. And I think that&#8217;s what makes learning so hard. And hopefully with these pathways, you can build that knowledge one step at a time.</p>



  <p>[00:24:44] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. And as is the way with open source, like we can only make these pieces of content better if you all show up and help us like try it out, learn some stuff, and tell us what was confusing. Tell us what was too big a step. Cause yeah, you&#8217;re right. There are some knowledge gaps and when you&#8217;re on the other side of knowing something, it is so hard to tell how big a step is, you know?</p>



  <p>[00:25:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> Exactly.</p>



  <p>[00:25:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so we need y&#8217;all to come in here and tell us very plainly as a new learner like that was eventually what I needed, but this part here was especially confusing. This part over here was too like too many little steps like we just we&#8217;re trying to make sure that it works for you WordPressers, future WordPressers of the world. And so yeah, come build some learning with us over here on the Training Team.</p>



  <p>[00:25:35] <strong>Wes:</strong> And yes, please, we want feedback because, as you say, as we iterate, we want to improve. So there will be a place where you can provide feedback, and at the end of the pathway where there will also be a satisfaction survey for folks to to complete.</p>



  <p>[00:25:50] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Great. Well, folks, we&#8217;re gonna have a bunch of links in the show notes. There&#8217;s so much stuff out here to learn with and about WordPress. Wes, thank you so much for joining me today.</p>



  <p>[00:26:01] <strong>Wes:</strong> Thank you for having me. And I will see you all on Learn.</p>



  <p>[00:26:05] (Music interlude)</p>



  <p>[00:26:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That brings us now to our small list of big things. Although I have to say we have a bunch of links that we&#8217;re going to share in the show notes. If you&#8217;re listening to this in a place where there are not show notes, you can head over to WordPress.org/news. That&#8217;s where we keep all of those. If you are lucky, we also will help you find it on Twitter/X, but I think that it&#8217;s hard to find things over there these days. So WordPress.org/news is your best bet. Now, it is time for the small list of big things.</p>



  <p>So, first up on my list is that WordPress 6.5.5 is now available. It&#8217;s got a few fixes in it, some maintenance things and some security fixes as well. I recommend that you update your sites immediately. You can download it from WordPress.org/download, or you can just visit your WordPress dashboard. If you&#8217;re on a managed host, they may have already done this for you, too. But auto-updates, manual updates, CLI updates. However, you want to get it done, get it done. But it is recommended to do this as soon as possible. 6.5.5.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:27:16] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The second thing on my list is that the WordPress Contributor Mentorship program has a call for interest out. This is a program that we launched about a year ago as well. And we had such a good bit of success at the end of the first round in February that there was significant interest in doing another cohort. So, that program connects seasoned WordPress contribution experts with folks who are new to contributing and offer a fantastic opportunity for mentees to gain hands-on experience contributing to WordPress while their mentors share their expertise and improve their leadership skills. So, most of the time, what you are going to be contributing to is probably a release of WordPress, but there are also a lot of opportunities to contribute to things like the Training Team that we&#8217;ve been talking about today and other teams as well. Not everything is focused all around our release cycle. We have things happening in the WordPress project literally all the time. It is a project that never sleeps.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:28:17] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Speaking of projects that never sleep, our next official release, our second release of the year, is coming out. WordPress 6.6 is coming out just about a week from now. It is the second major release of 2024 and has a lot of things in it that you will want to check out. If you have not yet seen the hallway hangout where we take a look at what was happening in the release, what we intended to get into the release, take a look at it. And if you haven&#8217;t tested it yet, if you are one of our plugin developers, if you are building something on top of WordPress core, now is the time to check that out and test it against your products.</p>



  <p>And then the final thing is that it&#8217;s a new month, my friends. Here we are in July, and we have a ton of things happening in the project. That&#8217;s the theme of my small list of big things: the project that never sleeps. But we have a lot of team meetings that are happening. If you haven&#8217;t attended one in a while or even if you have never attended one of these meetings and you were trying to figure out when to start, now is as good a time as any. You can join your fellow community members and contribute to the WordPress project. And there are ways that you can do that from home and from your computer and for some parts of the project, like from your phone, if you are taking photos out and about and submitting those. So check out make.WordPress.org/meetings. It&#8217;ll give you a sense for everything that&#8217;s happening. Do not get overwhelmed by that calendar. You can just choose which team you think is most interesting to you. </p>



  <p>[00:29:45] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Your small list of never-sleeping things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:30:15] (Music outro)</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17489";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:72:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 02 Jul 2024 17:09:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:6:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:3;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:4;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"RC2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:5;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17469";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:345:"WordPress 6.6 RC2 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC2 on a test server or a local environment. Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10955:"
  <p>WordPress 6.6 RC2 is ready for download and testing!</p>



  <p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, please evaluate RC2 on a test server or a local environment.</p>



  <p>Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.</p>



  <p>You can test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in four ways:</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-RC2.zip">RC2 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br><code>wp core update --version=6.6-RC2</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D">6.6 RC2 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Please test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in one or more of these four ways.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">6.6 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-6/">6.6-related posts</a> in the next few weeks for further details.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in WordPress 6.6 RC2?</h2>



  <p>Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 19 bug fixes for the Editor and more than <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">20 tickets for WordPress Core</a>.</p>



  <p>Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">Beta 1 announcement</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.6?since=2024-06-24&amp;until=2024-06-30">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since June 25</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">Closed Trac tickets</a> since June 25</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a>. Then, check out this list:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/hallway-hangout-section-styles-and-other-block-style-variation-updates/">Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/">Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/editing-custom-fields-from-connected-blocks/">Editing custom fields from connected blocks</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/updates-to-the-interactivity-api-in-6-6/">Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+6-6/">All 6.6-related developer notes</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can contribute. Here&#8217;s how</h2>



  <p>WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved in testing</h3>



  <p>Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17392">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you&#8217;re new to testing, follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>



  <p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">WordPress Trac</a>. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Search for vulnerabilities</h3>



  <p>From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 9), the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/06/04/wordpress-6-6-is-coming/">financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities</a> doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Update your theme or plugin</h3>



  <p>If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. </p>



  <p>Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC2, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/">plugin’s readme file</a> to 6.6.</p>



  <p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forum</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Help translate WordPress</h3>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English? <bdo lang="es" dir="ltr">¿Español?</bdo> <bdo lang="fr" dir="ltr">Français?</bdo> <bdo lang="ru" dir="ltr">Русский</bdo>? <bdo lang="ja" dir="ltr">日本</bdo>語? <bdo lang="hin" dir="ltr">हिन्दी</bdo>? <bdo lang="bn" dir="ltr">বাংলা</bdo>? You can <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Release the haiku</h2>



  <p>6.6 draws near.<br>In two weeks the final&#8217;s here.<br>Test. Test. Then test more.</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right"><em>Props to <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanmaguitar/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>juanmaguitar</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>meher</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>desrosj</a></em> <em>and <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/atachibana/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>atachibana</a> for peer review.</em></p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17469";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:78:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:33:"WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 1";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-1/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 25 Jun 2024 16:23:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:8:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:3;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:4;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"core";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:5;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:6;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"release candidates";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:7;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17429";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:356:"The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.6 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC1 on a test server or a local environment. Reaching this phase of [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11225:"
  <p>The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.6 is ready for download and testing!</p>



  <p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, please evaluate RC1 on a test server or a local environment.</p>



  <p>Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.</p>



  <p>You can test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in four ways:</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-table"><table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-RC1.zip">RC1 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br><code>wp core update --version=6.6-RC1</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D">6.6 RC1 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Please test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in one or more of these four ways.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>The current target for the WordPress 6.6 release is <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">6.6 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-6/">6.6-related posts</a> in the next few weeks for further details.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Two notes about changes in the RC period</h2>



  <p><strong>Hard string freeze:</strong> From now until July 16, there is a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#hard-freeze">hard string freeze</a> in place—no strings may change, and no new strings may be committed. That&#8217;s to give the Polyglots team time to translate WordPress 6.6 into as many languages as possible before final release.</p>



  <p><strong>Two-committer signoff:</strong> Commits in the RC period also require two Core committers to sign off on every merge. Since release candidates are supposed to be ready to go, only major fixes and blessed tasks should merge at this late date.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in WordPress 6.6 RC1?</h2>



  <p>Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 40 bug fixes for the Editor and more than <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=02%2F27%2F2024..03%2F05%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.5&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">40 tickets for WordPress Core</a>.</p>



  <p>Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">Beta 1 announcement</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.6?since=2024-06-18&amp;until=2024-06-24">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since June 18</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F18%2F24..06%2F24%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;max=1000&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">Closed Trac tickets</a> since June 18</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/21/wordpress-6-6-css-specificity/">WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/site-wide-background-images-in-wordpress-6-6/">Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/section-styles/">Section Styles</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes-6-6/">All 6.6-related developer notes</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How you can contribute</h2>



  <p>WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people who collaborate on and contribute to to its development. The resources below outline a wide variety of ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, whether or not you have any technical expertise.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved in testing</h3>



  <p>Testing for issues is critical to making sure WordPress is speedy and stable. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17392">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you&#8217;re new to testing, follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>



  <p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">WordPress Trac</a>. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Search for vulnerabilities</h3>



  <p>From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 16), the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/06/04/wordpress-6-6-is-coming/">monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities</a> doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Update your theme or plugin</h3>



  <p>If you build themes, plugins, blocks or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/">plugin’s readme file</a> to 6.6.</p>



  <p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forum</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Help translate WordPress</h3>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English? <bdo lang="es" dir="ltr">¿Español?</bdo> <bdo lang="fr" dir="ltr">Français?</bdo> <bdo lang="ru" dir="ltr">Русский</bdo>? <bdo lang="ja" dir="ltr">日本</bdo>語? <bdo lang="hin" dir="ltr">हिन्दी</bdo>? <bdo lang="bn" dir="ltr">বাংলা</bdo>? You can <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Release the haiku</h2>



  <p>We&#8217;re here already?<br>RC1 means three weeks left.<br>Have some fun—come test!</p>



  <p><em>Props to <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>meher</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>audrasjb</a> for collaborating on this post.</em></p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17429";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:63:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"WordPress 6.5.5";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-5/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:10:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Security";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17426";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:377:"WordPress 6.5.5 is now available! This release features three security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. This minor release also includes 3 bug fixes in Core. You can download WordPress 6.5.5 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Aaron Jorbin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5127:"
  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.5.5 is now available!</h2>



  <p>This release features three security fixes. Because this is a security release, <strong>it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. </strong>This minor release also includes <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?component=!Build%2FTest+Tools&amp;milestone=6.5.5&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;col=component&amp;order=priority">3 bug fixes</a> in Core.</p>



  <p>You can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.5.5.zip">download WordPress 6.5.5 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>



  <p>WordPress 6.5.5 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 which is scheduled for July 16, 2024.</p>



  <p>For more information on WordPress 6.5.5, please visit the <a href="https://wordpress.org/documentation/wordpress-version/version-6-5-5/">HelpHub site</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Security updates included in this release</h2>



  <p>The security team would like to thank the following people for <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress?type=team">responsibly reporting vulnerabilities</a>, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the HTML API reported by Dennis Snell of the WordPress Core Team, along with Alex Concha and Grzegorz (Greg) Ziółkowski of the WordPress security team.</li>



  <li>A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the Template Part block reported independently by Rafie Muhammad of Patchstack and during a third party security audit.</li>



  <li>A path traversal issue affecting sites hosted on Windows reported independently by Rafie M &amp; Edouard L of Patchstack, David Fifield, <a href="https://hackerone.com/x89">x89</a>, <a href="https://hackerone.com/apple502j">apple502j</a>, and <a href="https://hackerone.com/mishre">mishre</a>.</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>



  <p>This release was led by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/">Aaron Jorbin</a>.</p>



  <p>WordPress 6.5.5 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.</p>



  <p class="is-style-wporg-props-medium"><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/xknown">Alex Concha</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/azaozz">Andrew Ozz</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bernhard-reiter">bernhard-reiter</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/costdev">Colin Stewart</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/">David Baumwald</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell">Dennis Snell</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/grantmkin">Grant M. Kinney</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/gziolo">Greg Ziółkowski</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb">Jb Audras</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/matveb">Matias Ventura</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mcsf">Miguel Fonseca</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rajinsharwar">Rajin Sharwar</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellofromTonya">Tonya Mork</a></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to contribute</h2>



  <p>To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW">#core</a> Slack channel. Need help? Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/tutorials/faq-for-new-contributors/">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>



  <p><em>Already testing WordPress 6.6? The fourth beta is now available (<a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-beta4.zip">zip</a>) and it contains these security fixes. For more on 6.6, see the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-3/">beta 3 announcement post</a>. Learn more about <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">testing WordPress 6.6 here</a>.</em></p>



  <p>Props to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/paulkevan/">Paul Kevan</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis/">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/xknown/">Alex Concha</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/hellofromTonya">Tonya Mork</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/">Angela Jin</a> for reviewing.</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17426";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		

  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:7:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"WP Briefing: Episode 82: WCEU Hallway Track";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/episode-82-wceu-hallway-track/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:2:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Podcast";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"wp-briefing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17409";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:312:"Big events create big moments, and WordCamp Europe 2024 was no exception. Join host Josepha Haden Chomphosy on this episode of the WordPress Briefing as she shares her top insights  and favorite highlights from the event. Discover what the WordPress community focused on during this exciting three-day gathering.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:9:"enclosure";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:0:"";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:3:{s:3:"url";s:51:"https://wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/WPB082.mp3";s:6:"length";s:1:"0";s:4:"type";s:0:"";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10086:"
  <p>Big events create big moments, and WordCamp Europe 2024 was no exception. Join host Josepha Haden Chomphosy on this episode of the WordPress Briefing as she shares her top insights  and favorite highlights from the event. Discover what the WordPress community focused on during this exciting three-day gathering.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



  <p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Europe</a></li>



  <li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">WordPress 6.6 RC1 (and upcoming schedule)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2024/05/31/wordpress-project-contributor-handbook-v2/">WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/sustainability/2024/06/12/the-sustainability-teams-handbook-for-events-is-here/">The Sustainability Team’s Handbook for Events&nbsp;is here!</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/volunteering-at-wordcamp-us-2024/">Volunteering at WordCamp US 2024</a>&nbsp;</li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li>Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



  <p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;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.</p>



  <p>[00:00:28] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:00:40]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong> My friends, another WordCamp Europe is in the books. We had the second-highest number of tickets sold in the history of our event series, with the first being WordCamp Europe in Berlin. But even with that number of tickets sold, that number of people gathering together to talk about WordPress and related things, there were still a lot of people who didn&#8217;t get to join us.</p>



  <p>[00:01:01] <strong>Josepha:</strong> For some, that came with experiencing FOMO, but some of you embraced the JOMO of it all. Either way, at this point, there are a good collection of wrap-ups and round-ups going around, so I&#8217;m here to tell you a bit about what was buzzing in the hallway track.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Firstly, everyone was so excited to see old friends and make new ones. Everywhere I turned, I saw WordPressers in clusters catching up, most included new to the crew faces. So we know that we were using the Pac-Man rule that we love so much. But even while they were catching up on the last two, three, four years, they were also talking to each other about how to get more folks to things like this. </p>



  <p>Since we all generally agree that your first time meeting other WordPressers can be a truly pivotal moment in your WordPress journey, it was a delight to hear so much brainstorming focused on that. From mentorship to community introduction and the future of our events, the question of how to keep our ecosystem healthy and thriving was a big topic. Does any one of us have all the answers to this? No, but fortunately, we&#8217;ve got a global set of thinkers working on this global question. So, together, I&#8217;m sure we can come up with some good guesses to try out.</p>



  <p>[00:02:21] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Secondly, I saw a ton of talks and discussions about career development, not only about how to learn more but also how to be a champion for open source in your company, how to advocate for contribution as a best business practice. And what other communities can teach us about how they commit to their user&#8217;s continuing education, for lack of a friendlier term.</p>



  <p>And boy, do I love a good conversation about how to make working in open source easier, make it more meaningful, and more impactful. I&#8217;m in favor of anything that helps to dignify our profession. The front-facing, easy-to-use experience of WordPress, in particular, has been misunderstood to mean that we are a simple piece of software for simple tasks. And that is the way with our mission really. If we succeed at democratizing publishing or learning or commerce for that matter, we are taking the arcane and making it mundane. But simple to use doesn&#8217;t mean simple to create. And I want all of our future employers and clients to see that.</p>



  <p>[00:03:24] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And then the final thing that I saw lighting up the hallway track was the idea of bringing life and excitement back to the web. WordPress has been fighting against closed systems for a long time, but as Matt alluded to in his keynote, merely having an open web is still not quite as fun as having an active and dynamic one. And we saw that both in general desire to bring fun back to being online, but also in the fresh variety of demos and workshops that we saw in the fun that was brought to the event. There were new and shocking implementations of Playground, I must say. Which, as far as I can tell, will basically be able to run everything one day.</p>



  <p>[00:04:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> But at WordCamp Europe, it ran; it powered our second massive hybrid translation event, where we translated something like 50,000 strings. We also had an amazing speed-building duel with an accepted future challenge between Jessica Lyschik and Matt Mullenweg. And not for nothing; the way we designed; the way the event area was put together included ways to stop and just have fun.</p>



  <p>There was a little grassy area with yard games and smaller pods of chairs for those quick hallway catch-ups that you just don&#8217;t get anywhere else. And for me, it was simply lovely to see everyone embracing the fun that was there, but also hearing about how much they wanted to help the web embrace the fun that could be.</p>



  <p>[00:04:48] (Music interlude)&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:04:55] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Thanks for listening to my hallway track recap. Hopefully, it caused JOMO, not FOMO. And now, let&#8217;s turn our attention to the small list of big things.</p>



  <p>[00:05:05] <strong>Josepha:</strong> First thing on my list is WordPress 6.6 update. So we are reaching the release candidate phase tomorrow. WordPress 6.6 RC1 will be released, so download and join the community helping us to get this release out the door. It is scheduled for July 16th. If you have plugins or themes or any sort of business that uses WordPress, now is the time to get in and test it on a test site. I don&#8217;t recommend putting it in production at any point, but come and test it. Help us break it so that we can make sure that it doesn&#8217;t break for other people, for the, you know, 43% of the web that uses it when we get it out the door on the 16th.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>The second thing on the list is that we have a WordPress Project Contributor Handbook V2 out there. It aims to be the quintessential resource for everyone in our community. And it will provide a bird&#8217;s eye view of where to find key information and different aspects of our community. How it all kind of connects together. And, just like a release, we really need some feedback from you. There is the repo on GitHub where you can go and kind of make inline comments, join the discussion about it. It can be a go-to resource if we look at it together and make sure that it has as much information as clearly stated as you wished you had when you were learning your way around WordPress for the first time.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:06:27] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The third thing on the list is actually another handbook. So, the Sustainability Team has put together a handbook specifically for events. It&#8217;s their first version, and over the past few months, members of that team have been sharing their ideas and experiences on how WordPress community events can be held more sustainably. All this input created a first draft, which eventually became this first version. And so we&#8217;ll put a link in the show notes, wander over there, take a look at it, see what some best practices for sustainable events are in the WordPress ecosystem.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:07:02] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And then the final thing on my list is about WordCamp US. I realize this is a podcast about WordCamp Europe right now. And so it&#8217;s odd to think that I&#8217;m moving right along into WordCamp US. However, there is a deadline coming up. July 1st is the last day to sign up to be a volunteer at this event. It&#8217;s taking place this year in Portland, Oregon, on the west side of the US. And it should be a really fun time. It&#8217;s middle of September. Come on out there. Learn about WordPress. Learn about contribution. Maybe get some voodoo donuts. You know, the important things.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:08:06] (Music outro)&nbsp;</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17409";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:75:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"WordPress 6.6 Beta 3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 18 Jun 2024 16:37:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:7:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:3;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:4;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:5;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:6;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Testing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17392";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:342:"WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 is here! Please download and test it. This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do. Instead, test Beta 3 on a local site or a testing environment [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7996:"
  <p><br>WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 is here! Please download and test it.</p>



  <p id="block-79834dd4-c99a-477a-b722-091806a32976"><strong>This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. </strong>Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.</p>



  <p id="block-aa4b335e-b1a2-4904-a68c-c3e73e574386">Instead, test Beta 3 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-beta3.zip">Beta 3 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br><code>wp core update --version=6.6-beta3</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use a <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}">6.6 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance</a> to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! </td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Four ways to test WordPress Beta 3.</figcaption></figure>



  <p id="block-7e6a92e6-dba7-4f69-9226-f4dcab4a0b91">The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next four weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="block-aebce12b-08f8-40a7-9fe6-5a08f75d2254">If you find an issue</h2>



  <p id="block-b9e58289-f6cb-4bdd-85a1-eb8d9a704ae4">If you run into an issue, please share it in the&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a>&nbsp;of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">via WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The bug bounty doubles in the beta period</h2>



  <p>The WordPress community sponsors a&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/06/04/wordpress-6-6-is-coming/">financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities.</a>&nbsp;That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC), which will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this&nbsp;<a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a>&nbsp;and in this&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The work continues</h2>



  <p><strong>Catch up with what&#8217;s new in 6.6:</strong> <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.</a></p>



  <p>Beta 3 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including 39 <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=06%2F11%2F2024..06%2F16%2[…]id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">tickets for WordPress core</a>:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/trunk?since=2024-06-08&amp;until=2024-06-16" data-type="link" data-id="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.5?since=2024-02-14&amp;until=2024-02-20">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since June 11</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?changetime=06%2F11%2F2024..06%2F16%2F2024&amp;resolution=fixed&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;max=1000&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;order=milestone">Closed Trac tickets</a> since June 11</li>
  </ul>



  <p>The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing. </p>



  <p><strong>Do you build themes?</strong>&nbsp;Feedback from testing has already prompted a change in the way you offer style variations to your users.</p>



  <p>In Beta 1, if you made preset style variations for your theme, it automatically generated a full set of color-only and type-only options your users could mix and match across the different variations.</p>



  <p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/62469/commits/83f62ca81ff89b9d395863f6e9b7e82cec76d1b3">In Beta 3, your theme no longer generates those options automatically—you do.</a> So you can present a simpler set of choices, curated to guide users&#8217; efforts to more pleasing results.&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/62285" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">For more insight into the rationale, see this discussion.</a></p>



  <p>Thanks again for this all-important contribution to WordPress!</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right is-style-default"><em>Props to <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>meher</a>,  <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>rmartinezduque</a></em>,  @<em>atachibana</em>,<em> and  <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/mobarak/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>mobarak</a> for collaboration and review.</em></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Beta 3 haiku</h2>



  <p>Beta ends at 3<br>One more week, then comes RC<br>When we freeze the strings!</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17392";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:63:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36:"Highlights from WordCamp Europe 2024";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/highlights-from-wordcamp-europe-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 15 Jun 2024 21:29:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Events";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"WordCamp";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"WCEU";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17374";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:332:"From June 13-15, 2024, WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe gathered in Torino to explore and celebrate the world’s most popular web platform at WordCamp Europe 2024. A dedicated team of 250 volunteers, led by WordCamp veterans Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Juan Hernando, and Takis Bouyouris, organized and produced the event.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15857:"
  <p><em>2,584 attendees participated in the 12th annual WordPress event in Europe, held at the </em><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/venue/"><em>Lingotto Conference and Exhibition Centre</em></a><em> in Torino, Italy.</em></p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?ssl=1"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1" alt="The Mole Antonelliana building in Torino, illuminated at night to celebrate WordCamp Europe 2024. Photo by Chris Clarke." class="wp-image-17376" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/wceu-torino-night.jpg?w=1080&amp;ssl=1 1080w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The <a href="https://www.museocinema.it/en/museum-and-ma-prolo-foundation/mole-antonelliana">Mole Antonelliana</a> in Torino, illuminated to celebrate WordCamp Europe 2024. Photo by Chris Clarke.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>From June 13-15, 2024, WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe gathered in Torino to explore and celebrate the world’s most popular web platform. A dedicated team of 250 volunteers, led by WordCamp veterans Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Juan Hernando, and Takis Bouyouris, organized and produced the event.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Impact in Action on Contributor Day</h2>



  <p><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/contributor-day/">Contributor Day</a> brought together 726 contributors working across 25 teams to support the WordPress project. Their accomplishments included translating 79,059 “strings” for the WordPress user interface across 29 languages, updating documentation for the forthcoming 6.6 release, onboarding new contributors for the support forums and testing teams, and identifying ways to improve plugin security.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?ssl=1"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1" alt="Contributors gathering at a table with laptops during WCEU 2024 Contributor Day. Photo by Chris Clarke." class="wp-image-17377" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/Contributors-at-work-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Contributors gathering during WCEU 2024 Contributor Day. Photo by Chris Clarke.</figcaption></figure>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Sustainable open source is the future</h2>



  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?ssl=1"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1" alt="Keynote presenters, Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer, on state at WCEU. Photo by Fede Padilla." class="wp-image-17378" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/day1-keynote.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Keynote presenters, Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer. Photo by Fede Padilla.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer delivered the event&#8217;s opening keynote address on <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/session/sustainable-open-source-is-the-future/">sustaining open source software projects</a>. Their keynote covered funding open source, contributing beyond code, and convincing buyers in commercial enterprises that open source is a viable alternative to proprietary platforms.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Two days of engaging sessions</h2>



  <p>Friday and Saturday saw 60 presentations and workshops held across <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/schedule/">three tracks</a>. Topics included WordPress development, accessibility, design, business, community, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1" alt="Three presenters seated with their laptops on stage during the Speed Build Session at WCEU. Photo by Roberto Vázquez." class="wp-image-17381" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Speed Build Session. Photo by Roberto Vázquez.</figcaption></figure>
  </div>



  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="783" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C783&#038;ssl=1" alt="Four panellists seated on stage during the Connect Series at WCEU. Photo by Fede Padilla." class="wp-image-17382" style="width:285px;height:auto" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C783&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?resize=300%2C229&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?resize=768%2C587&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/session-photo1-1.jpg?w=1404&amp;ssl=1 1404w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Connect Series. Photo by Fede Padilla.</figcaption></figure>
  </div>
  </div>



  <p>A youth workshop gave younger attendees hands-on opportunities to build WordPress websites, explore new tech, and learn about internet safety. Meanwhile, a wellness-themed track included yoga lessons and walking tours of Torino, encouraging attendees to step away from their screens and explore the beauty of this year’s host city.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mid-year project update</h2>



  <p>WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg shared a <a href="https://youtu.be/ELW4Jdvujbc">mid-year project update on WordPress</a> and concluded by fielding questions from the audience on various topics, from Gutenberg Phases to the WordPress Playground, and acknowledging a request to escalate a bug fix.</p>



  <p>Matt’s presentation highlighted the success of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/06/15/wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program-q4-2024-call-for-interest/">contributor mentorship program</a> and WCEU Contributor Day, demoed Translate Live, and shared an update on the <a href="https://wordpress.org/data-liberation/">Data Liberation</a> initiative.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Matt also covered the latest innovations with <a href="https://wordpress.org/playground/">WordPress Playground</a>, highlighted <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/04/how-wordpress-is-creating-a-faster-web/">performance gains</a>, and previewed features anticipated in future releases, like rollbacks for auto-updates and zoomed-out view.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1" alt="WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg on stage at WCEU. Photo by Chris Clarke." class="wp-image-17383" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/matt-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg. Photo by Chris Clarke.</figcaption></figure>



  <p>Acknowledging an exciting new trend in the WordPress community, Mullenweg discussed “speed build challenges,” where onlookers watch WordPress experts build websites in real-time, showcasing tips, shortcuts, and best practices. One such event took place during a WCEU session, and in the Q&amp;A portion of Matt’s presentation, he was invited to participate in one–an invitation he accepted!</p>



  <p>Matt reflected on WordPress reaching its 21st anniversary since he and Mike Little launched the first version in 2003. He <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/05/wp21/">shared 11 things</a> to ensure that WordPress remains sustainable for decades to come:</p>



  <ol class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.</li>



  <li>Blogs and dynamic sites are better.</li>



  <li>Documentation should be wiki-easy to edit.</li>



  <li>Forums should be front and center.</li>



  <li>Plugins and themes with community infrastructure.</li>



  <li>Great theme previews and diverse aesthetics.</li>



  <li>We can’t over-index for guidelines and requirements.</li>



  <li>Feedback loops are so important.</li>



  <li>Core should be opinionated and quirky.</li>



  <li>If you make WordPress, use WordPress.</li>



  <li>Stay close to our end-users</li>
  </ol>



  <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="600" height="338" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ELW4Jdvujbc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
  </div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><a href="https://youtu.be/ELW4Jdvujbc">Watch Matt’s project update</a> on the WordPress YouTube channel.</figcaption></figure>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Closing remarks</h2>



  <p>In their closing remarks, the event organizers expressed gratitude for the endorsements of the <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/wordcamp-europe-receives-patronage-from-the-european-parliament/">European Parliament</a>, the city of Torino, and Turismo Torino, the regional tourism board. The volunteer team was celebrated for their hard work in producing the event.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Closing out a robust three days of programming, the organizing team announced that <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2025/">WordCamp Europe 2025</a> would be held in Basel, Switzerland, from June 5 to 7, 2025. The announcement was met with hearty applause and plans to meet in a year’s time.</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="682" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&#038;ssl=1" alt="Attendees gather for a photo at WCEU in Torino. Photo by Nilo Vélez." class="wp-image-17384" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/group.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-recalc-dims="1" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Attendees gather for a photo at WCEU in Torino. Photo by Nilo Vélez.</figcaption></figure>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Stay connected</h2>



  <p><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">WordPress events</a> enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.</p>



  <p>Mark your calendars for <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/">WordCamp US</a> (Portland, Oregon, United States), <a href="https://wordpress.org/state-of-the-word/">State of the Word</a> (Tokyo), and next year’s <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/">WordCamp Asia</a> in Manila!</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <p>This post is a collaboration between the contributors who produce content for <a href="https://wordpress.org/news">wordpress.org/news</a> and the WordCamp Europe Communications team.</p>



  <p>Props to the WCEU photos team for supplying the photos used for this post and to the following contributors for the work reviewing/contributing to this post: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/">@rmartinezduque</a>&nbsp;, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wmjohnston06/">@wmjohnston06</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/">@angelasjin</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">@cbringmann</a>.&nbsp;</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17374";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:75:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		
  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:6:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20:"WordPress 6.6 Beta 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:26:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:7:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:2;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3:"6.6";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:3;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:4;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"development";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:5;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:6;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Testing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17355";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:342:"WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 is here! Please download and test it. This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do. Instead, test Beta 2 on a local site or a testing environment [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7673:"
  <p><br>WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 is here! Please download and test it.</p>



  <p id="block-79834dd4-c99a-477a-b722-091806a32976"><strong>This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. </strong>Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.</p>



  <p id="block-aa4b335e-b1a2-4904-a68c-c3e73e574386">Instead, test Beta 2 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:</p>



  <figure class="wp-block-table"><table class="has-fixed-layout"><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-beta2.zip">Beta 2 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br><code>wp core update --version=6.6-beta2</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use a <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}">6.6 Beta 2 WordPress Playground instance</a> to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go!&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Three ways to test WordPress Beta 2.</figcaption></figure>



  <p id="block-7e6a92e6-dba7-4f69-9226-f4dcab4a0b91">The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next five weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="block-aebce12b-08f8-40a7-9fe6-5a08f75d2254">If you find an issue</h2>



  <p id="block-b9e58289-f6cb-4bdd-85a1-eb8d9a704ae4">If you run into an issue, please share it in the&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a>&nbsp;of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">via WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The bug bounty doubles in the beta period</h2>



  <p>The WordPress community sponsors a&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/06/04/wordpress-6-6-is-coming/">financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities.</a>&nbsp;That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC) that will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this&nbsp;<a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a>&nbsp;and in this&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The work continues</h2>



  <p><strong>Catch up with what&#8217;s new in 6.6:</strong> <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/" data-type="post" data-id="17289">check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.</a></p>



  <p>Beta 2 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&amp;changetime=02%2F14%2F2024..02%2F19%2F2024&amp;milestone=6.5&amp;col=id&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=priority&amp;order=id">tickets for WordPress core</a>:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/trunk?since=2024-06-04&amp;until=2024-06-07&amp;before=c7f51bdbe10bec0c0ab7f987a3f01caaa717c1db+70" data-type="link" data-id="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.5?since=2024-02-14&amp;until=2024-02-20">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since June 4</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?changetime=06%2F04%2F2024..06%2F11%2F2024&amp;resolution=fixed&amp;milestone=6.6&amp;max=1000&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=type&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;order=priority">Closed Trac tickets</a> since June 4</li>
  </ul>



  <p>The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing. Thanks again for this vitally important contribution to WordPress! </p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right is-style-default"><em>Props to <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/priethor/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>priethor</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>dansoschin</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidb/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>davidb</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/atachibana/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>atachibana</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>meher</a>, <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>webcommsat</a>, and <a href='https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanmaguitar/' class='mention'><span class='mentions-prefix'>@</span>juanmaguitar</a> for collaboration and review.</em></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Beta 2 haiku</h2>



  <p>Testing is vital:<br>It makes everything better.<br>Let&#8217;s find all the bugs!</p>
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:30:"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1";a:1:{s:7:"post-id";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"17355";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
  		
  		
  		
  		
  		
  				
  		
  		

  					
  										
  					
  		
  		

  			";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:4:{s:0:"";a:7:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"WP Briefing: Episode 81: It’s your first WordCamp? Welcome!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/episode-81-its-your-first-wordcamp-welcome/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 10 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"category";a:2:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Podcast";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}i:1;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"wp-briefing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17352";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:11:"isPermaLink";s:5:"false";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:373:"Get ready to dive into the vibrant world of WordCamps with this special episode of the WordPress Briefing, hosted by Josepha Haden Chomphosy! This episode is designed for first-time attendees; we’ll explore what to expect, from Contributor Day activities to mastering the art of socializing and networking. Whether you’re aiming to contribute to the WordPress [&#8230;]";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:9:"enclosure";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:0:"";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:3:{s:3:"url";s:51:"https://wordpress.org/news/files/2024/06/WPB081.mp3";s:6:"length";s:1:"0";s:4:"type";s:0:"";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:40:"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19398:"
  <p>Get ready to dive into the vibrant world of WordCamps with this special episode of the WordPress Briefing, hosted by Josepha Haden Chomphosy! This episode is designed for first-time attendees; we’ll explore what to expect, from Contributor Day activities to mastering the art of socializing and networking. Whether you’re aiming to contribute to the WordPress community or simply looking to make new connections, this episode will help you navigate your first WordCamp with confidence and excitement. Join us for a fun and informative guide to ensure you’re prepared and energized for all the activities these dynamic events have to offer.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



  <p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Asia</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp Europe</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp US</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/upcoming-events/filtered/type/wordcamp/">Upcoming Smaller WordCamps</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress</a><br><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9T3ZFSB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses Survey</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2025/dates-and-venue-revealed/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordCamp Asia 2025: Dates and Venue Revealed</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/contribute/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Try the Contributor Wizard Questionnaire</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2024/05/23/five-for-the-future-program-updates-may-2024/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Five for the Future Program Updates: May 2024</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li>Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



  <span id="more-17352"></span>



  <p>[00:00:00] <strong>Josepha:</strong> 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&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.</p>



  <p>[00:00:28] (Intro Music) </p>



  <p>[00:00:40] <strong>Josepha:</strong> A pivotal moment in my WordPress journey was when someone invited me to a WordCamp. I was sort of aware of WordPress, but certainly not aware of the community or the ways of open source. And when I look back, there were a few things I wish I had known going in. I am, of course, an unapologetic extrovert and therefore unstoppable at events, but if you are headed to your first WordCamp and are feeling a little nervous or confused, then pop in some earbuds because the next 10 minutes are for you.</p>



  <p>[00:01:11] <strong>Josepha:</strong> We&#8217;re going to first take a look at some basic tactical things about WordCamps, and then I&#8217;m going to tell you a few, like, human things about being a human going to events. If you&#8217;re a dog going to these events, I think that your prep is different, but also that is not my area of expertise. So the first thing, some tactical stuff about going to WordCamps. All of this happens before you even get in the front door. And so this is stuff that you can do in the comfort of your own home, on your own time, using your own computer. If you&#8217;ve got questions, you&#8217;ve got a search engine nearby to take some quick searches. Make sure you know what you&#8217;re talking about.</p>



  <p>But first things first, the shape of a WordCamp. All WordCamps have at least one day of talks, one social event, and sponsors to connect to. Some also have extra events that you need to sign up for, like Contributor Days, workshops, things like that. But we&#8217;ll start with the main event, right? We&#8217;re going to start with the day of talks and things.</p>



  <p>[00:02:09] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So when we&#8217;re looking at the main event of a WordCamp, what you should do is you should head to the WordCamp&#8217;s website and check out the schedule. I suggest that you plan for two, maybe three things that you might want to learn and look around at the schedule to see if there are any presenters or presentations that look like they fit those things that you think you might want to learn. Because if it&#8217;s not working for you, if it&#8217;s not teaching you something, then you don&#8217;t necessarily need to be in that one. Even if you&#8217;re not sure about a session a talk that you&#8217;re planning to go to, I recommend that you stop by, and then if you find out that it&#8217;s not for you, you can leave again.  That&#8217;s fine. But I do encourage you to go to at least one thing that feels a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Even if you feel lost right now. It at least gives you an idea of what to search for once you do get to that point. I would never have known the things to search for early on in my learning of WordPress without going to at least one or two sessions that were just way over my head. </p>



  <p>[00:03:14] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Second thing is don&#8217;t forget to check when lunch is available. And if you have dietary restrictions, let them know ahead of time. I realize this sounds silly, and I don&#8217;t know about you, but I can&#8217;t focus when I&#8217;m hungry. But also, it&#8217;s really a great, low-stakes networking time, and I think one of the overlooked networking times as well. I mean, everyone&#8217;s gotta eat, right? And it&#8217;s easier to strike up a conversation over a meal than just out of thin air or, you know, in the middle of a presentation when you&#8217;re supposed to be listening to a talk. So yeah, check out when lunch is happening! And yeah, make a friend or two, sit down at a table, and ask somebody what they&#8217;re doing with WordPress and how long they&#8217;ve been doing it.</p>



  <p>And the third thing that I would recommend that you do when you&#8217;re looking at kind of the main event for a WordCamp is to schedule in time to wander around and meet the event sponsors. They are all experts in some WordPress problem or other, so probably they have a solution to a problem that you have got. But they&#8217;re also how we keep our prices super low, so even if you have no problems or you think you have no problems. Still, check them out. They&#8217;re also staffed with wonderful people that are building really cool stuff with WordPress and so you might just get some inspiration out there. </p>



  <p>[00:04:28] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Now for the side events.</p>



  <p>So the side events, we&#8217;re going to kind of start close to the main event and work our way out. So you&#8217;ve got generally three types of side events if you don&#8217;t count the networking things, which, in this case, I&#8217;m not. But just know that almost every WordCamp has some networking event, either an after-party or, like, a happy hour, a social that happens before the event.</p>



  <p>You&#8217;ll get emails about those if you have signed up for updates on the website. Also, you can look on the website directly. Just check out the schedule. Always go to those. The networking is the best at a WordCamp. But the side events—we&#8217;re talking about specific types. Like I said, we&#8217;re going to start close and work our way out.</p>



  <p>[00:05:11] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So, workshops. These are just what they sound like. They&#8217;re classroom-style opportunities to practice the things you&#8217;ve learned at meetup events or on learn.WordPress.org, depending on how you found your way to this WordCamp. They mostly happen during the WordCamp itself. in a separate track, and there are like stacks of workshops in that track in that series of sessions. But a lot of them do require preregistration simply so that the trainer has an idea of how many people to expect. Again, if you get in the workshop and it&#8217;s way over your head, you feel like you absolutely cannot get it done, you&#8217;re always welcome to leave and check out some other area. But, in general, the workshops that we have WordCamps are pretty solid.</p>



  <p>So a little bit further removed from that are our Youth and Teen Days. So this is more of an event series that is specifically designed for teens or kids who are trying to learn more about WordPress and other related business and entrepreneurial topics. It&#8217;s kind of a catch all but also has a lot of WordPress content in it. They have age limits, of course, and require separate registration for safety and planning purposes both. And those, in general, are either half-day during the WordCamp itself or a full-day during that WordCamp. </p>



  <p>[00:06:32] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Which brings us then to the big one, the major side event. This is a full-day side event called Contributor Day. If your WordCamp has a Contributor Day, it will happen either the day before or the day after the WordCamp itself. It is an entire day where attendees come together to learn how to contribute to the future of the WordPress open source project. Now, if you are listening to this as part of, like, you&#8217;re getting ready to go to a WordCamp, and you don&#8217;t know what I meant by open source or open source project or WordPress open source project, that&#8217;s fine.</p>



  <p>[00:07:08] <strong>Josepha:</strong> You&#8217;re going to learn all about it at the Contributor Day if you go, but the TLDR is that this software that you are about to choose to build your website on is built by thousands of people across the planet who are looking for the best solutions to problems that they have in their businesses that probably you will encounter or have encountered before. There&#8217;s no new problems under the sun, and open source methodologies kind of use the collective wisdom of everybody who has ever worked with a WordPress project or site and ran into a problem that they had to solve on their own, like this open source project, this community of people just make sure that that wisdom is collected and standardized and made available for all of eternity.</p>



  <p>That&#8217;s all you need to know. Low key. I&#8217;ve made Contributor Days sound so calming. However, that is a whole day thing. It happens before or after the WordCamp. It has separate registration so that organizers of your WordCamp can plan for how many folks need to be there to teach new and returning contributors, what to do. If I&#8217;m going to be honest, if you&#8217;re going to get overwhelmed at any WordPress event, it&#8217;s going to be one of these, but they are well worth the effort.</p>



  <p>[00:08:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Even if you just make a single contribution and never return, which I hope is not the case for you. I hope you do return. Even if you make a single contribution and never return, there&#8217;s something really grounding about seeing how much expertise and time, and care goes into this software that is, against all odds, completely free. So that&#8217;s all the tactical stuff, or a lot of it anyway.</p>



  <p>It at least gives you a sense for what you&#8217;re getting yourself into for your first-ever wonderful WordPress weekend. But I promised you some human stuff too. So here is my considerably shorter list of stuff to bring as a human being going to a WordCamp. There&#8217;s an optional one. I&#8217;ll start you off with an optional one. Come with an idea of what you think you want to learn. You don&#8217;t have to come with that if you don&#8217;t want to. Some of us don&#8217;t know what we don&#8217;t know yet, and that&#8217;s fine too. But if you have a sense for what you think you need to learn, you&#8217;ll have an easier time figuring out how to spend your time while you&#8217;re here.</p>



  <p>[00:09:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So, the non-optional things. Bring some way to exchange information. It can be QR codes, business cards, or pen and paper. It doesn&#8217;t really matter as long as it&#8217;s something that works for you to be sharing information with people that you meet. Because you never know when you&#8217;re going to meet your business soulmate, but the odds that you&#8217;re going to do it at a WordCamp are pretty dang high.</p>



  <p>The second thing to bring is bring what you need to be comfortable. Bring your water bottle, a change of shoes if you need it, spare battery for your phone, your glasses. This day is going to be long enough without worrying about small inconveniences. So bring what you need to make yourself comfortable. </p>



  <p>[00:10:09] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And finally bring your bravery. You will not know by looking at someone whether they&#8217;ve been doing WordPress stuff for two years or two weeks. But you can know that at some point, they were in the first two days of trying to figure this all out. One of the most endearing things about this community is the zeal they bring to solving a problem. So if you get lost or stuck, just ask the person next to you. We all remember what it was like to know nothing, and we are rooting for you to succeed. And that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s your whole list. That&#8217;s everything you need to know to be the most prepared first-time attendee to a WordCamp ever. If that all sounded more overwhelming than just showing up, don&#8217;t worry.</p>



  <p>You can also just show up. That&#8217;s what I did. And even though I knew next to nothing, those WordCampers made me feel welcome and included and kept me coming back to learn more.</p>



  <p>[00:11:04] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Ah, WordCamps. Gosh, I love those things. So glad that we&#8217;re all getting back together for them.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:11:10] (Music interlude) </p>



  <p>[00:11:18] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That brings us now, my friends, to our small list of big things. If you&#8217;re a first-time WordPresser, if you&#8217;ve never been to a WordCamp, and you don&#8217;t know what any of these things are, don&#8217;t worry; you can still go take a look at them, or you can wait until later when you&#8217;re less overwhelmed.</p>



  <p>Either way, but this is our small list of big things for middle of the year 2024. First thing on my list, the gender equality in WordPress businesses survey is still open. It aims to gain critical insight into the gender composition of leadership teams, the experiences of women and gender-diverse leaders and employees, and also take a look at the challenges and barriers to their career success. I care deeply about making sure that we have a way for folks who are traditionally and historically underrepresented in technology have a way to get into our space. Obviously, women and nonbinary folks are an area that I feel particularly called to help build those on-ramps for, but I have a great concern for that across the entire ecosystem and any intersection that we run into as we get more and more users into our space. </p>



  <p>[00:12:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> If you are a woman, if you work with women, if you work in WordPress, if you work in a WordPress business, go take that survey, and let&#8217;s see what we find out about what it&#8217;s like to work in this space, as somebody that we normally don&#8217;t see. </p>



  <p>The second thing on our list is that WordCamp Asia 2025 dates and venue have been revealed. So WordCamp Asia 2023 and 2024 were both major successes, and we are excited to share that the dates and venue for next year will be February 20th, 21st, 22nd in 2025 in Manila, and you&#8217;ll be able to go over to that website, take a look at it, we&#8217;ll have a link in the show notes as always and maybe start planning your your next big Asian adventure.</p>



  <p>[00:13:13] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The third thing on my list is this new contributor wizard questionnaire. So, there are more than 20 teams to contribute to in the WordPress project. They all show up at those Contributor Days that I talked about. But there are more than 20 of them. They work on different parts of the WordPress project every day. And our passionate community offers contribution opportunities for everyone. I know, we know, that finding the right team is the key to a meaningful contributor experience. So, our interactive questionnaire is here to help you determine where to start. It is sometimes difficult to know whether you can contribute to a software if you are a designer, if you are a writer, if you are in marketing.</p>



  <p>And it turns out that you can contribute to WordPress with a bunch of skills that you otherwise would not have realized. So, we&#8217;ll have a link to the questionnaire in the show notes again. Also, it&#8217;s probably going to pop up on WordCamp sites, Contributor Day sites, anything that helps you all understand where you might find a little bit of success as a contributor is a good place for it to be. Take the questionnaire, see where you land, the WordPress sorting hat. </p>



  <p>[00:14:18] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And item number four. So we&#8217;ve made some updates, not we&#8217;ve made some updates, we have some updates from the Five for the Future program. So the Five for the Future program has a long history in the WordPress project. There are a couple of different episodes in this podcast where you can learn more about it.</p>



  <p>But, to bolster transparency and openness, we have an update on the current state of WordPress contributions as of the end of May 2024. In the past few months, we&#8217;ve made a lot of efforts to improve the program and contributor experience in WordPress. We&#8217;ve also done a little bit of work to kind of clean up the pledges that are in there for, people or companies or teams that have found that they couldn&#8217;t continue their contributions over time. That is fine too. But we&#8217;ll have a link to that update in the show notes as well.</p>



  <p>[00:15:09] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomposy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks. </p>



  <p>[00:15:36] (Music outro) </p>
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  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:117:"Gutenberg Times: New courses on Learn, My Menu theme, Section styles, Playground step library — Weekend Edition 299";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=29239";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22554:"<p>Hello, </p>



  <p>We are a few days away from WordPress 6.6 version hitting a WordPress instance near you. The latest <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-rc3/">WordPress 6.6 RC3</a> was released earlier this week. By now most of your testing should be done. Or you wait a few weeks before upgrading. On the Developer Blog <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/10/whats-new-for-developers-july-2024/">What&#8217;s new for Developers (July 2024)</a>, help you sort through all new features and updates coming to WordPress.  </p>



  <p>Contributors are working on what next for Gutenberg, and there will be another <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/09/hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-whats-next-in-gutenberg-2/">Hallway Hangout on August 15, 2024, at 15:00 UTC / 9 am EDT</a> to discuss what could be on the Roadmap for 6.7 and beyond.</p>



  <p>Exploring my hometown anew is a special treat for us; finding new Restaurants, hanging out in beer gardens and café&#8217;s with friends, shopping at farmers market, walking guided tours, and visiting art exhibitions in one of the seven art museums. It is wonderful to play tourist for a while. The next couple of weeks, I will write from my parent&#8217;s hometown, outside of Munich.</p>



  <p>Wishing you a wonderful weekend. </p>



  <p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>


  <div width="100%" class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block">
  <div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



  <ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#learn-wordpress-updates">Learn.WordPress updates</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#developer-courses">Developer Courses</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#upcoming-events">Upcoming events</a></li></ol></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-courses-on-learn-my-menu-theme-section-styles-playground-step-library-weekend-edition-299/#wordpress-playground">WordPress Playground</a></li></ol>
  </div></div>
  </div>


  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



  <p></p>



  <p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-bd161c98d845ccce6904985904015b6a">🎙️ Latest episode: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/">Gutenberg Changelog #103 – Create Block Theme Plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and Updates from the Training Team </a> with Nadia Maya Ardiani</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="learn-wordpress-updates">Learn.WordPress updates</h3>



  <p>The training team started publishing their Learning Pathways courses. </p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/">Beginner WordPress User</a> </strong> is a course for WordPress users to learn more about the content management system that houses their content. It holds 25 lessons that users can tackle one at a time, or in single sessions, if they are eager to learn something very specific, for instance, how to use, the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson/using-the-media-library-2/">Media Library</a> or <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson/understanding-the-difference-between-wordpress-posts-and-pages/">about the difference between post and pages. </a></p>



  <p>If you design sites for clients, you can guide your clients to a single lesson on the official WordPress site with videos on the official WordPress YouTube channel, that doesn&#8217;t have any advertising nor any other uncontrolled suggested videos. </p>



  <p>The next set of Lessons are for an Intermediate<a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-wordpress-user/"><strong> WordPress User</strong></a>. This one lets learners &#8220;delve into advanced features, fine-tune site customization and implement effective content strategies.&#8221; It comprises 37 lessons, also all with individual links, for instance: <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson/using-the-style-book/"><strong>Using the style book</strong></a> or <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson/uncovering-the-cover-block/"><strong>Uncovering the Cover block</strong></a></p>



  <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/"><img width="652" height="367" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Text-Guests-Image-block-2-copy-3.png?resize=652%2C367&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29299" /></a>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="developer-courses"><strong>Developer Courses</strong></h3>



  <p>For aspiring WordPress Developers the training team also released the first course. In 59 Lessons, the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/"><strong>Beginner WordPress Developer</strong></a> &#8220;course provides an extensive overview of the basics of almost every development topic relevant to WordPress. While it is geared toward first-time developers, there’s enough information available that it’s worthwhile for veterans in the community to learn something new&#8221;, wrote <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> in <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/10/whats-new-for-developers-july-2024/">What&#8217;s new for Developers (July 2024)</a></p>



  <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/"><img width="652" height="367" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/beginner-developer-learning-pathway.png?resize=652%2C367&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29298" /></a><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/"><strong>Beginner WordPress Developer</strong></a> 



  <p>On Learn. WordPress site, there are other developer related courses available which might be an overlap with the current work. They are more deep dives into certain topics. </p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/introduction-to-block-development-build-your-first-custom-block/">Introduction to Block Development: Build your first custom block</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/using-the-wordpress-data-layer/">Using the WordPress Data Layer</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-1/">A Developer&#8217;s Guide to Block Themes – Part 1</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/a-developers-guide-to-block-themes-part-2/">A Developers Guide to Block Themes – Part 2</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/develop-your-first-low-code-block-theme/">Develop Your First Low-Code Block Theme</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/converting-a-shortcode-to-a-block/">Converting a Shortcode to a Block</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/developing-with-the-wordpress-rest-api/">Introduction to developing with the WordPress REST API</a></li>
  </ul>



  <p class="has-light-background-background-color has-background"><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> and <strong>Wes Theron</strong> chatted about the Learning Pathways releases on the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast: <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/episode-83-learning-pathways/"><strong>Episode 83: Learning Pathways</strong></a></p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="upcoming-events">Upcoming events</h3>



  <p><strong>July 23, 2024 15:00 UTC</strong> <strong>/ 9 am EDT</strong> <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><strong>Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives</strong></a>. JuanMa Garrido and Nick Diego  will explore several scenarios often addressed with custom blocks and discuss alternative approaches, especially those that leverage block patterns and Editor extensions. Key highlights include:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>How to create overrides in synced patterns</li>



  <li>How to add new functionality to core blocks</li>



  <li>How to use content-only editing and the allowedBlocks attribute in patterns</li>



  <li>How to integrate block bindings and block variations</li>



  <li>How to effectively use block locking and naming</li>
  </ul>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>July 24, 2024 18:00 UTC / 2 pm EDT </strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301927241/"><strong>What’s new in WordPress 6.6?</strong></a> with<strong> Bud Kraus</strong> and <strong>Laura Adamonis.</strong> You will see demonstration of the main features of this new version: Here are the main features that will be demonstrated during this prevention: Synced Pattern overrides, the Grid Block, an improved way to layout pages and negative margins. All part of the new and improved user experiences in the site editor and more.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>July 19, 2024, </strong><a href="https://stellarwp.com/stellar-spark/spark-schedule/"><strong>Stellar Spark Conference</strong></a>, a free online WordPress event! The lineup of speaker promises interesting, inclusive and innovative talks. It starts at 9 am EDT with a keynote with <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong>. Among others, you can listen to Tammie Lister, Bet Hannon, Bud Kraus, David Wolfpas and Lindsey Miller.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>July 30, 2024 </strong><a href="https://wordsesh.com/"><strong>WordSesh</strong></a><strong> </strong>produced by <strong>Brian Richards</strong>&nbsp;is back. It&#8217;s a free online event with eight sessions across three live broadcasts in three time zones. Speakers announced so far include Alex Thomas (Defiant), Daniel Bachhuber (Automattic), Kimberly Lipari (Valet), and Piccia Neri (UX and accessible design lead)</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><em>Save the date:  </em><br /><strong>August 27, 2024 15:00 UTC /9 am EDT:</strong> <strong>Developer Hours: Building themes with the Create Block Theme plugin</strong> with <strong>Tammie Lister</strong>. In this session, you will explore how this plugin enhances WordPress theme development. You also learn to create custom themes, utilize the speed boost, define different types of themes, and streamline your theme creation process all the way to exporting the theme.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



  <p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> published the recording of his talk at WordCamp Europe on YouTube: <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2024/07/master-wordpress-block-themes-3-essential-principles-for-beginners/"><strong>Master WordPress Block Themes: 3 Essential Principles for Beginners</strong></a>. He shows you how Blocks, Templates, and Styles&nbsp;can transform your website design with their simplicity and flexibility.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><a href="https://x.com/nithin_sreeraj"><strong>Nithin Sreeraj</strong></a> at WP Content, takes you along <a href="https://wp-content.co/wordpress-6-6/"><strong>WordPress 6.6 and its expected new features and changes</strong></a> and explains in short paragraphs why those features and changes are important for you and your customers.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Mike McAlister</strong> announced the update of <a href="https://olliewp.com/the-ollie-pro-pattern-browser-just-got-a-huge-boost/"><strong>the Ollie Pro pattern browser just got a huge boost</strong></a>. To help you quickly browse the massive pattern collection, served from a cloud app, the updated increases load performance for these patterns seamless into the WordPress block editor. McAlister shared some technical details of the refactoring.</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>This announcement comes days after the <a href="https://olliewp.com/introducing-ollie-pro/">public roll-out of Ollie Pro</a>, </li>



  <li><strong>Rae Morey</strong> at <a href="https://www.therepository.email/?mailpoet_router&endpoint=view_in_browser&action=view&data=WzI1OSwiNGMzNDVlMjk4MWQ3IiwwLDAsMCwxXQ">The Repository covered it comprehensively</a>. </li>



  <li><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> will interview <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/0-aHhfbk8Ac">Mike McAlister on Monday on his live stream</a></li>
  </ul>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>One of the newest Block theme in the WordPress Repository is <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/mymenu/"><strong>My Menu</strong></a> by Automattic. It &#8220;is a simple theme designed to facilitate restaurant owners’ site-building experiences. It is clean, direct, and customizable. Test the cool style variations that have been added to the theme.&#8221; </p>



  <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/mymenu/preview/?style_variation=maroon"><img width="652" height="489" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MyMenu-Screen.jpg?resize=652%2C489&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29337" /></a><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/mymenu/preview/?style_variation=maroon">My Menu &#8211; style variation &#8220;Maroon&#8221; </a>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



  <p><strong>Jessica Lyschik</strong> asked contributors and users on <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/08/what-would-you-like-to-see-in-the-next-default-wordpress-theme/"><strong>What would you like to see in the next default WordPress theme?</strong></a>&nbsp; The next theme will be Twenty-Twenty-Five and is part of the next major WordPress version, to come out in mid-November. To be more specific, she asked:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>What types of sites do you want to create with the theme?</li>



  <li>What problems do you need the theme to solve to be able to create these sites?</li>



  <li>Is there an existing feature that you want the theme to support? </li>
  </ul>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>In his latest post, <strong>Brian Coords</strong> asked <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/will-wordpress-6-6-have-components/"><strong>Will WordPress 6.6 have components?</strong></a> After outlining his expectations on flexibility, Coords reflects on how Section Styles and Sync Pattern overrides fit into the ideas of a design system. </p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>The summary of this week&#8217;s Hallway Hangout is now available on the Make Core Blog: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/12/summary-hallway-hangout-section-styles/"><strong>Recap Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates</strong></a> &#8220;Attendees chatted about cool new features and handy tips for styling sections in WordPress 6.6. They also swapped stories and ideas on how to handle theme styles with section styles. The group shared their experiences and brainstormed ways to make pattern management and theme building in&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;better.&#8221;</p>



  <p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



  <p>In this week&#8217;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDozCmu1l0"><strong>Developer Hours: Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6, </strong></a><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> and <strong>Nick Diego</strong> discussed how the more unified slots and extensibility APIs are unified in the @wordpress/editor package global variable, simplifying the integration of extensions across editors for developers. The user interface is also becoming more standardized.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
  </div>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordpress-playground">WordPress Playground</h2>



  <p><strong>Alex Kirk </strong>has created a <a href="https://akirk.github.io/playground-step-library/">WordPress Playground Step Library</a>. To learn more about the thoughts behind it and how to use it, he also wrote a blog post about how to <a href="https://alex.kirk.at/2024/07/11/wordpress-playground-step-library/"><strong>Build a Playground Blueprint with a Drag and Drop UI</strong></a>.</p>



  <a href="https://alex.kirk.at/2024/07/11/wordpress-playground-step-library/"><img width="652" height="356" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/wordpress-playground-step-library-1-1024x559-1.png?resize=652%2C356&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29306" /></a>



  <p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



  <p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



  <p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />


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  <p>Featured Image: Reflections Munich Marstall photo by Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>



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  </div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 13 Jul 2024 04:09:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:46:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 14.0.0 « Da Lucia »";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=334577";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://buddypress.org/2024/07/buddypress-14-0-0-da-lucia/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10099:"<p>We’re very excited to announce the immediate availability of <a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.14.0.0.zip">BuddyPress 14.0.0 « Da Lucia »</a>, named after the excellent pizza restaurant located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, France. Get it now from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">WordPress.org plugin repository</a>, or right from your WordPress Dashboard.</p>



  <p>This new major version of your site’s community engine introduces around 80 changes mostly working under the hood to improve documentation, code formatting, consistency and the stability of the plugin. Here are five improvements we would like to highlight:</p>



  <ol class="wp-block-list">
  <li>There’s a new &#8220;BuddyPress constants&#8221; panel added to the WordPress Site Health information tool. Use it to check whether you’re using deprecated constants in your custom code or third party BP Plugins/Add-ons. The information in the &#8220;BuddyPress&#8221; and &#8220;BuddyPress constants&#8221; panels is also very useful when you need to ask for support.</li>



  <li>Most BuddyPress Admin screens now have a help tab in their top right corner which includes a link to an updated&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/buddypress/buddypress/tree/master/docs/user/administration#readme">documentation resource</a>.</li>



  <li>Whether BuddyPress is installed on a multisite network or on a single site,&nbsp;<a href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2024/04/21/signups-are-becoming-members-only-after-validating-their-accounts/">signups</a>&nbsp;are now managed the exact same way.</li>



  <li>Speaking of signups, the&nbsp;<a href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2024/05/07/signup-fields-via-the-rest-api/">BP REST API</a>&nbsp;has been improved so that you can now submit values for any xProfile field registered as part of the Signups profile field group.</li>



  <li>Last but not least, we again offer native support for overriding BuddyPress’s language with your community vocabulary using&nbsp;<a href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2024/06/28/translating-buddypress-texts-into-your-community-vocabulary-is-back-in-14-0-0/">custom translations</a>.</li>
  </ol>



  <p>Take a few minutes to discover all changes reading this <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-14-0-0/">release note</a>.</p>



  <p>Compared to our previous major version (12.0.0 &#8211; the number right after was too intimidating&nbsp;<img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f408-200d-2b1b.png" alt="🐈‍⬛" class="wp-smiley" />), 14.0.0 is a quieter update.&nbsp;After the huge BP Rewrites API revolution, the humans (us the BP Team) who maintain and support your favorite community plugin needed to catch their breath to get ready for the new round of big changes arriving in 15.0.0.</p>



  <p>Let’s keep in mind BuddyPress is an open source project maintained by volunteers giving freely of their time and energy to help you build great WordPress community sites.&nbsp;Don’t hesitate to <a href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-14-0-0/">send us some encouraging words</a> and please consider contributing back to&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/buddypress/buddypress/tree/master/docs/contributor#readme">the project</a>.</p>



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  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">47 contributors freely gave some of their time &amp; energy to build the 14.0.0 release <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f60d.png" alt="😍" class="wp-smiley" /></h2>



  <p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ahegyes/">ahegyes</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/boonebgorges/">Boone Gorges (boonebgorges)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chairmanbrando/">chairmanbrando</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dcavins/">David Cavins (dcavins)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dd32/">Dion Hulse (dd32)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/djpaul/">Paul Wong-Gibbs (DJPaul)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dontdream/">Andrea Tarantini (dontdream)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/emaralive/">emaralive</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/espellcaste/">Renato Alves (espellcaste)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/gingerbooch/">gingerbooch</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/iandunn/">Ian Dunn (iandunn)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/">Mathieu Viet (imath)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/itpathsolutions/">IT Path Solutions (itpathsolutions)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jnie/">jnie</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johndawson155/">johndawson155</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnjamesjacoby/">John James Jacoby (johnjamesjacoby)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/josevarghese/">Jose Varghese (josevarghese)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kainelabsteam/">KaineLabs Team (kainelabsteam)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lenasterg/">Lena Stergatou (lenasterg)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/needle/">Christian Wach (needle)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nhrrob/">Nazmul Hasan Robin (nhrrob)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/niftythree/">Nifty (niftythree)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nitinp544/">Nitin Patil (nitinp544)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pawelhalickiotgs/">pawelhalickiotgs</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/perchenet/">perchenet</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/poojasahgal/">Pooja Sahgal (poojasahgal)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/r-a-y/">r-a-y</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/respawnsive/">respawnsive</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/roberthemsing/">Rosso Digital (roberthemsing)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt/">Stephen Bernhardt (sabernhardt)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shailu25/">Shail Mehta (shailu25)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shawfactor/">shawfactor</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sjregan/">sjregan</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/slaffik/">Slava Abakumov (Slaffik)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/strategio/">Pierre Sylvestre (strategio)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/testovac/">testovac</a>,<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun/">Varun Dubey (vapvarun)</a>,<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/yagniksangani/">Yagnik Sangani (yagniksangani)</a>,<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dancaragea/">Dan Caragea (dancaragea)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/modelaid/">modelaid</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nekojonez/">Pieterjan Deneys (nekojonez)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mehrazmorshed/">Mehraz Morshed (mehrazmorshed)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shenyanzhi/">沈唁 (shenyanzhi)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/haozi/">耗子 (haozi)</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cyrfer/">cyrfer</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/narolainfotech/">narolainfotech</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/benjamin_zekavica/">Benjamin Zekavica (benjamin_zekavica)</a>.</p>



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  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Your feedback</h2>



  <p>How are you using BuddyPress? Receiving your feedback and suggestions for future versions of BuddyPress genuinely motivates and encourages our contributors. Please&nbsp;<a href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-14-0-0/">share your feedback</a>&nbsp;about this version of BuddyPress on our website.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Let’s meet at «&nbsp;Da Lucia&#8217;s&nbsp;» !</h2>



  <a href="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2024/07/IMG_7414.jpg"><img width="1024" height="714" src="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2024/07/IMG_7414.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-334590" /></a><a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/vapvarun/" rel="nofollow">@vapvarun</a> &amp; <a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/imath/" rel="nofollow">@imath</a> met at Da Lucia&#8217;s to enjoy 2 delicious &amp; enormous pizzas!



  <p><strong>BuddyPress is about people</strong>! The BuddyPress team is made up of friendly folks from all around the world. We meet online every week during a release cycle but when we manage to meet IRL during a WordCamp, a BuddyCamp or just because we&#8217;re around at the same time we absolutely need to celebrate it with a great <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f355.png" alt="🍕" class="wp-smiley" />. <a href="https://daluciaresturantpizzeria.eatbu.com/?lang=en">Da Lucia&#8217;s</a> will, from now on, be remembered as the great pizza restaurant where <a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/vapvarun/" rel="nofollow">@vapvarun</a> &amp; <a class="bp-suggestions-mention" href="https://buddypress.org/members/imath/" rel="nofollow">@imath</a>, two members of the BP Team, met IRL for the first time <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f91d.png" alt="🤝" class="wp-smiley" /> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f602.png" alt="😂" class="wp-smiley" />.</p>



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  <blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">BuddyPress</a></blockquote>
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  <p>Props <a href="https://buddypress.org/members/dcavins/">@dcavins</a> for his review about this announcement post.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Jul 2024 11:49:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"Do The Woo Community: Connecting Means Opening the Doors";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84661";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"https://dothewoo.io/connecting-means-opening-the-doors/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4327:"Episode Transcript
  <div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p>You know as well as I do that there are people in our community looking for a job. The reasons for this stem from many different situations. For freelancers and small business owners, in reality, they are always looking for a job in another sense. Depending on how things are going, it reflects on their need to find that next client.</p>



  <p>Now, I&#8217;m not leading into some episode where I am going to give you tips on looking for a job or insights on best practices. I&#8217;m really not qualified for that. I have been working for myself since the late 1980s, with a few jobs here and there during those early years of surviving. I probably know as much as many of you do.</p>



  <p>And again, I could mention all the resources where you might find work. Michelle Freschette generously curates job openings on her X profile every Wednesday. Marcus, one of our hosts, lists those who are looking for work over on thewp.world. Not to mention sites like Post Status and others that list jobs.</p>



  <p>The reason I bring this up is that, as I do every day, several times, I visit LinkedIn and typically find a message from someone asking me if I am hiring. Now I get it on both sides. Often, this is unsolicited and can be annoying. On the other hand, there are those that just need work. Their abrupt intrusion, which you may describe as random, often sounds that way. True. But we do have to understand that in some cases it&#8217;s cultural, and in other cases, it&#8217;s just the fact that they have little experience in finding a job in what we may describe as the professional or correct way.</p>



  <p>So, there are a couple of things here. First, they do have to connect or at least ask to connect with you to do this, unless they have a premium account, which likely they won&#8217;t be doing. That first connection may be as abrupt as a short intro asking if you are hiring, or a bit more extended by first asking to connect and then following up with something like, &#8220;Hi Bob, how are you doing?&#8221; which may then lead into the job pitch.</p>



  <p>What do I personally do? I like to connect with people, and most of them are potential listeners to the podcast. So I connect a lot unless the invite to connect includes some kind of weird pitch, be it a job, services they offer, or anything like that. When they immediately come back with the pitch, well, sometimes I ignore it, or other times I reply with a polite reason why I am not interested.</p>



  <p>You may think I am crazy and spending way too much time doing that. Well, let me explain a couple of things about me.</p>



  <p>First, the ripple effect or the &#8220;you never know&#8221; effect. Each connection, no matter how it starts, can lead to something else. Maybe you think the odds are against it, but it happens. I have experienced that myself. Maybe they do become a listener. Or read one of my posts that inspires them. Or they could tell a friend or colleague about the podcast because of where their interest lies. The thing is, you never know.</p>



  <p>Secondly, I have opened the door. I&#8217;m not sure how many of you are old enough to remember door-to-door salespeople. Those ones that you would answer the door for or quickly disappear around the corner into another room hoping they didn&#8217;t see you. But for those times you did open the door, there was the invite. The chance for them to introduce themselves and give their pitch. How that moment evolved varied. But the fact is, you did invite them in. So when you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you are doing the same thing. Sure, it&#8217;s not what you may have expected or wanted, but you opened the door.</p>



  <p>So that&#8217;s it. I&#8217;m not suggesting you follow my line of reasoning or even that you have the same goals as me when it comes to a platform like LinkedIn. All I want to do is to remind you that you opened the door.</p>
  </div>




  <p>In today&#8217;s episode BobWP leads into the diverse challenge of so many people in the WordPress ecosystem looking for a job.</p>



  <p>Which leads into his take on LinkedIn where so many people are asking for work and how connecting is all about opening doors.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Jul 2024 10:08:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Akismet: Version 5.3.3 of the Akismet WordPress plugin is ready";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=284062";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://akismet.com/blog/version-5-3-3-of-the-akismet-wordpress-plugin-is-ready/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:572:"<p>Version 5.3.3 of <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the Akismet plugin for WordPress</a> is now available for&nbsp;download.</p>

  <p>There are a number of bug fixes and improvements and we recommend upgrading if you&#8217;re using an earlier version of the&nbsp;plugin.</p>

  <p>To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the WordPress plugins&nbsp;directory</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jul 2024 23:38:45 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Chris Rosser 🏔";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"WPTavern: #127 – Rian Rietveld on Understanding the European Accessibility Act and Its Impact on Websites";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=156969";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/127-rian-rietveld-on-understanding-the-european-accessibility-act-and-its-impact-on-websites";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44407:"Transcript<div>
  <p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



  <p>Jukebox is a podcast, which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, understanding the European Accessibility Act and it&#8217;s impact on websites.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



  <p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head over to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there.</p>



  <p>So on the podcast today, we have Rian Rietveld. Rian is a web accessibility specialist from the Netherlands. As a freelance accessibility consultant, she works for NL Design Systems, the WordPress agency Level Level, and the form plugin Gravity Forms. She also teaches at the online learning platform, The A11Y Collective. She loves to share her knowledge at WordCamps meetups workshops and accessibility conferences worldwide.</p>



  <p>Today, we talk about the accessibility requirements of the European Accessibility Act or EAA, which will be enforced on June the 28, 2025.</p>



  <p>This legislation mandates that public service websites, products and services be accessible to all people. Rian clarifies the key aspects of the EAA, particularly focusing on websites, but we also touch upon other areas such as apps and PDFs.</p>



  <p>She emphasizes the importance of ensuring accessibility, not only because of the legal requirements, but also due to the moral obligation to include individuals with disabilities who access the web using a variety of different mechanisms, such as screen readers and keyboards.</p>



  <p>We discuss practical ways to achieve web accessibility. For example, using default accessible themes in vanilla WordPress, and writing accessible content.</p>



  <p>Rian also highlights the need for constant monitoring and training within teams to maintain accessibility standards, especially focusing on keyboard accessibility and color contrast.</p>



  <p>Financial incentives for making websites accessible are another point we talk about, as accessible websites can lead to increased revenue by catering to a broader audience, including the 20% of the population that relies on accessible websites.</p>



  <p>Additionally Rian points out that an accessible website can significantly impact SEO and customer engagement.</p>



  <p>Towards the end of the podcast we talk about the importance of having an accessibility statement for websites in Europe, the differences in the requirements between the EU and other parts of the world, and the benefits of hiring a professional to conduct an accessibility audit.</p>



  <p>She also addresses exemptions for small companies, but notes the overall benefit of compliance for reaching more customers.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;re interested in the implications of the European Accessibility Act, and how to make your website more inclusive, this episode is for you.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;d like to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



  <p>And so without further delay, I bring you Rian Rietveld.</p>



  <p>I am joined on the podcast by Rian Rietveld. Hello, nice to meet you.</p>



  <p>[00:04:03] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Thank you. for having me.</p>



  <p>[00:04:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You&#8217;re very welcome. So we are at WordCamp Europe 2024. We are in the city of Torino. This is my first interview, so it&#8217;s an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. We&#8217;re going to talk a little bit about a topic which Rian is mentioning at this conference. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about who you are before we get stuck into accessibility?</p>



  <p>[00:04:24] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> My name is Rian Rietveld, and I&#8217;m from the Netherlands. I&#8217;m an accessibility expert. At the moment I&#8217;m freelance, and I&#8217;m working on various projects. One is the NL Design System that&#8217;s for the Dutch government, where I write documentation and guidelines for government websites, how to create accessible forms. And I also work for the WordPress agency Level Level, and for Gravity Forms, the WordPress forms plugin. And I give in-house trainings to companies.</p>



  <p>[00:04:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This is a topic which is probably, well, we&#8217;ll get into it, but there&#8217;s probably a whole load of legal stuff that we&#8217;ll end up talking about. And I just want to clear up at the beginning, do you have a background as a lawyer, or anything like that?</p>



  <p>[00:05:04] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> No, I am not a lawyer, and I want to emphasise that everything I say is from the accessibility point of view, and not from the legal point of view. If you have questions really about a legal implications for your company, hire an expert in legislation for accessibility.</p>



  <p>[00:05:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so I guess good to get out the way right at the beginning. Nevertheless, you&#8217;ve got a lot of expertise in this area. Your talk is called the European Accessibility Act. I would imagine we&#8217;ll probably call that EAA from this point. Well, I don&#8217;t know which is quicker, to be honest.</p>



  <p>But the EAA, the European Accessibility Act is a piece of legislation, which I think is coming around in the year 2025. It seems like it&#8217;s a very big and important piece of legislation for people working with websites. Do you just want to tell us a little bit about what it is? Just what it is to begin with, and then we&#8217;ll get into who it affects, and how it affects people.</p>



  <p>[00:05:55] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> In 2016, the EU member states agreed to make public service websites accessible. For example, government websites. And in 2019, they agreed on the directive to make also products and services accessible. And each member state has to implement that directive into their own legislation.</p>



  <p>In 2022, each member state must already have that put in their law. So actually, that legislation should already be implemented with the member states. The Dutch government only did that two months ago. Some countries didn&#8217;t even do that yet. Other countries have that really nicely in order. So it depends a bit on the member state, but they all agreed that it will be enforced in 2025. June 28th, 2025. So it&#8217;s in one year, and then it will be enforced.</p>



  <p>And what they agree on, that all services and products need to be accessible. And that&#8217;s a whole bunch of products like computers, operating systems, ATMs, ticket machines. And for services, it&#8217;s websites, e-commerce, the 111 emergency number. It&#8217;s a list of products and services that need to be accessible for people with a disability.</p>



  <p>[00:07:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it&#8217;s not bound, this legislation is very much not bound just to websites, although that&#8217;s obviously our area of expertise. It&#8217;s any sort of interface, so an ATM is a perfect example. You know, you want to go and get money out of the machine, and obviously if you have an issue which prevents you doing that in the, and I&#8217;m putting air quotes, the normal way, that machine needs to be, by 2025, June 2025, that machine has to be accessible. And we can explore what that might mean for an ATM, as well as a website in a moment. But that&#8217;s the moment. That&#8217;s the day it&#8217;s got to be done?</p>



  <p>[00:07:44] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> It should already be a law in the countries, but then it will be enforced. So that&#8217;s the deadline.</p>



  <p>[00:07:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so the expectation is that people are working towards this, and it&#8217;s not like you start thinking about it in June 2025. Yeah, it needs to be done. That work needs to be finished, because at that point the enforcement can happen. And we can get on to the enforcement, actually, let&#8217;s sort of pivot to that.</p>



  <p>So we&#8217;re in Italy at the moment, which is a member of the EU. I come from the UK, which made a decision several years ago to leave the EU. And I imagine there&#8217;ll be a bunch of people listening to this, I don&#8217;t know, in Australia, in New Zealand, in India, in America, does it affect them in any way?</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;re an ATM manufacturer, I guess you might be shipping ATM machines to Italy. But certainly with a website, if I have a website which is based in the US, well, there&#8217;s nothing preventing me, as a user in the EU, from accessing that website. So where do the boundaries lie? What is the jurisdiction? Is there a boundary? Does it neatly encapsulate the EU, or do we need to worry wherever we are?</p>



  <p>[00:08:49] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, that&#8217;s the web. The web is worldwide. So if you sell services or products to an EU member state, then your website or product needs to be accessible.</p>



  <p>[00:08:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You specifically said if you sell, so you used the word sell there. What if you have a website which is, oh I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s just say you have a blog, for example, or you have a brochure website, which is nothing to do with selling a thing. It&#8217;s just a hobby of some kind. Let&#8217;s call it that.</p>



  <p>[00:09:16] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Of course, but you don&#8217;t have to. If you sell items, services, or products, then you need to be accessible.</p>



  <p>[00:09:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it&#8217;s bound up with the transaction of money. If money is moving from one point to another point, and any of that touches the EU, then you need to be compliant by June 2025.</p>



  <p>[00:09:34] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Yes.</p>



  <p>[00:09:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What I&#8217;m taking from that then is that, if you are an international company, and you are selling anything into the EU, you can&#8217;t ignore this, even though you are in a country where the jurisdiction, if you like, you might think it doesn&#8217;t affect you.</p>



  <p>How could that jurisdiction possibly affect you though? So for example, let&#8217;s say that I am an American company, and I&#8217;m selling things, and Europeans are buying them. What possible thing could the EU do to an American citizen? Is there some relationship in law that you know of? And again, I&#8217;ll just emphasise that I know you&#8217;re not a lawyer.</p>



  <p>[00:10:07] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, that&#8217;s the big question, nobody knows yet.</p>



  <p>[00:10:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Interesting.</p>



  <p>[00:10:10] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> And what will happen, will it be a sue culture like in the US. Or will it be someone complaining, and take it to a local court? I have no idea. That&#8217;s kind of a tin of worms, because each country implements the legislation on a bit different way. For example, Germany has a very strict legislation. Maybe other people only stick to what is needed. It&#8217;s a tin of worms. And how it&#8217;ll be implemented, and how it&#8217;ll be enforced, we just have to see what happens.</p>



  <p>[00:10:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I guess it will be interesting. Do you know though if people are lining up? How can I describe this without sounding controversial. In certain parts of the world, there&#8217;s this phrase which I hear from time to time and it&#8217;s ambulance chasing lawyers. And it&#8217;s the idea that lawyers find things where there&#8217;s a problem, and they go after them, maybe not for ethical reasons, or moral reasons, or whatever it may be, but it&#8217;s just because there&#8217;s a pot of money that they could get. Do you have any intuition as to whether lawyers in the EU are kind of ramping up their posture in terms of the EAA.</p>



  <p>[00:11:11] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> That&#8217;s not a culture in Europe at all, because for government website you need at the moment have an accessibility statement where you say, I&#8217;m aiming for, for example, the web content accessibility guidelines, version 2.1, level AA. This is what still needs to be done. This is the roadmap, and this is where you can file an issue. That&#8217;s an accessibility statement. And you already put what&#8217;s wrong on your website. And that will be hard to do in the US, because that gives a lawyer like a checklist.</p>



  <p>But if you have a good support system in place. First, someone needs to complain, and you need to respond on that and say, okay, I&#8217;m going to fix that. But if you ignore complaints and just say, oh, there&#8217;s disabled people, I&#8217;m not interested in that. That will trigger a lawsuit I think.</p>



  <p>But in Europe, you have to have an accessibility statement explaining what still needs to be done. And that&#8217;s a big issue I think for US companies, because they legally cannot do that.</p>



  <p>[00:12:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So does that statement need to be published online, or it be a document that you just have in a file, in a drawer gathering dust?</p>



  <p>[00:12:21] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> It has to be on your website, an accessibility statement. Yeah, it gives information about, what are you doing? What are you aiming for? What are you working on? And also, how people can report an issue. And that&#8217;s important if you are a client and you cannot use someone&#8217;s website, and you have the courtesy to actually tell that, okay, I cannot use your website because I have this, and this issue. You have to take these people seriously.</p>



  <p>[00:12:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So if you have to put that online, presumably it&#8217;s possible to go and find guidance about websites, in order to start ticking off those boxes, to be able to say, yeah, we have done that one, and we have done that one, but we have yet to begin this process. Those kind of documents are available, easy to access. Do you have a URL which you can just pop out of your head to do with that, where you would go and find those kind of things?</p>



  <p>[00:13:07] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> If you have a website, you let an accessible expert or firm do an audit. And in the audit you state what is wrong, right, and what is wrong. And that is a document you can link to. Is that what you mean?</p>



  <p>[00:13:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think so. So you are advocating that, if you are not entirely sure, in other words, it sounds like, if you don&#8217;t have a legal team who are up on this, and understand all of this, you are saying hire a professional.</p>



  <p>[00:13:31] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Yes, please. Well, you have to do an audit by a professional. And a professional has to do an audit on your website, as a basement measurement, and you work from there. You fix the issues from there. And maybe if all the issues are fixed, you can redo the audit, and publish that on your website. But it gives you a state of the accessibility of your website at that moment.</p>



  <p>[00:13:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So I&#8217;m imagining a, almost like a tick sheet with, there&#8217;s this, and this, and this, and I&#8217;ve to tick that, but I haven&#8217;t ticked that. Are there certain things on that tick sheet, things that you need to do in a certain order? And again, obviously you know the caveat about you not being a lawyer, and what have you. But, are there certain things that are more important? Can you get away with just ticking one box? Do the very tiniest amount, and still say, well, look we&#8217;ve made a start, it&#8217;s fine.</p>



  <p>[00:14:18] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> No, you have to say, I&#8217;m aiming for WCAG, it&#8217;s a web content and accessibility guidelines, version 2.1 AA, or 2.2 AA. And then you have to meet a couple of success criteria. Your images have alternative text, your videos have captioning. You have to meet all those to comply to WCAG, and to comply to the European Accessibility Act requirements.</p>



  <p>So if you fail some, you need to fix those to comply completely. There are not many websites that comply a hundred percent. There&#8217;s always something missing. So it&#8217;s utopia to say, oh, my website is perfectly accessible. Website is a work in progress.</p>



  <p>[00:14:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, given that businesses can be one person, or they could be 50,000 people. Does any of that factor in? So if I am an individual employee, I am selling something, so I know that I have to take this seriously. Does the size of the business in any way affect how much I have to do by a certain date?</p>



  <p>Because I can imagine a company of the size of, oh I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say Amazon, or Google, or something along those lines, where they&#8217;ve got gigantic resources, and they can really fairly, straightforwardly put teams of people onto this project. I&#8217;m kind of imagining, in a fair and just world, there would be an expectation that they do more than the one person business, who just started up recently, and has got a million other things to do to keep their business going. Is there any sense of that, or is it, no, it&#8217;s a absolute flat level playing field, we all have to do the same?</p>



  <p>[00:15:49] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Thankfully, there&#8217;s an exception for small companies. If you have less than 10 employees, and you have a revenue less than 2 million euros, you don&#8217;t need to comply. You can, of course, because it&#8217;s very good for your revenue, but you don&#8217;t need to comply to that rules.</p>



  <p>[00:16:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I hadn&#8217;t written this question down, but that was an interesting thing that you just said. You just said that it will help your revenue, or it&#8217;s good for your revenue. And I&#8217;ve heard this being talked about before, that the people out there online, who require an accessible website, that the money in their pockets, the size of that cohort of peoples, the finances that they&#8217;ve got available is pretty large. And so if you do this work, even if you don&#8217;t need to, it could be very, very economically good for your business. So I&#8217;m just going to throw that back. Do you have anything to say about that?</p>



  <p>[00:16:37] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Oh, I totally agree. And the population is getting older and older, so more and more people need an accessible website. Good color contrast, a logical order of the information. I think, if you build for everyone, then you just have more customers.</p>



  <p>About 20% of all people need some kind of accessibility. So if you just throw away 20% of your people, of your customers, that&#8217;s a large amount of number. And those are what you said, people who have money and want to buy something from you, and you just block the door for them.</p>



  <p>[00:17:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s interesting. So, I think we&#8217;re all carrying around a mobile phone. We&#8217;ve all got this device in our pockets, which enables us to buy anything at any moment. And if you are closing the door, it&#8217;s literally like having a shop with a front door, but you&#8217;ve locked the door, and closed the windows, and pulled the curtains, and nobody can peer inside.</p>



  <p>[00:17:28] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> What I found interesting is that there is a lot of money in SEO. You want all those people coming to your website, and then you say to 20%, okay, you are not allowed. So you throw away 20% of your SEO budget.</p>



  <p>[00:17:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Really interesting. So 20% would be the kind of figure that we&#8217;re playing with. So there&#8217;s not only a legal obligation to do it, and we can talk about whether there&#8217;s a moral obligation in a moment. But there is definitely a financial incentive to doing this. And that, I think, is a piece of the conversation which doesn&#8217;t often get raised. And if, by doing a series of tasks, and it may be hard, and it may be arduous, but if you get these tasks complete, you may see an uptick in your revenue. So that&#8217;s kind of interesting.</p>



  <p>[00:18:08] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Yeah, it is part of your quality. You want to make your website responsive, secure, and good performance. That are all things that make a good website. Also add accessibility. It&#8217;s part of the quality of your work.</p>



  <p>[00:18:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is there a reason this kind of legislation hasn&#8217;t happened many years ago? Is it that the people who are now having an expectation that they can get online, did they just not have a voice until more recently? Because I can imagine that, if you require an accessible version of the internet, in the past years, you just wouldn&#8217;t have used the internet.</p>



  <p>And so you didn&#8217;t have a way to say, well, okay, this bit doesn&#8217;t work, this bit doesn&#8217;t work, because the whole thing was just broken. So you never got to see inside, you never got to peel back the curtain, and see what amazing things there are in the internet. So it&#8217;s kind of curious to me how we&#8217;ve got to 2025, and we&#8217;re still talking about this subject. We could have tackled it a decade or more ago, probably.</p>



  <p>[00:19:03] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, it&#8217;s so hard to even get the government accessible. That took years, and years, and years. And now, even in the Netherlands, about 3% of the website for the government is totally accessible. The rest has still issues. It&#8217;s hard work because it needs training, it needs awareness, it needs people who decide about the finances to give the resources for training and for development. It&#8217;s a question of awareness, and that&#8217;s getting now better and better.</p>



  <p>[00:19:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I guess if you are, so I&#8217;ll take the example of a wheelchair user. If you are standing on the street, and you see somebody using a wheelchair, and they want to get into a physical shop, and there are some steps, and nothing but steps, you see the problem. It&#8217;s right there in front of your eyes. This person cannot get into that shop. That&#8217;s a disaster. So we built the ramps. But this is kind of hidden.</p>



  <p>[00:19:53] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Yes. When you are young and everything works, your body, you just test a website with a mouse and your eyes, and you say, okay, it works. And you have no idea that someone who gets the website read out loud, has no clue about what&#8217;s happening, or uses the website with a keyboard, cannot open the menu, for example. It works for the mouse, it works for you.</p>



  <p>Only recently in the Netherlands, accessibility is taught on the schools for developers and designers. That&#8217;s only now starting. So everybody has to teach themselves who is a developer at the moment, or gets training, or maybe companies train their people. It&#8217;s only starting at the moment.</p>



  <p>[00:20:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So we had decision makers who didn&#8217;t make these decisions, plus we had people coming into the industry who just didn&#8217;t know. But now we&#8217;re at the beginning of that journey. This is part of the education, so hopefully, yeah okay.</p>



  <p>[00:20:44] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Yes, education is the key, I think. We need to educate developers, designers, and also managers.</p>



  <p>[00:20:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So with the best will in the world, even if 50% of the people, 60%, 70%, 80%, whatever it may be, of the people listen to this podcast, and they say, yep, I&#8217;m going todo all the right things. There&#8217;s definitely going to be a proportion of people who say, leave it till tomorrow, we&#8217;ll leave it for another year. We&#8217;ll never get caught, we a tiny fish in a big pond of websites.</p>



  <p>What can the EU actually do? And when I wrote the question out, I wrote, what stick can the EU use? We have this carrot and stick approach in the English language, where you hit something with a stick to get it to behave, or you offer it a carrot, a treat if you like, to get it to behave. So, is there any of that? Is there any stick that the EU can bring to bear? And also, are there any carrots?</p>



  <p>[00:21:30] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, that&#8217;s the big question. I cannot look in the future. So, what will happen in 2025? Everyone in the accessibility world is looking at, so what will happen? We don&#8217;t know. Will there be a strict legislation? Will nothing happen, like with the GDPR? Oh, panic, and then nothing happens. Or will we actually be enforced, and will there be fines for companies? I don&#8217;t know.</p>



  <p>I hope this will be a game changer, because there&#8217;s a lot of publicity on this. And there&#8217;s no easy, quick fix. Like the GDPR, you put a cookie banner, and you&#8217;re done. Rework your website, you need to rebuild your website, look at your work. And that&#8217;s a lot more work than just adding a cookie banner. And if there will be implications, I hope so.</p>



  <p>[00:22:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you know if on the books, in theory, there&#8217;s a stick? Is there anything, and again, I know you are not a lawyer, but do you know if there&#8217;s anything in the legislation which could be used? Whether or not it will be used aggressively or, you know, more of a soft touch.</p>



  <p>[00:22:26] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, it depends on the member states. Each member state can decide, in their own legislation, what the fine will be, what the stick will be. So, not every country has decided on what to do yet. Some countries have, and some other countries none. Ireland, the law in Ireland that went viral in the accessibility world, you can go to jail. Yes, you can get fined and go to jail. Other countries may have no implications at all. If you can go to jail in Ireland, it may be not really happening, but it&#8217;s in the legislation.</p>



  <p>[00:22:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;d be curious to see, in the same way that financial laws, you know, if you can move your business to a country where there&#8217;s very little tax, we know what happens. The countries, there&#8217;s lots of companies, they suddenly set up an office there, and they become, I wonder if the same thing would happen. All the companies move away from Ireland from the risk of going to prison, or something like that.</p>



  <p>Okay, tell me about this then. So we know that you have until June 2025 to get this work done. Tell us about the more sort of moral aspect. And what I&#8217;m talking about there is, it&#8217;s going to be difficult to do this because we&#8217;re an audio podcast, and really it would be nice to sort of see some of this stuff on a screen, but we&#8217;ll just have to use words to describe it. Is there a kind of, a moral aspect to this? Can you describe what it may, in some limited circumstance, look like, or feel like, or sound like for people on the web?</p>



  <p>And I know that&#8217;s really hard to encapsulate. But if we took the example of somebody who is completely blind. So that&#8217;s something I think we can all understand. You know, if you&#8217;ve got perfect sight, you can close your eyes, and you can hold a mouse in your hand, and you can then try to imagine what the internet would be like. And already, just in my own mind, I&#8217;m picturing it&#8217;s a complete black box. I can&#8217;t see it anymore. What are the ways that people are accessing the web without normal, air quotes, mouse, keyboard, eyes, ears, format?</p>



  <p>[00:24:16] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> There&#8217;s so many different ways. Some people are deaf and blind, so they depend on a braille display. They get all the text in pins, braille letters. Some people use the keyboard only, and that actually is a requirement. You should be able to use a website with a keyboard only. And some people use a stick in their mouth, if they cannot use their hands. And they can access keyboard, or display by that.</p>



  <p>Some people have a straw in their mouth, and they can use the straw to blow in that, and puff it&#8217;s called. And that, way it&#8217;s a zero and one, so that way you can use the website also. Stephen Hawkin, he used electronic device on his chin. He used a device on his cheek, where he can, just by moving one muscle, operate his voice control. There are people who speak to the computer without any hands. So many different ways. And it only works if you code your website properly.</p>



  <p>[00:25:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, that&#8217;s the key point. All of that bit that you just said, if you just listen to that, you would think, oh, well it&#8217;s fine then, people can put a stick in their mouth, and they can use that, or they can blow, or they can have something attached to their face, or they can speak.</p>



  <p>But of course that&#8217;s not it. It&#8217;s that, if the website isn&#8217;t built to enable those kind of technologies, you are faced with something border lining on, just massively infuriating to use, impossible to use. So it&#8217;s not like, oh, I&#8217;ve got this assistive technology, suddenly everything is perfect. You have to rebuild the website so that the assistive technology can get through the website, and you&#8217;ve got clear markers, and it&#8217;s all built correctly.</p>



  <p>[00:25:52] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Actually, the web by itself, HTML, what the website is made of, is accessible. All the extra stuff they put into it, making it work only with the mouse, all the extra effects, that makes it inaccessible. So learn HTML properly. If you can use HTML well, you already have a lot of accessibility for free.</p>



  <p>[00:26:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So again, this is a question that I didn&#8217;t have written down, but it&#8217;d be interesting to explore. If you were just using pure and exact HTML, everything would work. But we&#8217;re at a conference where we&#8217;re using a CMS, and I just have the question, how does WordPress do with any of this? Is it out of the box?</p>



  <p>So, okay, I&#8217;m not imagining that we&#8217;re throwing a bunch of plugins in. Ignore that, because obviously that would introduce a million and one different ways of making it inaccessible, or accessible. But if we just took vanilla WordPress, and installed directly from wordpress.org, and we were to write posts, and pages, and what have you with that, with just the core blocks, how are we doing?</p>



  <p>[00:26:54] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> If you use the default teams, 21, 22, that kind of themes, those are all accessible. If you use those with vanilla WordPress, you&#8217;re pretty good.</p>



  <p>Another thing is the content. You need to write also accessible content. Good heading structure, don&#8217;t call all the links, click here. Add alternative text to your images. If you do that too, you can create an accessible website. It&#8217;s perfectly possible.</p>



  <p>[00:27:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Now the interesting thing there is, it feels like we just had a conversation where, a person without accessibility needs has a WordPress website, and they&#8217;re creating the content for people who have accessibility needs. How does it work the other way around? How does WordPress behave as an editing, content creating experience for people with accessibility needs? I think that&#8217;s going to be a harder question to answer.</p>



  <p>[00:27:44] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> It needs work. I will keep it to that.</p>



  <p>[00:27:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, okay. There&#8217;s work to be done.</p>



  <p>[00:27:47] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> There&#8217;s work to be done. And we have an excellent accessibility team, and they are doing a great job. They need more people.</p>



  <p>[00:27:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. I mean, we&#8217;ve thrown in, in the last five or six years, a very complicated, well, not complicated once you&#8217;ve understood it. It&#8217;s a complicated editing experience. There&#8217;s lots of moving parts and there&#8217;s menus over here, and there&#8217;s options, which if you click in something, other things appear, and what have you, and it&#8217;s all very visual. My interpretation of that is entirely visual. I move my mouse, and it&#8217;s complicated. So there&#8217;s work to be done, the long and the short of it.</p>



  <p>We didn&#8217;t really touch on this, but I do want to slightly. Is your website ever going to be complete? Even if you are Google, and you have this giant team, where you&#8217;ve got people, you know, a hundred people on this every day, for all of the things that they do. Is this journey ever complete, or is this shifting sand? Is it that the legislation is changing all the time, or there&#8217;s just too many things to do?</p>



  <p>And with that, are you allowed to, I know we had this sort of tick box exercise, are there some things that you could recommend to begin with if you&#8217;re on this journey? So let&#8217;s take the first bit. Can you ever say that website over there is complete?</p>



  <p>[00:28:57] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, yes you can, but a website is evolving. New content is added, new features are added, and all those need to be checked all the time. If you have a new content manager and they don&#8217;t know about adding alternative texts, it breaks your accessibility.</p>



  <p>[00:29:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, good point, yeah.</p>



  <p>[00:29:14] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> So everybody on the team must stay focused and trained. If you have a new content manager, train them in accessibility. If you add content, then the accessibility is vulnerable because it needs to be added accessible.</p>



  <p>[00:29:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Sorry, just to interrupt you. That&#8217;s interesting because I&#8217;m imagining a site that, let&#8217;s say I&#8217;ve got a site and it&#8217;s 10 years old, and I&#8217;ve got 10,000 blog posts, and all of them contain, let&#8217;s say video because you mentioned that videos ought to have captions. Do I need to go back and do all of those 10,000 videos?</p>



  <p>[00:29:44] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> That&#8217;s interesting because you can, in your accessibility statement, say, okay, from January 1st 2024, I&#8217;m going to add captioning to all my videos, and then do that also. And before that, if you need content that is added to the video, or if you need captioning on a video, or need the content on an older video, email us and we&#8217;ll provide it to you. So you don&#8217;t have to go through all that content, and go through the videos, and the alternative text. But if someone needs that content, you must be able to provide it.</p>



  <p>[00:30:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So we know that our website really, in the real world, the website&#8217;s never going to be complete if you are, like most people, are tweaking the website, and you&#8217;ve got people creating content, and new pages. So you&#8217;ve got to be constantly mindful.</p>



  <p>And also, I think we&#8217;ve learned that you can pick your journey a little bit. You can say, okay, I&#8217;m going to tackle this piece of the jigsaw, and this piece. And treat it as a journey.</p>



  <p>[00:30:41] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> That&#8217;s the roadmap you&#8217;re taking. And first start with keyboard accessibility. That&#8217;s a main feature. If your keyboard accessibility is okay, it works with almost all assistive technology. And then go through color contrast. And that&#8217;s the easiest thing. If your color contrast isn&#8217;t right, it&#8217;s just tweaking your CSS. That&#8217;s a quick fix. Go for the quick fixes, and for the keyboard accessibility. I think that&#8217;s the best way to approach the roadmap.</p>



  <p>[00:31:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s a good way to start. Okay, that&#8217;s perfect.</p>



  <p>Does this affect anything apart from websites? So I&#8217;m imagining situations where, oh I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say that I&#8217;m sending out email and it&#8217;s nothing to do with my website, it&#8217;s a third party piece of software, or I&#8217;ve got, I don&#8217;t know, a CRM system, where customers can log in and see their orders and things like that. So it&#8217;s outside of the website. Does all of this need to be accessible? So we&#8217;ve been talking about websites, and at the beginning we began with ATMs, so I&#8217;m guessing the answer is yes, if anybody can interact with that thing.</p>



  <p>[00:31:38] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> If a client can do that.</p>



  <p>[00:31:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But there might not be any money changing hands with that thing. So I&#8217;m imagining the website, let&#8217;s say that you&#8217;re a website and you&#8217;re selling things, you&#8217;ve got a company with enough employees, you are based in Europe, and you are selling things. So we know you are definitely, the European Accessibility Act, we know that you are under that. But if you are, I don&#8217;t know, sending out email, and there&#8217;s no transaction in that email, it&#8217;s not anything to do with sales, but your company is selling things, how does that work?</p>



  <p>[00:32:07] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Well, emails are not really mentioned.</p>



  <p>[00:32:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Interesting.</p>



  <p>[00:32:09] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> It&#8217;s a good way to do it because it&#8217;s communication with your client, and you better make sure your client understands your message. So that&#8217;s good part of your best practice, of your good practice.</p>



  <p>[00:32:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But it&#8217;s not specifically tied into the legislation. In theory, you could avoid it. That&#8217;s kind of fascinating that that never got pulled in.</p>



  <p>[00:32:25] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> In websites?</p>



  <p>[00:32:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, just websites. That&#8217;s fascinating.</p>



  <p>[00:32:28] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> And apps, and also electronic documents. If you have PDFs on your website, they need to be accessible too. And that&#8217;s a good reason to get rid of your PDFs.</p>



  <p>[00:32:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, thank you. Would you just tell us a little bit about where we can find you on the internet? Obviously, you are very keen on this subject. I&#8217;m guessing that part of your business might be to do with this as well. So just tell us a little bit about where we can find you, and what kind of things you are doing.</p>



  <p>[00:32:50] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> You can find me on rianrietveld.com. I&#8217;m doing consultancy and I write documentation. I also train people for web accessibility. If you want an online training, you can go to the A11Y Collective, that&#8217;s a11y-collective.com. We have a couple of online trainings in web accessibility there. There is, for the US WebAIM, webaim.org, and that&#8217;s a large website with excellent information about accessibility.</p>



  <p>Also on gov.uk, that&#8217;s from the British government, they publish excellent information about accessibility. And if you Google, well, there are many, many companies that provide accessibility consultancy, and also training. Deque is one of them. So there are plenty of them about.</p>



  <p>[00:33:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure that I dig all of those URLs out, and I will paste them on the WP Tavern page, so you&#8217;ll be able to find them there, along with a complete transcript of this episode.</p>



  <p>[00:33:47] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> That will be great. Yeah.</p>



  <p>[00:33:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, you are very welcome. So thank you Rian Rietveld. I appreciate you chatting to me on the podcast today. I hope that you have a good WordCamp EU.</p>



  <p>[00:33:55] <strong>Rian Rietveld:</strong> Thank you.</p>
  </div>



  <p>On the podcast today we have Rian Rietveld.</p>



  <p>Rian is a web accessibility specialist from the Netherlands. As a freelance accessibility consultant she works for NL Design System, the WordPress agency Level Level and the form plugin Gravity Forms. She also teaches at the online learning platform The A11Y Collective. She loves to share her knowledge on WordCamps, meetups, workshops and accessibility conferences worldwide.</p>



  <p>Today we talk about the accessibility requirements of the European Accessibility Act or EAA, which will be enforced by June 28th, 2025. This legislation mandates that public service websites, products, and services be accessible to all people.</p>



  <p>Rian clarifies the key aspects of the EAA, particularly focusing on websites, but we also touch upon other areas such as apps, and PDFs. She emphasises the importance of ensuring accessibility not only because of the legal requirements but also due to the moral obligation to include individuals with disabilities who access the web using a variety of different mechanisms such as screen readers and keyboards.</p>



  <p>We discuss practical ways to achieve web accessibility, for example using default accessible themes in vanilla WordPress and writing accessible content. Rian also highlights the need for constant monitoring and training within teams to maintain accessibility standards, especially focusing on keyboard accessibility and colour contrast.</p>



  <p>Financial incentives for making websites accessible are another point we talk about, as accessible websites can lead to increased revenue by catering to a broader audience, including the 20% of the population that relies on accessible websites. Additionally, Rian points out that an accessible website can significantly impact SEO and customer engagement.</p>



  <p>Towards the end of the podcast, we talk about the importance of having an accessibility statement for websites in Europe, the differences in the requirements between the EU and other parts of the world, and the benefits of hiring a professional to conduct an accessibility audit. She also addresses exemptions for small companies, but notes the overall benefit of compliance for reaching more customers.</p>



  <p>If you’re interested in understanding the implications of the European Accessibility Act and how to make your websites more inclusive, this episode is for you.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



  <p><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/03/the-european-accessibility-act-explained/">The European Accessibility Act explained</a> on WordPress.tv</p>



  <p><a href="https://www.nldesignsystem.nl/">NL Design System</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://level-level.com/">Level Level agency</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/">Gravity Forms</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/">WCAG guidelines</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://rianrietveld.com/">Rian&#8217;s website</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.a11y-collective.com/">The A11Y Collective</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://webaim.org/">WebAIM</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guidance-and-tools-for-digital-accessibility">Guidance and tools for digital accessibility</a> from gov.uk</p>



  <p><a href="https://www.deque.com/">Deque</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"Do The Woo Community: Walking the Floor at WCEU Talking Accessibility with Taeke Reijenga";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84570";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"https://dothewoo.io/walking-the-floor-at-wceu-talking-accessibility-with-taeke-reijenga/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25282:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-7 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-df14f0e3ece767c29248940486a8055c">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



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  <p class="wp-container-content-2"><strong><a href="https://hostinger.com">Hostinger</a></strong>: As a builder or an agency managing multiple sites, check out <strong>Hostinger</strong>. Whether you are building a WordPress site or specifically, a Woo store, their infrastructure brings your clients sites speed, uptime and security.</p>
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  <p class="wp-container-content-4"><strong><a href="https://your.omnisend.com/onlywoo_dothewoo">Omnisend</a></strong>: Whether it&#8217;s for integration into your Woo product, or building sites for clients, <strong>Omnisend</strong> is the solution for email and SMS marketing with their CRM solution for WooCommerce shops and your own website.</p>
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  Episode Transcript
  <div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p>Taeke:<br />Hey guys and girls, and anything in between. This is Taeke, your host from the accessibility podcast. It&#8217;s just me today. I saw Anne-Mieke running around, which is understandable as she is one of the organizers of WordCamp Europe that we&#8217;re currently attending. We&#8217;re going to freestyle a bit, so I&#8217;ll just walk around and ask some people about accessibility: what it means for them, if it&#8217;s something that is part of their daily practice, if it&#8217;s new to them, anything. So let&#8217;s get started. Hey there, this is, let&#8217;s see, Manuela van Prooijen. How are you doing? Hi.</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />I am fine, thank you. This is quite a spread.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />It&#8217;s been a couple of years.</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />Yes. The last time we met was at Porto WordCamp Europe.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />And that&#8217;s when you decided to move to Portugal.</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />That&#8217;s right. That&#8217;s my home base now.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Really cool. This is the Do the Woo accessibility podcast. So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about accessibility. Is there anything that you do in your daily life that involves accessibility?</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />Yeah. Over the past few years, I&#8217;ve developed training programs specifically for virtual assistants to bridge the gap between backend developers and marketing teams to provide a hands-on workforce for bridging accessibility gaps. So I have this program, and it&#8217;s very successful in the Netherlands.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />So you&#8217;re basically training the new generation to help us out?</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />Yes. With the upcoming European Accessibility Act, it&#8217;s very important not just to have auditors or programmers, but people who can provide hands-on workforce.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s amazing. And I totally agree. I mean, I foresee a bit of an issue with this act coming up. At the moment that we are recording, this is one year and 14 days away.</p>



  <p>Manuela:<br />Yes, it&#8217;s almost one year away, but it&#8217;s getting closer.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />It&#8217;s getting closer. The clock is ticking. Next booth, I see a booth for Equalize Digital, and I know they do something with accessibility. Hi there. Who are you? What do you do at Equalize Digital?</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Hello, I am Steve Jones. I am the CTO at Equalize Digital. We are an accessibility product and services company specializing in accessibility. We have a plugin called the Accessibility Checker that scans your websites for accessibility issues.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />And I heard something, and I see it on your booth. You landed an amazing client not too long ago, or maybe some time ago, but they launched not too long ago.</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />They have a lot of things, but the client you&#8217;re speaking of is NASA. Last year, we were brought in as the accessibility team for the NASA project. NASA built a new website on top of WordPress, and we were lucky enough to be brought in to audit the code being developed by the Lone Rock Agency for the NASA website. It was an exciting time, and it actually has extended to just recently. We&#8217;ve still been doing some audits on that and providing accessibility feedback.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />That&#8217;s amazing. Congrats on that. That&#8217;s a cool name to have in your portfolio, right?</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Absolutely.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />So is it just these big names that you work for? I imagine that the plugin is for anyone to install. Can you tell a little bit more about the plugin, what it does, and why I should install it on my website?</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Yeah, we don&#8217;t just do huge, awesome, interesting clients like NASA, although that is great. The bulk of our clients are medium to large agencies. We do a lot of enterprise website development that is accessible, and like you said, we have our Accessibility Checker plugin. This plugin has a full-featured free version available on WordPress.org. It sits inside your WordPress admin and evaluates your post or page for accessibility issues in real-time.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />So this really helps editorial teams in writing their content because they get immediate feedback, right?</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Yes, it&#8217;s never enough to launch a website and say it&#8217;s accessible and then leave it. Especially WordPress websites. They&#8217;re a living, breathing machine. So accessibility is something that needs to be evaluated with every publish.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />It&#8217;s not just about developers being trained.</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Content creators,</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Content creators, designers. It&#8217;s a team effort. Is there anything you want to add or share with us? Otherwise, I&#8217;m going to move along and see if there are more sponsors here that do anything with accessibility.</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />For any freelancers or agencies or large agencies out there, consider accessibility a priority. Put accessibility first.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />I do have one last question. Why is it so important for you? Is it the law or is there a more ethical motivation? What brought you to accessibility as a niche?</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Well, there is a legal aspect and an ethical aspect to it. Of course, a lot of companies do need to legally comply. The European Accessibility Act will be enacted next year. So there&#8217;s a lot in that respect. But there&#8217;s the ethical side too. At Equalize Digital, we lean more on the ethical side. It’s the right thing to do. Anybody should be able to use the internet. Societies across the world are becoming increasingly digital for basic tasks like getting medical supplies and filling out government paperwork. They shouldn&#8217;t be met with blockers along the way. They should be able to access and submit information as easily as people without any disabilities.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Yeah, totally agree. And it’s exactly the same philosophy that we live by. It’s more the ethical argument that weighs stronger than any law. It’s about democratizing publishing, making sure that the web is open and can be used by anyone in any situation, whether it’s a temporary or a more permanent one. In the end, we’ll all grow older.</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Yeah, I mean, we’re building an internet for our future selves. We will get older, and we will have degenerative issues, eyesight issues typically. It’s funny that you bring up democratizing publishing because our CEO, Amber Hines, likes to say that we’re trying to democratize accessibility.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Thanks very much.</p>



  <p>Steve:<br />Alright, thank you.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />And while I’m approaching the Do the Woo booth at WordCamp Europe, I see another amazing person that I want to ask some questions. We’re going to see an amazing talk by Fel about the European Accessibility Acts that we extensively discussed already. And I just ran into Bet.</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Hey.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Hey, Bet, how are you?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />I’m good. How are you?</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />I’m good. How are you enjoying WordCamp Europe?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />I am enjoying it a lot.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Yeah. What brought you here?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />I get to talk to all kinds of people about accessibility.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Awesome. Just accessibility?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Well, selling myself, yeah.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />What we’re doing. Well, sell yourself to the audience. Who are you? What do you do?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />I’m Ben Hannon. I’m the CEO of AccessiCart. We do web accessibility for e-commerce and other folks too, but primarily e-commerce. We work on WordPress, Shopify, and Magento.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />And what does that mean, &#8220;we work on&#8221;?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />We do accessibility consulting and testing for those platforms, and then we can do remediations in WordPress, but not on the others. We tend to partner with agencies, working alongside them to identify issues, prioritize them, help them solve them, and retest and document everything.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />You guide them through the process with the aim of going from one project to the other or training them on the job and letting them go at some point?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, we build up the skills of the developers there. We do some project work, project management for remediation, or consulting for a development project. But our bread and butter is doing accessibility maintenance plans. Accessibility can be affected by any kind of content change. Sometimes even a plugin update can make something inaccessible. So we work with them to monitor and work on the sites continuously. For many, it’s about identifying and solving a few problems every month, step by step.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />And that gets them documentation that shows they’re making incremental progress. It’s about showing they’re taking it seriously, right?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Exactly. And having those documented reports makes it more affordable for many people to begin thinking about doing it in smaller chunks.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />You’re from the US, right?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, I’m from Oregon.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />So you deal with the Americans with Disabilities Act mainly?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, but we also have clients who need to comply with EU laws.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />If you look at the European Accessibility Act and compare it to what’s already happening in the US under the ADA, do you see a difference?</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, the EU law will have a much bigger impact. The ADA was enacted 40 years ago, before websites, so it wasn’t written for websites. Lawsuits are brought under the ADA, and courts usually say you have to remediate to WCAG 2.1 AA. But the EAA talks about those standards plus regular testing and reporting, which isn’t required in the US unless they have EU customers.</p>



  <p>Taeke:</p>



  <p>So the European Accessibility Act is really an act about accessibility, and it’s up to the European countries to implement it into law. It’s inclusive.</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, and in some countries, like Germany, competitors can file a complaint, which really motivates people to get that competitive advantage.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />I hope there’s enforcement and it’s taken seriously. From Europe, we look at the US and see it as the Wild West with the ADA.</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Yes, the European Accessibility Act is friendlier but has a bigger impact. It’s about being inclusive.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />With only one year to go, I’m a bit worried that we’re not ready for this.</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />But there’s more awareness now. Agencies and clients are starting to realize they need to step up.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />It’s a mindset. If we don’t feel it, if we don’t have the empathy to understand what it’s like not to be able to use the web, then…</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />Exactly. If you’re lucky enough not to die suddenly, you’ll probably need accessibility.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Yes. Someone mentioned we’re building the accessible web for ourselves. We’ll all grow older and benefit from this. Thanks for the catch-up, Bet. Let’s see if we can get you on the show soon.</p>



  <p>Bet:<br />That would be great. Thanks a lot.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />My name is Ash Shaw. I’m from Lightspeed WordPress Agency. We did some testing using BrowserStack accessibility tools and PageSpeed Lighthouse. We’ve been fixing issues within our free open-source theme listed on WordPress.org.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />What’s it called?</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />NSX Design. None of our software in the past was accessible. After we purchased courses from the A11Y Collective, we skilled up in accessibility. My designer, developers, and I all skilled up.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />That’s amazing.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />It made a huge difference to our understanding of accessibility and compatibility. We have clients worldwide, but mainly in South Africa. Now that we have a base that is accessible, we can build accessible sites.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />You’ve just taken the first steps towards full accessibility in your client work?</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />Yes. We’re using tools like Stark as a browser extension and in Figma. We’re dealing with contrast issues, button sizes, font sizes, etc. Yesterday, I worked with the accessibility table at Contributor Day and got input on our theme issues. Some issues are in Core or WooCommerce or Gravity Forms.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />I know there are issues in WordPress and WooCommerce, but I also know people are taking it seriously. After WordCamp Europe, WooCommerce will work on their plugin and address 50-60 accessibility issues.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />Yes, Amber Hinds is leading that. I reported the issues I found, and she’s logging them as GitHub issues.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Thank you for that contribution.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />It was a fun day. I learned a lot. My developers struggled at first but eventually got it.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />It takes time to go from awareness to practice. That’s why it’s important to start working on accessibility now, especially with the European Accessibility Act in mind. It’s only a year away.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />Now that we have this knowledge, every project we do will use these tools. We get free access to the BrowserStack accessibility tool, and I’ve recommended it to other users.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />A lot more people will thank you for that suggestion because this is the Do the Woo podcast on accessibility. This will be broadcasted after WordCamp Europe. Thank you for all the tips and your experiences. I’m going to see if I can tackle a few more people and hear their stories about accessibility. Thanks a lot.</p>



  <p>Ash:<br />Thanks, man. See you.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Hello Ingrid. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing here, what you’re promoting here at the Accessibility Collective booth?</p>



  <p>Ingrid:<br />We are an e-learning platform with courses for designers, developers, and content writers, mostly marketers, to ensure the web is fully accessible.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Is there a lot of interest in the booth today?</p>



  <p>Ingrid:<br />Yes, definitely. From frontend developers, backend developers, and plugin creators. It’s a diverse audience, which is fun to talk to about accessibility.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Who is the Accessibility Collective aimed at? Is it for a specific discipline?</p>



  <p>Ingrid:<br />It’s important for all disciplines creating or writing content for the web to ensure full accessibility. It’s a team effort.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />I see a potential candidate for a small interview. Hi Josepha. Can I ask you a couple of questions? This is the Accessibility Podcast from Do the Woo.</p>



  <p>Josepha:<br />By some fluke of nature, we also have the current project ambassador from the TYPO3 Project.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Wow, that’s amazing.</p>



  <p>Josepha:<br />You can ask us both a question.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />Can you tell me what accessibility, specifically web accessibility, means to you personally or professionally?</p>



  <p>Josepha:<br />I think the most important thing about accessibility that people often overlook is that it is a subset of usability. We are all just temporarily fully abled. Just because you feel accessibility doesn’t apply to you now, doesn’t mean it won’t later. It’s something we should all care about because we are a global project trying to make the world a better place, making commerce and access to cool stuff better and easier for more people.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />That’s a great opinion. Thank you for that.</p>



  <p>Mathias:<br />My name is Mathias Bolt Lesniak. I am the project ambassador of TYPO3, a friendly cousin CMS to WordPress. We work together in the Open Website Alliance. My elevator pitch about accessibility is this: I once stood in front of an elevator in a hotel and pressed the button. The elevator came with a person inside who asked, “Where am I?” The elevator had braille everywhere, but the key card scanner wasn’t marked in braille. It’s an excellent example of how important accessibility is. You can’t just do it as an afterthought. You have to think through it the whole way. If you skip a step, you lose the visitor.</p>



  <p>Taeke:<br />You ruin the experience, you lose the visitor. It’s a great example, especially in digital accessibility for e-commerce. The whole store can be accessible, but maybe the marketing team forgot something, and the user experience is ruined. Thanks very much.</p>



  <p>Mathias:<br />Thank you.</p>
  </div>




  <p>Welcome to this special episode of A<strong>ll Things WordPress and WooCommerce accessibility podcast</strong>, recorded live at WordCamp Europe. In this episode, your host <strong>Taeke</strong> takes you on a journey through the bustling conference, engaging with various experts and enthusiasts in the field of web accessibility.</p>



  <p>First, Taeke catches up with <strong>Manuela van Prooijen</strong>, who has developed a successful training program for virtual assistants in the Netherlands to bridge accessibility gaps between backend developers and marketing teams. Next, he speaks with <strong>Steve Jones</strong>, the CTO at Equalize Digital, who shares insights about their Accessibility Checker plugin and their notable collaboration with NASA. Then, Taeke interviews <strong>Bet Hannon</strong>, CEO of AccessiCart, who discusses their work on web accessibility for e-commerce platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Magento.</p>



  <p>The episode also features a conversation with <strong>Ash Shaw</strong> from Lightspeed WordPress Agency, who shares their journey towards building accessible sites and the tools they use. Additionally, <strong>Ingrid</strong> from the Accessibility Collective talks about their e-learning platform aimed at making the web fully accessible for everyone. Finally, Taeke has an enlightening discussion with <strong>Josepha</strong> from Automattic, and <strong>Mathias Bolt Lesniak</strong>, the project ambassador of TYPO3, who highlight the importance of comprehensive accessibility planning. Join us as we explore these valuable perspectives on creating a more inclusive web.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Hightlights</h2>



  <p><strong>Training for Accessibility:</strong> Manuela van Prooijen highlights the importance of training virtual assistants to bridge accessibility gaps between backend developers and marketing teams, emphasizing the need for hands-on workforce in the Netherlands.</p>



  <p><strong>Accessibility Tools</strong>: Steve Jones from Equalize Digital discusses their Accessibility Checker plugin, which evaluates website accessibility issues in real-time, and shares their experience working with NASA to ensure the accessibility of their new WordPress website.</p>



  <p><strong>Ecommerce Accessibility:</strong> Ben Hannon, CEO of AccessiCart, explains their approach to making e-commerce platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Magento accessible, focusing on consulting, testing, and maintaining accessibility over time.</p>



  <p><strong>Building Accessible Foundations</strong>: Ash Shaw from Lightspeed WordPress Agency talks about their efforts to build accessible websites from the ground up, using tools like BrowserStack and Figma to address issues like color contrast and font sizes.</p>



  <p><strong>Team Effort in Accessibility</strong>: Ingrid from the Accessibility Collective emphasizes that creating accessible web content requires collaboration across all disciplines, including designers, developers, and content writers, to ensure a fully inclusive web experience.</p>



  <p><strong>Holistic Accessibility Planning</strong>: Mathias Bolt Lesniak, the project ambassador of TYPO3, shares a real-world example illustrating the importance of thorough accessibility planning, stressing that skipping any step in the process can ruin the user experience.</p>



  <p><strong>Ethical and Legal Motivations</strong>: Several participants, including Steve Jones and Ben Hannon, highlight the dual motivations for accessibility—both ethical (making the web usable for everyone) and legal (complying with laws like the European Accessibility Act and the ADA in the US).</p>



  <p><strong>Future-proofing</strong>: The discussions underscore the importance of building an accessible web not just for current users but also for future generations, as everyone will benefit from accessible design as they age or face temporary or permanent disabilities.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong><a href="https://www.a11y-collective.com/">A11Y Collective</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://accessicart.com/">AccessiCart</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://equalizedigital.com/">Equalize Digital</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://lightspeedwp.agency/">Lightspeed</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://typo3.org/">TYPO3</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://weblish.nl/">Weblish</a></strong></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashshaw/"><strong>Ash Shaw on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethannon/"><strong>Bet Hannon on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingrid-lentz-coelho-toscano-5080a714/"><strong>Ingrid Lentz on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephahaden/overlay/about-this-profile/"><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelavanprooijen/overlay/about-this-profile/"><strong>Manuela van Prooijen on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathias-bolt-lesniak/overlay/about-this-profile/"><strong>Mathias Bolt Lesniak on LinkedIn</strong></a></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejonesdev/"> Steve Jones on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>
  </ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jul 2024 09:02:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17497";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9307:"<p>WordPress 6.6 RC3 is ready for download and testing!</p>



  <p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, please evaluate RC3 on a test server or a local environment.</p>



  <p>Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.</p>



  <p>You can test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in four ways:</p>



  <table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-RC3.zip">RC3 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br /><code>wp core update --version=6.6-RC3</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D">6.6 RC3 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table>Please test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in one or more of these four ways.



  <p>The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is <strong>next Tuesday,</strong> <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">6.6 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-6/">6.6-related posts</a> in the next few weeks for further details.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in WordPress 6.6 RC3?</h2>



  <p>Thanks to your testing (and many other contributors‘ up to now) this release includes eight bug fixes for the Editor and  <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&milestone=6.6&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">18 tickets for WordPress Core</a>.</p>



  <p>Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/">Beta 1 announcement</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC 2, you can browse the following links:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.6?since=2024-07-02&until=2024-07-09">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since July 2</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&milestone=6.6&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Closed Trac </a><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=07%2F02%2F2024..07%2F09%2F2024&milestone=6.6&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">tickets</a> since July 2</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a>. Then, check out this list:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+6-6/">All 6.6-related developer notes</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can contribute. Here&#8217;s how</h2>



  <p>WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved in testing</h3>



  <p>Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you&#8217;re new to testing, follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>



  <p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">WordPress Trac</a>. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Please update your WordPress product</h3>



  <p>If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your efforts play an integral role in adding new functionality to WordPress and helping bring new people and ideas to the most vibrant (and massive!) open source community in the world.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 betas and release candidates. With RC3, you’ll want to make sure everything is working smoothly, and if it&#8217;s a plugin, update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in its <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/">readme file</a> to 6.6.</p>



  <p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forum</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Help translate WordPress</h3>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The RC3 haiku</h2>



  <p>One week to go. Then:<br />Open the paintbox! Try the tools!<br />Play a new jazz tune.</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right"><em>Props to  <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>meher</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>audrasjb</a>. for peer review.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 09 Jul 2024 17:39:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: A Journey and the Evolution of WooCommerce with Beka Rice";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84508";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"https://dothewoo.io/the-journey-and-evolution-of-woocommerce-with-beka-rice/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45632:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-12 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-df14f0e3ece767c29248940486a8055c">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



  <div class="wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-11 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
  <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-3 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex">
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  <div class="wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-10 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
  <div class="wp-block-group has-base-background-color has-background wp-container-content-5 has-global-padding is-content-justification-left is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-9 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <img width="1650" height="1650" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/avalara-logo-_dtw.png?resize=1650%2C1650&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-75400" />
  </div>
  </div>
  </div>



  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
  <p class="wp-container-content-6"><strong><a href="https://developer.avalara.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Avalara</a></strong>: help developers make sure their Woo projects are tax compliance done right with Avalara&#8217;s API. Visit their extensive developer resources today.</p>
  </div>
  </div>
  </div>
  </div>



  Episode Transcript
  <div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p>Zach:<br />Zach Stepek here again with Carl Alexander for another episode of the Do the Woo Dev Chats. Carl, how are you doing, man?</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I had a good WordCamp EU, but I got Covid, so I&#8217;m slightly recovering from that now. I&#8217;ll be muting my phone so I can cough silently in my apartment, but otherwise, I&#8217;m doing quite well. How about you?</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />While you were in Europe getting Covid, I had bronchitis in the US. It’s just been a fun month for respiratory things, evidently.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Yeah, apparently summer is now the time for respiratory issues. Usually, we&#8217;re from the north, so it&#8217;s a winter thing. Winter is when all the bugs come out.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Yes, unless you&#8217;re talking about cicadas, which have been recent. Those are the bugs that came out this summer for a lot of the Upper Midwest and a bunch of other places too. So that&#8217;s been fun. And we as developers, of course, know how to deal with bugs evidently. It’s been a very interesting month, watching some of the changes around Do the Woo. If you&#8217;ve missed that and you just come to listen to the dulcet tones of myself and Carl talking with developers about nerdy things,</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />It&#8217;s mostly your dulcet tones. I don&#8217;t think my tones are dulcet at all.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Well, some people may be attracted to the accent, my friend. That being said, if you haven&#8217;t heard about the changes around Do the Woo, Bob did a great episode summarizing what shows there are now. We&#8217;re up to 12 shows, so I encourage you to check out some of those other shows if you haven&#8217;t yet. The most recent is our Enterprise WordPress and WooCommerce show, which is pretty cool, partnered with the Scale Consortium for that. So really cool stuff. But yeah, we&#8217;re growing and changing, and that&#8217;s always nice to see. This month we have decided to invite a friend I&#8217;ve known for a very long time now, Beka Rice, to join us here on the dev chat. Let&#8217;s start out, Beka, by introducing you a bit and seeing how you have been in the last month.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yes, I am one of the lucky folks who did not get Covid from WordCamp Europe, so very grateful for that. I had enough respiratory illnesses this winter that I am glad to be done with it, but it&#8217;s good to see you guys again. As Zach noted, I&#8217;m Beka Rice. I&#8217;ve worked with WooCommerce since 2013, maybe even before that. It&#8217;s been a long time—since I think version 1.4 if I go back in time a bit. I was one of the original folks at SkyVerge; Max, Justin, and I were partners there. We worked at SkyVerge for a long time and were acquired by GoDaddy in 2020. I still worked in the Woo ecosystem but had a number of other responsibilities and projects I was working on there as well. I left earlier this year after a few years of doing some really cool stuff but wanted to be back working with a small team. So now I have reentered the Woo atmosphere and am very excited to be back doing specific work with a small team again at Kestrel. It was nice to reconnect with a lot of people at WCEU, so if you were one of them, it was very good to see you again.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Yeah, no, that&#8217;s quite a journey. I tell the story of how I got into WooCommerce—building a website for a record label I was part of, using the white light theme back in the day.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />It wasn&#8217;t Canvas?</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />No, I used white light because it had the look that I was after. Those were very interesting days. One of my favorite parts of that time period was the fact that it was kind of the Wild West of WooCommerce. The fork had just happened recently, and we were all starting to adopt it and get into it. There was this Trello board with all these ideas for integrations and plugins, and people would go in there, claim the things they wanted to build, and then build them. Suddenly, we had this ecosystem of plugins and extensions for WooCommerce that started to grow. You and Max and Justin were very early in all of that. I know there were some cards that were claimed that you didn&#8217;t end up building. One in particular was taken over by someone else when the bandwidth just wasn&#8217;t there to do it. I think that was subscriptions, right?</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Well, I would have to ask them if that was a card they had talked about or not, but there were a number in the early days. I think &#8220;Wild West&#8221; is a great way to describe it because the community was so small at that point that you had a couple handfuls of developers who had gotten into WooCommerce, but there weren&#8217;t very many. There were more integrations and ideas and extensions than could simply be built by that small group of people. So certainly Max and Justin were earlier with that. I wasn&#8217;t developing anything at that time myself; I was more so doing documentation and support. But yeah, there were a lot of things that got built, some things that didn&#8217;t, some ideas that probably were big misses still. But with subscriptions in particular, that landing with Brent was probably a great thing all around. You can&#8217;t be mad about a really fantastic piece of software that someone else built.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />I don&#8217;t think so. Honestly, the ecosystem wouldn&#8217;t have Action Scheduler if that hadn&#8217;t happened. For those who don&#8217;t know, WooCommerce Subscriptions is what birthed Action Scheduler, which is the way WooCommerce handles asynchronous tasks in the background. Brent Shepherd and his team did all the work to make that happen. I still have my blue T-shirt, the collaborative T-shirt between SkyVerge and Prospress, the Subscriptions team. One of my profile photos that I frequently go back to is me wearing that shirt with a leather sport coat over it next to a performing arts venue that&#8217;s now five minutes from my house. It’s one of my favorite pictures, and it was taken by my former business partner, Scott.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />A lot of fond memories of those times for sure.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />We were still technically just exiting that Wild West era when the first WooConf happened, and we all got together in Austin. What year was that?</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />The second WooConf in Austin? Yeah, I think it was 2015.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />You and I both spoke at 2017; we were secondary keynotes then, so that was Seattle.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />We&#8217;re testing our memories here, Zach. But yes, there was one in San Francisco early on that was much smaller, then Austin, and then Seattle. All were really wonderful conferences. I would love to see something like that again in the Woo ecosystem.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I tell them all the time, every WooCommerce event. Zach can&#8217;t go, but I crash all the WooCommerce events and consistently remind them they should have a dedicated WooCommerce event.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />A few people are calling for that now, and it&#8217;s a common thing. We miss it because it was our chance as a community to not only gather and be a community of builders and developers in one location but also a way to show off the cool stuff that&#8217;s been happening.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, it’s hard in Woo, right? With it being decentralized, you don&#8217;t always have a view of what other people are doing. There&#8217;s no one source, not even Automattic, that knows every WooCommerce site out there. I think it was super valuable to see that across the community.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />For me, it was more networking. I was trying to find agencies that specialize in that or people that worked with it more because it&#8217;s hard at WordCamps. It’s people doing a bit of everything, so it&#8217;s hard to find the people that specialize in that. I&#8217;m actually really thankful I broke in because Bob sent me an invite that he couldn&#8217;t go to the first WordCamp Asia in Bangkok, and that got the ball rolling for me. A lot of WooCommerce people hang on the sidelines a bit at these WordCamps, so it&#8217;s hard to know who specializes in it, what the big agencies are, the big plugin companies, the big extension companies, who&#8217;s doing cool stuff. It’s just really hard to find them.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Yeah, it is, and I think Brian has done a great job with WooSesh, trying to keep some of that alive virtually, but virtual events don&#8217;t compare to being in person with a group of people. It&#8217;s still fun. I enjoy them. I love what WooSesh and WordSesh have done for the community, but it&#8217;s different than gathering in person.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Some conferences, like WPCampus, do a hybrid. I got accepted to speak this year but couldn&#8217;t go physically, so I declined because I&#8217;m like you. I think the physical connection aspect, the physical networking in person, is way better than virtual. So if that&#8217;s your goal, it&#8217;s really important. Conferences, it’s hard when you do purely virtual. I think it&#8217;s good that some events are trying to do this hybrid format at least to accommodate the speakers because it&#8217;s also about the speakers. It costs a lot of money. I think WPCampus actually has a bit of a stipend, but WordCamps don&#8217;t. So there’s financial accessibility, a question of how comfortable you are traveling. So I think it&#8217;s great to have these hybrid events, but for the speakers and attendees, there&#8217;s a big difference.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />It is. Right now, the designer and developer community are coming together in a virtual and physical hybrid event for Figma, right? Figma has their Config event happening yesterday and today as we&#8217;re recording. They&#8217;ve taken a hybrid model as well. They have a limited number of in-person tickets that sold out, and everybody else can attend virtually, which is pretty cool. I hope to see</p>



  <p>more events do that, take that hybrid approach, limit the number of attendees, but offer the people who couldn&#8217;t attend in person to attend virtually. It seems to be a really good model. The hardest part with that model is the participation of virtual people compared to those in person. I don&#8217;t think anybody&#8217;s really cracked the code on that yet. We&#8217;ll see, though. We&#8217;ll see if somebody figures that one out.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I remember there were these little virtual pixel 16-bit hallways during Covid. Some people, you could walk around and I was just like, no, thank you. I&#8217;m a bonafide nerd. I&#8217;m 41, started coding at seven. My first computer was a Phillips, which I learned something insane, that Phillips spawned ASML and so did TMSC. I always associated Phillips with shaving razors, but apparently, they were really good at computers.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />They did a great job in the semiconductor industry and other parts of the computer industry. They&#8217;re also huge in medical. They’re kind of everywhere. I worked on a project back in my Adobe days. I was working on a Flex application built for a subsidiary of Siemens called Sorian, called Med Suite. It was an electronic medical record system built entirely in Adobe Flex.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />See, I find it interesting that you guys got into programming and the tech ecosystem prior to, let&#8217;s say, Woo or WordPress. Woo and WordPress is actually what got me into the ecosystem. My background was not in tech. I used WordPress early on to manage my website. The reason I learned HTML and then CSS was trying to insert tables on a website. How do I do this? There&#8217;s no WordPress to do a table. How do I do tables? Then, after you learn HTML and CSS, you keep going—PHP, you start to learn JavaScript. Even though I wouldn&#8217;t consider myself a very talented developer at this point, it’s never been my focus. I learned a lot about building and got into different ecosystems, different applications, worked extensively in Shopify, but have worked on e-commerce platform infrastructure as well. Since you&#8217;ve done other things outside the ecosystem prior to working with Woo and Prospress, and I have post working with it, how do you feel like the ecosystem these days compares? It&#8217;s definitely more mature than the early days. As a developer, if you were coming into this ecosystem today, are there things you would expect that you don&#8217;t see?</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />I think if I were coming in new right now, the thing that would bother me the most is how to add a table that I can actually use in the block editor to call back your table story. The table block kind of sucks right now. Sorry to those responsible for that block, but at least I filed a bug report.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, now you’re responsible for giving them the feedback.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />It&#8217;s inflexible. There&#8217;s barely anything you can do with it beyond displaying data. Not a lot of options to customize beyond that. The ecosystem is interesting. It is at this inflection point between what it used to be, primarily PHP, and what it&#8217;s becoming, this hybrid of PHP and React, JavaScript, and whatever new technology we want to insert next. The interaction API isn&#8217;t react. It&#8217;s something else. I can&#8217;t remember what the framework is. Is it Alpine JS?</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />No, we were saying they should have. We had a conversation with Marcel and Mike when we did our joint. I have a lot of thoughts on the current state because I teach a lot of programming. I wrote an object-oriented programming book for WordPress developers that teaches computer science topics. It’s a huge loss to WordPress that you can&#8217;t do what you went through.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, it&#8217;s really easy to get started with React, and then 27 steps later, now you can finally write some code.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Yeah, exactly. It’s not easy. There&#8217;s a lot of… I think now more than ever, WordPress needs to think about developer experience more if they want to go that route. Before, PHP by itself offered a really good developer experience because you could just literally edit a file, FTP it up. Okay, you&#8217;re cowboy coding, but you could get something done. You could change something and see the effect.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Well, you could see your white screen of death, but then you got to see your effects later.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Then you fixed it, or you could display errors there. It felt more accessible for somebody with no programming background. Now it&#8217;s like, oh, I have to learn react templates. I have to learn this. I have to learn that. But forget about that because does my thing even build right now? I think it&#8217;s a huge loss to the ecosystem. I&#8217;m starting to get to the point where, I mean, things change. Nothing stays the same forever. But I think it&#8217;s more obvious than ever that WordPress, yes, it&#8217;s more mature, but the whole community nature of it is not really the same either. My favorite analogy is that it&#8217;s more like a corporate-backed open source project like MySQL. MySQL is super boring. Nobody knows who works on MySQL. It’s Oracle that must sponsor a lot of developers. WordPress is not quite the same, but it&#8217;s not the kumbaya of open source where people can make contributions. But there needs to be a focus on developer experience, especially in the PHP ecosystem. You&#8217;re competing with JavaScript, which is really popular. Then on the other side, you have something like Laravel that actually does care about developer experience. It’s completely different. If I told somebody to learn something in PHP, now I&#8217;d tell them to try Laravel. They’ll be closer to doing what you wanted to do, which is edit a template file. The syntax is different, but I see HTML tags. I can add some HTML tags. There&#8217;s some stuff there. I don&#8217;t have to compile it. There&#8217;s just so much tooling around it. How do you bring new people in? WordPress used to attract people that never did programming. That’s the best part. That’s what I find the most exciting. I think that&#8217;s what makes the community so diverse. People came from so many different backgrounds, just learned WordPress, and could contribute and build a company like yours. Well, you&#8217;re at your second company now, but SkyVerge was a big company, got bought by GoDaddy, and it started with somebody editing HTML files and adding tables. That&#8217;s amazing. To me, that&#8217;s crazy. So that&#8217;s why I think about that a lot.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, the diversity one is interesting. I certainly don&#8217;t have a problem at all with a project evolving and becoming more mature. There were parts of WordPress that needed that. If we go back 10 years, the Wild West wasn&#8217;t the way.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />No, absolutely.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />We&#8217;ve all seen the good and bad side of that. I think the biggest thing that I see sometimes is if you don&#8217;t have that kind of diversity of thought, you develop pieces of the project in a certain way. I sometimes see that with blocks. Exactly, your point about the table block. One of the things I&#8217;ve seen in WordPress is it was so accessible to me because of how extensible it was. You learn about actions and filters and the hook system, and you&#8217;re empowered to change something without having to completely write your application. Literally with a code snippet, six lines of code, I can change a thing. It gets addictive in a way where now I&#8217;ve changed this thing.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Absolutely.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Then you learn more. Within a couple of years, I was like, I really want to write my own plugin and started writing my own plugins. You progressively learn. I&#8217;m not saying my path is the right one or even a good one, but that extensibility is what got you in. It empowers a lot of people to use the software and made it popular. Sometimes with the block ecosystem, and I&#8217;ve had conversations with the Woo folks about that, who have been very receptive, which is wonderful, without that extensibility or ability to modify things, it makes the project less accessible to those tinkerers. People just trying to build a website for some local business that contracted them and is like, can you do this? It sacrifices some of the interoperability that&#8217;s unique to commerce. If you&#8217;re a publishing site, a block may be the most atomic piece of your workflow. I put a form here, a button there. But from our perspective, working in WooCommerce, that&#8217;s not the smallest piece because another extension needs to modify that too or add something of its own into your form. That&#8217;s been challenging. The diversity of thought of people who have grown up in open source and with that extensibility and playing in the sandbox with everybody else versus in isolation is something I feel is missing in modern day. I don&#8217;t know if you feel the same way.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />I do to a point. I&#8217;ve provided feedback on some of the blocks WooCommerce has released, like the cart and checkout blocks. They are these monolithic pieces. They&#8217;re not separated well and weren&#8217;t extensible for a while. It wasn&#8217;t easy to extend them. They finally added the ability to add your own text blocks to the checkout, which was missing. I think the more we think about blocks, the more we have to think about blocks at the atomic level and how they compose into larger patterns. The patterns weren&#8217;t fleshed out when WooCommerce blocks started. I get why the checkout block and the cart block are more these monolithic block components, but now they would be better suited to being a pattern, a composition of numerous blocks that make up all those individual pieces. We would finally get back to some customizability and the ease of customizability on WooCommerce pages. We wouldn&#8217;t be back to the level of code we had the ability to tweak and customize before, but we&#8217;d have a clear delineation between front end and backend development. The visual display being separate from the backend processing makes sense long-term because it gives us</p>



  <p>more flexibility. As it sits right now, we&#8217;re getting there, but we&#8217;re not there yet. I just taught a course for Solid Academy talking about WooCommerce fundamentals with people who haven&#8217;t dove into WooCommerce yet. My favorite thing when teaching WooCommerce is showing people the Business Bloomer visual hook guides for the first time. They have this light bulb moment of, oh, so that&#8217;s what hooks are, that&#8217;s what they&#8217;re supposed to do. That&#8217;s what actions and filters are. Actions interrupt the flow of code, do something, and return control, and filters take an input, modify it, and return it back. Those are the two things we have from a code perspective to change how things work by overriding how they do by default. Just this eye-opening moment for developers where they see those visual hook guides and it clicks. Oh, okay, these are all the things and this is where they live, and this is why overriding that hook or changing its priority does what it does. That&#8217;s the power of where we&#8217;ve been. We have to make sure we don&#8217;t lose that.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, I would agree. With PHP, it’s a little easier versus something more event-based like JavaScript. It&#8217;s easier for a newcomer to grasp. I don&#8217;t lament that we’ve ruined WordPress. It&#8217;s a big step forward. People who have been in Woo as long as we have, we’ve seen some things. There’s the adolescent phases of version 1.6 to 2.0 or 2.3 to 3.0. Those were huge jumps for the project. There&#8217;s a lot of pain to grow up as an ecosystem. I feel like this phase is like that for me, but I’m also back in the ecosystem. It&#8217;s a good change and will make things better. The biggest thing is preserving that superpower of the ecosystem, that interoperability between different code projects merging into one execution stream at runtime. How do you preserve that and welcome different builders into that workstream? I think it&#8217;s a little scary. People are scared because that results in bad things sometimes. But the net positive of the kinds of sites people can create is really cool. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />I&#8217;m reminded of the commercials for State Farm. &#8220;We know a thing or two because we&#8217;ve seen a thing or two.&#8221; We&#8217;ve been through the trenches of building WooCommerce sites larger and more complex than imagined. It&#8217;s amazing that open source can do that. It can enable something that even the creators had no clue was a possibility when they were starting out. I don&#8217;t think Mike and James had any idea that something they were working on would power billions of dollars in commerce.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Every year, right? Billions every year. They’ve published the global GMV of WooCommerce sometimes in WooSesh. It’s probably even an underestimate from what I’ve seen. Last time they estimated WooCommerce powers tens of billions.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />It&#8217;s hard to get an estimate.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, because there&#8217;s no centralization. I&#8217;ve looked at different ways to estimate, but it’s hard to know how much revenue is online versus offline for some businesses that use it.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Some people use it internally.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />At least tens of billions.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I know from indirect clients that they use it just for internal warehousing and internal customers. If you&#8217;re a big company…</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Running your own swag store.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Yeah, exactly. It could be a swag store or just managing inventory between divisions. In big companies, the financialization is interesting. It’s impossible to track all that usage.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />The cool thing is they do that because you can customize it. It has those crazy diverse use cases because of that customization. Your software can work together easily with other software.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />It’s the only option. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m still really bullish. Even if Shopify is great, if you want a self-hosted thing, your other option is Magento, and that&#8217;s not really a road most people want to go on. That&#8217;s really exciting. Just from a developer aspect, it&#8217;s not necessarily lamenting, but it comes from being around programming for so long.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, you care about it. You want it to be better.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />But also, I love programming. You described it the best way. You can make little changes and feel empowered. It&#8217;s the empowerment. You put a filter, six lines of code, and it did something. And you&#8217;re like, holy crap, I&#8217;ve done something. That’s addictive. How do you get people to that space as fast as possible with as little technical knowledge as possible is really important, even if you&#8217;re not the flavor of the month framework. That&#8217;s the essence. Things can mature and not stay accessible, and that&#8217;s okay. But if you want to think about the health of the ecosystem and bringing new people in, I was really heartened to meet a couple of 23-year-olds at WordCamp EU. I thought we were all late thirties, early forties people. There weren&#8217;t a ton of them, but a few. That&#8217;s really important. It doesn&#8217;t have to be cool, but you want to make it something they&#8217;re not like, okay, boomer. It&#8217;s always going to be like, oh, I want to try the newer thing. It’s good to keep that in mind. The harder it is, the more people don&#8217;t want to do it, and the harder it is to bring people in, which affects health of products, hiring, maintaining talent.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />You don&#8217;t want to become COBOL in a few years, right?</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Yeah, exactly. I&#8217;m trying not to say COBOL, but basically not become COBOL. There&#8217;s a big gap between that, but this idea that it&#8217;s good for the ecosystem too, for indirect reasons.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />The accessibility becomes a big thing. It reminds me of what General Assembly did for Rails and how easy it was for people to pick up and start learning. By the end of six weeks, they build a small web app. I hired a lot of Rails developers. Some of our software was Rails with a React front end. As a small company, we didn&#8217;t always hire people that junior, but it was amazing how people could have no code experience but have an interactive web app they built by the end because of how accessible the ecosystem was. Carl, to your point, that&#8217;s a good measure of how well you can thrive and get people in the door. Not people like us who do this all day, every day, and build software for the platform. It&#8217;s people building WordPress websites and need to customize something for a client. Can they do it? If there&#8217;s not a plugin that exists or it only gets them 90% of the way there, have we made it easier for them to get on board and try?</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I always try to think empathetically. PHP is my sixth or seventh programming language. I&#8217;m not a representative person, so I always try to think. I think programming is a life-changing career that anybody, regardless of educational background, could get into. Anything that empowers people to do that, to have that opportunity, is huge. WordPress attracted people that never did programming. That&#8217;s the great thing. A lot of people career changed into WordPress, built companies, sold companies, made money, learned even more complicated things. It was great. That&#8217;s always what&#8217;s in the back of my mind.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />A couple of things based on what was just discussed. We have a newer podcast here at Do the Woo, part of the All Things WordPress and WooCommerce podcast, called The Next Gen, with Allison Dye and Sophia DeRosia talking about WordPress and the next generation of WordPress. It&#8217;s interesting to see what that looks like from their perspective as younger people in this ecosystem. I&#8217;m excited about the next generation of WordPressers. There’s a lot of possibility and potential. I&#8217;m excited about newer community members driving us forward. Also, I got into computers by breaking something. There’s an inherent desire to tinker that comes with being a developer. I was tinkering before I knew what I was doing, and I ended up breaking my grandmother&#8217;s brand-new computer. I ended up on the phone with my friend&#8217;s dad, Tom, who worked at Baxter Labs in their IT department. He was the only person I knew who could help me fix what I had done. I spent hours on the phone with him, and he took his time to help me rebuild the operating system when I was nine or ten years old. That pushed me to understand that tinkering may have a cost, but it also has a benefit. I never stopped tinkering. I encourage anybody interested in development, sitting on the builder side thinking, wow, I really like hearing Zach and Carl talk about development, but it seems daunting to get into it. Just tinker. At the core of what we&#8217;re talking about, the block ecosystem changes tinkering in a way that makes it more difficult. I would encourage people who are newer to WordPress to look at the Roots Project with Radical. It uses the Roots stack and the Roots ecosystem. They have this thing called ACORN that lets you use Laravel inside WordPress. It&#8217;s a completely different way of looking at things than the block editor. It has ways to use and build blocks with an HMR-supported build setup. These are really cool things as part of a nice starting point if you&#8217;re interested in trying something different than what WordPress core does by default. It’s the power of an open-source ecosystem that allows people to build anything because we have all the code. That’s powerful. Sometimes we lose sight of that as a community that&#8217;s been in it. If we were working in a closed-source ecosystem like Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly, we don’t know the internal workings. We have a set of integration points, but that’s the limitation. We can only talk to the things we&#8217;re allowed to. It’s harder to build highly custom things. One of the things I talk about frequently is that Woo</p>



  <p>Commerce enables non-traditional stores. We have a ton of capability for selling physical products, but we can also, due to plugins, do things that are significantly different. We can do event ticketing, bookings, hotel reservations. Try that with Shopify out of the box. WooCommerce is highly focused on physical products. It’s not particularly great at virtual products. It can do it, but not particularly well.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />You need apps to do that.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Yes, you need the booking plugin. Virtual products, event ticketing, time and resource-based booking, accommodation booking, membership sites, online courses, charitable giving, fundraising, peer-to-peer software subscriptions—these are all business models powered by WooCommerce. Think beyond physical products. These are things plugins enable. All these things are possibilities inside the WooCommerce ecosystem. That&#8217;s insane. There’s no other e-commerce platform that can do all those things and do them well. That’s a strength.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />If you were getting into the Woo ecosystem to build things right now, how would you use that information? Would you be building booking plugins? What would you be doing if you were listening to this?</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />I would shift my definition of e-commerce because what we think of as e-commerce is generally the Amazon model of selling a product and shipping it. Shipping at such a low cost that margins are low. It’s hard to make money without volume when your margins are low. Amazon changed the physical product world. I would change my definition of commerce to be anything that involves transacting through a website.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Using Woo with a framework to do that.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Absolutely.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Exactly. I agree with that.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />You heard it here, folks. If you&#8217;re a new developer, building the next invoicing app for plumbers is the way to go. I agree. Service businesses and other kinds of businesses—you see them more commonly on Woo because they can&#8217;t use anything else.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />In addition to that, you have these restricted product categories that don&#8217;t have other choices. These restricted product categories are growing by leaps and bounds.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Shout out to all the vape stores out there.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />There are sites I know of in restricted categories doing hundreds of millions of dollars in sales in a month just through WooCommerce. That&#8217;s because we have the capability to build payment gateways and plugins that tie to high-risk payment processors willing to take that business. That’s the open-source nature of WooCommerce and WordPress.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Or selling gray market stuff. But one of my favorite WooCommerce sites is a Canadian site to buy magic mushrooms. It’s WooCommerce, and it’s the coolest site. They went all out with a Miami Vice aesthetic. But they can do that. What you can host, what you can sell, what payment options you have is important. So I really like Zach’s idea of expanding, really think about e-commerce literally as electronic commerce. Are you doing commerce online for anything? Like you said, plumber, wedding DJ, book gigs as a wedding DJ and charge for it. Anything. It lets you do that. That’s the real way to think about the platform.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />I favor people I can pay online for things, even a DJ or booking something. If I can do it and pay online, I feel like it usually indicates people are more serious about their business versus someone I have to call and book.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Oh, interesting.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />The four to six times a year I book a haircut, I do it online. That&#8217;s how I reserve that person&#8217;s time. I do the same with my doctors, my therapist, and all the other services I consume regularly. All the booking is done virtually now. I’m not calling somebody to set these appointments up. Building these tools increases accessibility to services for people who wouldn&#8217;t want to book them because of the friction involved. Friction is a killer. I know we&#8217;re talking about development, but these things are important to know. Friction is a killer. Statistically, the abandonment rate is 57%. Friction is enough for them after making a purchase decision to cancel, to abandon their decision. They&#8217;ve decided to give you money, and now 55% of shoppers say friction is frustrating enough to quit a purchase. Crazy. Friction can exist in multiple ways. For some people, making a phone call to a location to set up an appointment is terrifying.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Don&#8217;t make me call. I&#8217;m extroverted and will talk to anybody at a conference, but don’t make me call for support. I just want to do it online or via form or email.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Building these tools increases the accessibility of these services to people who normally would not want to book them because of friction. I think the future of commerce is going beyond the Amazon model. It’s a great model. It works well. But people who look at things more creatively and don’t just copy Amazon will see huge returns. Experimentation will be rewarded in the coming years because e-commerce is growing. The industry segment is growing. It’s already billions more than we thought it would be and will be billions more. I think we’re crossing the trillion-dollar threshold this year in the US for e-commerce transactions. So much money is being transacted online. For anybody thinking, wow, I really want to get into this space, do it. Beka is a testament that you can get into this space, build things people love, and get a call from someone as crazy as GoDaddy, be acquired, build product inside a large organization, then exit and come back in and start again with another plugin company, Kestrel. I can’t wait to see what you, Max, and Justin do with Kestrel. It’ll be a lot of fun to see the future unfold. But we’ll leave that for another podcast.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />You ended with a cliffhanger, Zach.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />That’s how we get you back.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />We’re talking about having you come back for a product chat in the near future. Be on the lookout for it. Have Beka come back in and talk more about the story behind Kestrel and where Kestrel is going. It’s been a joy talking the history of Woo and some of the thoughts we have around where things are going and development in general. Thank you for joining us this week. Before we wrap up, I always give Carl the opportunity to ask any final questions he has.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I don&#8217;t have any follow-up questions. I’ve just really enjoyed the discussion. I thought it was really good.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Carl&#8217;s going to ask when I start building block tooling. Don’t ask me that, Carl.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />I wouldn&#8217;t invest in block tooling until they can say, okay, we&#8217;re done. Some people tried to build abstractions around blocks, but it’s so volatile and unstable that it’s not worth the investment to maintain that.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, I&#8217;d agree. You need to work with Woo and WordPress core to make those things happen. The cool news is we&#8217;re seeing it. It’s super exciting to see something change.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />There&#8217;s an opportunity.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m back, right?</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Maybe there will be an ACF for blocks eventually or something to abstract away and make it easier for people to do these blocks. But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s right now.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />I think ACF block is the ACF block.</p>



  <p>Carl:<br />Yeah, ACF blocks are cool too, but you know what I mean. Something…</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Yes, absolutely. Something that&#8217;ll be a landmark shift in how we build with the block editor. That&#8217;s definitely something on the horizon. Some tools are really close already. We’re in a good position to usher in a new future together as a community. For those watching some of the drama in this community, remember you have a choice to engage in that drama or ignore it. You have the ability to change this ecosystem by participating. That’s the wonder of open source and contribution. Despite what some people may think or the feelings some may have, we all have the possibility and potential to influence where the future goes. That’s what I remain focused on. No matter how small a voice you have, you have a voice. Use it.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Beautiful.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Thank you.</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />Well said.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Now that I&#8217;ve ended on a high emotional point, Beka, how do people find you on the internet?</p>



  <p>Beka:<br />I&#8217;m around. I&#8217;d love for people to check us out at kestrelwp.com. As Zach mentioned, we&#8217;ve acquired a number of plugins for Woo to ramp back up. We&#8217;re excited to be back in the space. I&#8217;m on Twitter, B-E-K-A-R-I-C-E. Happy to chat and love to hear what people are building. If you&#8217;re in the Woo space and getting into some new projects, let me know how I can help.</p>



  <p>Zach:<br />Awesome. As always, if you have ideas for what you’d like to hear about on a Woo DevChat, go to your favorite social media platform and use hashtag bug Bob. We&#8217;re still going to make this thing happen. Hashtag bug Bob. Bob will listen to your feedback or just go to Do the Woo.io and contact us there. We want to hear your feedback. If you want to participate in a dev chat, we&#8217;d love to hear your ideas and hear from you directly. On behalf of myself, Carl, Bob, and the entire Do the Woo team, thank you for listening and being part of this amazing community.</p>
  </div>




  <p>Welcome to another episode of <strong><em>Woo DevChat</em></strong> and join hosts <strong>Zach Stepe</strong>k and <strong>Carl Alexande</strong>r as they dive into a lively discussion with <strong>Beka Rice, a seasoned WooCommerce expert and product architect at Kestrel.</strong> </p>



  <p>In this episode, Beka shares her journey through the evolving WooCommerce ecosystem, the challenges and opportunities in the world of development, and the exciting future ahead with her new venture, Kestrel. Whether you&#8217;re a seasoned developer or just starting out, this episode is packed with insights, reflections, and forward-thinking ideas. </p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Highlights</h2>



  <p><strong>The Evolution of WooCommerce</strong>: WooCommerce has evolved significantly from its early days, becoming more mature and complex. The community has grown, and the ecosystem now includes a diverse range of plugins and extensions.</p>



  <p><strong>Challenges with Blocks</strong>: The transition to using blocks in WordPress and WooCommerce has created new challenges, particularly around extensibility and ease of customization. Blocks need to be more flexible and easier to work with for developers.</p>



  <p><strong>Developer Experience</strong>: There&#8217;s a need to improve the developer experience within WordPress, especially for new developers. Ensuring the platform remains accessible and easy to tinker with is crucial for attracting new talent.</p>



  <p><strong>Diverse Use Cases:</strong> WooCommerce supports a wide range of business models beyond just physical products, including virtual products, event ticketing, bookings, membership sites, and more. This versatility is a significant strength of the platform.</p>



  <p><strong>Importance of Community</strong>: The open-source nature of WordPress and WooCommerce allows for a collaborative community where developers can contribute, innovate, and influence the future of the platform. This community-driven approach is vital for continued growth and improvement.</p>



  <p><strong>Focus on Reducing Friction</strong>: Reducing friction in ecommerce transactions is essential. Making it easier for customers to interact with businesses online, whether through booking services or making purchases, can significantly improve conversion rates.</p>



  <p><strong>Future Potential</strong>: There is excitement about the future of WooCommerce and the potential for new innovations. The community is looking forward to seeing how new tools and approaches, such as those developed by Kestrel, will shape the ecosystem.</p>



  <p><strong>Encouragement for New Developers</strong>: The conversation emphasizes the importance of welcoming and supporting new developers in the WooCommerce ecosystem. Tinkering and experimenting are encouraged as ways to learn and grow in the field.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong><a href="https://kestrelwp.com/">KestrelWP.com</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://x.com/Beka_Rice">Beka on X</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://x.com/kestrelwp">Kestrel on X</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/kestrelwp/">Kestrel on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>
  </ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 09 Jul 2024 08:15:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 83: Learning Pathways";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=17489";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/episode-83-learning-pathways/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35146:"<p>Discover how Learning Pathways can guide you through your WordPress journey with clarity and purpose. In the latest episode of WordPress Briefing, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy welcomes special guest Wes Theron to discuss the newly introduced Learning Pathways. These curated lesson sets are tailored to various experience levels, roles, and use cases, ensuring a personalized learning experience for every WordPress user. </p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



  <p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Guest: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/west7/">Wes Theron</a><br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn.WordPress.org</a>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/">Beginner WordPress Developer</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/">Beginner WordPress User</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/playground/">WordPress Playground</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ETacCXdCCxwdAo-_xciwlQJ">Learn WordPress YouTube Playlist</a></li>



  <li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-5-5/">WordPress 6.5.5 is now available!</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/06/15/wordpress-contributor-mentorship-program-q4-2024-call-for-interest/">WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Q4 2024</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress 6.6 Official Release</a>
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYdkXAx7qw">What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/">Upcoming WordPress Meetings</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li>Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@WordPress.org">WPBriefing@WordPress.org</a>.</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



  <span id="more-17489"></span>



  <p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;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.</p>



  <p>[00:00:28] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:00:39] <strong>Josepha:</strong> As a steward of the WordPress community, one of the big overarching questions that I grapple with is how to make sure people who have just found out about us know how to get around. Obviously, there&#8217;s the contributor path, which is important to me because I am especially concerned with the longevity of our little open source community, but there&#8217;s also a path for folks who are learning how to use the software.</p>



  <p>[00:01:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so, joining me today to talk through a project called Learning Pathways is Wes Theron. Wes, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.</p>



  <p>[00:01:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> Good day. Thank you very much for having me. It&#8217;s a pleasure.</p>



  <p>[00:01:13] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Before we get into this project that we&#8217;re talking about, do you want to just tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do with the WordPress project?</p>



  <p>[00:01:22] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah. So, as you know, my name is Wes Theron. I&#8217;m based in New Zealand, and I&#8217;m an instructional designer. And, I am part of the Training Team. So, most of my life revolves around creating learning content for learn.WordPress.org.</p>



  <p>[00:01:38] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s quite a life. Teaching people how to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:01:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, I teach WordPress. We run online workshops. I create video tutorials, courses, and now, of course, this great project we&#8217;re working on, Learning Pathways.</p>



  <p>[00:01:52] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. So, I&#8217;ve talked about Learning Pathways a few times here on the podcast, but for folks who have not heard me talk about it or who just need a more in-depth understanding, why don&#8217;t you tell us a little bit about this project as it stands today?&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:02:06] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, so when Learn started out, I think the main goal was to just get learning content on the site. But, in May of last year, we shared an individual learning survey with folks, and we were hoping to basically find out what are the needs of the learners? What are learners after? And from that individual learner survey, we actually learned a few things. We learned that tutorials, courses, and online workshops were the most used content types. We also saw that web-based learning is the most popular learning method. And then there was a clear need for a structured way of consuming learning material. And that&#8217;s basically where the Learning Pathways project was born; to create Learning Pathways that basically target various types of learners, but also various skill levels. So July of last year, we started with outlines, creating outlines for these learner pathways.</p>



  <p>[00:03:10] <strong>Wes:</strong> And then, in October of last year, we actually started creating content. So, the first learner pathways we started working on was the User Learning Pathway and the Developer Learning Pathway. And what that entails is of course, creating a Learning Pathway for beginner users, intermediate users, and then advanced users.</p>



  <p>So that&#8217;s how we kind of broke it up. And last week, the Beginner Developer Pathway was actually published, so that&#8217;s very exciting. And a few weeks before that, the Beginner WordPress User Pathway. And yeah, of course, we&#8217;ve got many other pathways in the pipeline that we want to work on. For example, a Designer Learning Pathway and even a Contributor Learning Pathway.</p>



  <p>[00:03:57] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, when we&#8217;re talking about pathways, what we mean is, like, we are figuring out what you probably need to know when you first arrive and then helping you to identify what you build on based on what your goals might be.</p>



  <p>[00:04:11] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Like, obviously, the beginner user, the goal is basically just like, learn how to get WordPress doing stuff at all. Like that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s an easy goal to understand. But when you all were doing the work to figure out what needed to be in the pathway for a beginner developer, and as you&#8217;re looking towards doing the work around intermediate and advanced topics, like how are you all able to determine what most likely you need in those various steps in the learning process?</p>



  <p>[00:04:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, of course, a lot of research went into that. When we created the outlines for these Learning Pathways. We shared it with the community. We asked for feedback. And yeah, a lot of research was done to make sure we cover all the all the bases. </p>



  <p>[00:04:59] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I know that there were a couple of different proposals about how to, like do skills assessments, maybe? There was something where like we were talking with companies that employ WordPress folks in the ecosystem, and then we were talking to WordPressers who were currently trying to make sure that their skills were advanced enough to get those jobs. And we were trying to figure out like the distance between those and where we actually have some concerns around like the language choices that they need, like basic developer language choices and jargon that goes in there and stuff like that.</p>



  <p>[00:05:34] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So this, if I recall correctly, the research for this has been going on for like maybe two or three years, right?</p>



  <p>[00:05:42] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, definitely. And we&#8217;ve reached out to many stakeholders within the WordPress community. And as you say, even agencies, and businesses, you know, trying to find out what do they want people to know when they employ them. And yeah, then of course, speaking to the community, speaking, speaking to folks at WordCamps reaching out to folks an online workshops.</p>



  <p>[00:06:04] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, yeah, it&#8217;s definitely been an ongoing process and also seeing what resources are lacking and what needs to be there.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:06:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, so, the very first, the very first iteration of any training that the WordPress project was offering on, I think it was on learn.WordPress.org, but I don&#8217;t actually know for sure, was a troubleshooting workshop, because when you are trying to figure out WordPress for the first time, when you are trying to figure out any software for the first time, being able to figure out what went wrong is a really important part of that. And so that was like the only workshop that existed over there for quite some time. And so it&#8217;s really nice to see how we have really, not only created a bunch of resources in general, if you all have not looked at learn.WordPress.org lately, it has, like, workshop outlines that you can use to do a training by yourself at your meetup group or at a school or whatever it is.</p>



  <p>[00:07:08] <strong>Josepha:</strong> But then also, I want to say it was maybe two, three years ago, that you all, as a team, the Training Team, started doing these online workshops. And so, when you created the Learning Pathways, considering like how much time and research has gone into this project overall, did you all have learnings that came from those workshops that you had already done? Is this like a collection of workshops or is this something where you can do it at home and learn by yourself and then go someplace else and learn more about WordPress? Like how does that function in what we have already?</p>



  <p>[00:07:45] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, so maybe I should first, maybe let&#8217;s define a learning pathway. So I, I thought about this, but a learning pathway, I would say, is a route taken by learner through a range of modules, lessons, and even courses to build knowledge progressively. So it&#8217;s similar to a course, but of course usually covers like a specific topic or subject where learning pathways usually have a larger goal.</p>



  <p>[00:08:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> So I wouldn&#8217;t say that the online workshops form part of the Learning Pathways project. And maybe I can also clarify that the teacher notes or the lesson plans that you refer to is something that&#8217;s also changing going forward. </p>



  <p>[00:08:23] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Oh, good. Because I wrote some of those, and I am not an instructional designer. And so, ha!</p>



  <p>[00:08:30] <strong>Wes:</strong> We&#8217;ve actually decided to move away from having two different content types. So, we had tutorials. You know, video tutorials, and we had lesson plans, and as you said, the lesson plans were notes that somebody could use to run an online workshop or to go to a WordCamp or at their local meetup and use that to teach something. But moving forward for Learning Pathways, we are actually just going to have one content type, namely lessons. And then lessons from part of creating a course or lessons from part of creating modules and then Learning Pathways. The other exciting thing, and something we haven&#8217;t mentioned, is that at the end of this month, when we launched the Learning Pathways or the first few Learning Pathways, it actually coincides with a website redesign.</p>



  <p>[00:09:18] <strong>Wes:</strong> So, yeah, beyond the lookout, hopefully, learn.WordPress.org is going to have a brand new face at the end, from the end of July or, yeah, or August. So, yeah, that&#8217;s very exciting.</p>



  <p>[00:09:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Excellent. Excellent. So, you said that these Learning Pathways are part of a larger goal. Is that a goal for your learners or a goal for WordPress? A goal for the team?</p>



  <p>[00:09:40] <strong>Wes:</strong> I would say all of the above.</p>



  <p>[00:09:42] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Goals for everybody. We&#8217;re like the Oprah of goals. Don&#8217;t come get me, Oprah. That&#8217;s all I got to say about it.</p>



  <p>[00:09:48] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yeah, I think for us as a team, at the end of the day, we want folks to be able to use the content and find the content and utilize all the learning material on learn.WordPress.org. And then, of course, at the end of the day, for learners, we want folks to be able to succeed in whatever they are trying to do. Is it to build their own website? Is it to maybe find a job as a developer? And. Yeah, I mean, the list can go on.</p>



  <p>[00:10:21] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. So, on the subject of wanting to help people succeed, I think that as far as I hear from the majority of contributors that I have worked with over the years, like helping other people figure out how to do this and making sure that they can succeed is always something that is top of mind for contributors to open source probably in general, but definitely to WordPress. Like, we really care about helping other people figure out how to have the same sort of benefits that we&#8217;ve had in the project and with the software. So if you have somebody who is familiar with all the bits and pieces of WordPress and really, really want to like show up and help teach some things. Is it the case that they can take part in like running a Learning Pathway? Is it something where we mostly need people to help us build some content? Like if we&#8217;ve got people who are just desperate to help other people succeed in WordPress, what kinds of things can they show up and help do on this project?</p>



  <p>[00:11:22] <strong>Wes:</strong> Yes, please come to the Training Team. There are many ways to get involved. If you just want to review content, you can do that. But yeah, we do have a need for content creators, folks, you know, creating a video lesson or putting their hand up and saying, I will actually create an entire module or an entire learning, a Learning Pathway. We do have some awesome contributors that&#8217;s part of the Training Team that are already doing that. Some people are writing scripts. Some folks are actually, you know, creating everything from the beginning to the end. So they are writing the script, they recording the video, publishing the video, et cetera. And then we&#8217;ve, of course, have people reviewing content. We&#8217;ve got folks running online workshops. If maybe creating video content is not their, is not their forte, they can can run online workshops. So yeah, many ways getting involved.</p>



  <p>[00:12:16] <strong>Wes:</strong> But Josepha, I wanted to point something else out that I haven&#8217;t done. I think there was a real need for Learning Pathways because, at the moment, if somebody new to WordPress or new to developing with WordPress wants to find learning content. You know, where do they go? What&#8217;s the main platform to go to? I think most people probably go to YouTube, right?&nbsp;But a lot of the content there are, are scattered and fragmented. </p>



  <p>So a lot of learning material or learning about WordPress is all over the place. It&#8217;s not in one place. And as I said, a place where you can actually learn from A to Z, learn progressively learning in a structured way. Yes, we know there are courses available that you can pay for, but the awesome thing about this project is that we are providing these Learning Pathways, these learning resources, for free for folks to be able to work through at their own time. I know that&#8217;s something else you asked earlier on. So yes, this is a course in quotation marks; this is a Learning Pathway that somebody can start whenever it suits them, you know, in the comfort of their own home, and they can work through the Learning Pathway from the beginning to the end. Or, if they feel I actually know everything taught in module one and two, I&#8217;m going to start at module three, they can do that. They basically come in at their skill level.</p>



  <p>[00:13:43] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yes. I think it&#8217;s really important to try to meet people where they are. And I know that it&#8217;s difficult because, like, we don&#8217;t take a lot of data from our users. You don&#8217;t have to give us basically anything in order to use WordPress. And by basically, I mean you literally don&#8217;t have to give us anything to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:14:01] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so we always have some difficulty in figuring out what is it that our users need the most in order to succeed the quickest. And so I agree that there was a real need for this not only because, like, there&#8217;s plenty of content for getting from, like, some knowledge to a good amount of knowledge. There&#8217;s almost no content around, like, I didn&#8217;t know CMSs existed until yesterday, and now I need to quickly learn how to do it because it&#8217;s become a thing I need to do in my job. There&#8217;s some really clear, like use cases for being able to onboard quickly and progressively.<br /><br />And I understand that, like, having a clear, structured way to learn doesn&#8217;t always fit with the idea of meeting people where they are. But I do really think that, that like what you were saying, it can be as structured as you need it to be. But also, if you get into it and you think to yourself, you know, I know this information already. I can move on to the next module. I can move on to the module after that. Similar to the way we do that at WordCamps also. If you get into a session and you thought it was going to be useful for you, and you discover that it&#8217;s not once you&#8217;re there, you don&#8217;t have to stay. You can go to a different room where they&#8217;re teaching about SEO if it turns out that you don&#8217;t need to learn about JavaScript today.</p>



  <p>[00:15:23] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And I think that that&#8217;s, it&#8217;s kind of the value that this is hoping to bring, like, because it is a little bit built one on top of the other when you discover that you have already learned something, you can easily try out the next step and know that it&#8217;s probably a good next step.</p>



  <p>[00:15:38] <strong>Wes:</strong> Exactly. And if you maybe want to teach this to other folks. The plan is to, you know, we had lesson plans. We have a lot of lesson plans on Learn. But the plan is also to, instead of having, as I said, two different content types, is to have lessons but then add a tab where you can click on teacher notes and actually teach something as well if that is your goal. But yes, our lessons and modules also include quizzes and, hopefully, some practical activities. We&#8217;ve incorporated WordPress Playground where, where folks can actually, you know, test out what they&#8217;ve learned or test their knowledge. So yeah, I agree with you that you can basically join the Learning Pathway wherever you feel the most comfortable.</p>



  <p>[00:16:28] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So we&#8217;ve been kind of in the weeds of the project itself, the program itself, and if you want to like do stuff with that and in that. Let&#8217;s switch gears a little bit and talk about just what people who are wanting to join those pathways would need to know. Do you have any advice for somebody who is just today learning about these Learning Pathways and they think to themselves, I definitely want to sign up for one of those. Like, for one, how do they get started? And for two, your like top two or three bits of advice for as they get started? </p>



  <p>[00:17:05] <strong>Wes:</strong> So you can make your way to learn.WordPress.org, and you can basically open the, the pathway, and you can start wherever, wherever you want to. We have made it possible to actually view these pathways or our content without logging in with your dot org profile. The other thing I also wanted to mention is that our content is actually hosted on YouTube now.</p>



  <p>So the great thing is we have these pathways within YouTube as well. So, folks can go to the, YouTube channel and see our content. And, of course, that basically reaches a very wide audience. And hopefully some of those videos will also bring people to the dot org site so that they can access the content.</p>



  <p>[00:17:57] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I think it&#8217;s great that you don&#8217;t have to sign up for a profile. If you are a brand new WordPresser and ran into this in your dashboard and are listening to this podcast now. So dot org profiles are a place where you can kind of log your activity in the WordPress community and the WordPress project. You do not have to have one in order to use WordPress. You don&#8217;t have to have one in order to look at these courses or to learn from them. But I always think that it&#8217;s kind of nice to get your profile set up so that people kind of know who you are and what you&#8217;re doing. And then also your activity shows up. Like, you can see that you enrolled in the course and you get to know for yourself that you made some progress. I know that when you&#8217;re getting started, it&#8217;s hard to, like, see your progress because you don&#8217;t know how far you have to go. And so, like progress when you&#8217;re starting out is really difficult to feel is real. And so I like it just so that you have a few reminders to yourself, like, look how far I&#8217;ve come as you&#8217;re trying to figure out how far you still have to go. And so I like that a lot. </p>



  <p>[00:18:58] <strong>Wes:</strong> You won&#8217;t be able to access all the content on Learn without your dot org profile. But one of the things we&#8217;ve made possible is to access these Learning Pathways, the new ones being launched without, you know, removing those blockers. So, of course, when you work through a Learning Pathway, you will be able to track your progress, and you will be able to see which lessons you have completed. So yeah, one of the pieces of advice I would give to somebody starting with the Learning Pathways actually to first go through the modules. And go through the lessons to see which things you know and feel comfortable with so that you don&#8217;t waste time maybe going through the first module and say, oh, I know this, and you&#8217;ve wasted time. Rather do a bit of research, a bit of reading, and then find the right place for you to start the journey.</p>



  <p>[00:19:45] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That&#8217;s excellent. I also, just as a learner, I try to always learn some stuff. And also, as you get older, it&#8217;s harder and harder to learn things partially because like you&#8217;re in a set path, but also, and here&#8217;s my advice to new learners: you worry about looking foolish. Like you, you worry, you&#8217;re showing up, and you don&#8217;t know anything about anybody else in the classroom. And so there&#8217;s this feeling of like, what if I&#8217;m the only person who does not know how to make this work? What if I&#8217;m the only person who can&#8217;t figure out what Wes meant by &#8220;Playground&#8221; or whatever it is? There&#8217;s this real feeling of looking silly when you&#8217;re doing something like this.</p>



  <p>[00:20:25] <strong>Josepha:</strong> I can&#8217;t control what anybody else says or does to anyone else, unfortunately. But what I can say is that I think that there&#8217;s never a bad time to start something you wish you had done, right? Like, the best time to have learned how to use your CMS, your website, make your website work was probably a year ago or something, but the second best time is today. And so, like, why not go ahead and get started and be part of that small group of adults that are learning new things every single day? I think that&#8217;s great. And so that&#8217;s my tip is to just embrace looking silly sometimes because you&#8217;re making some choices about your future, and that&#8217;s always a good choice.</p>



  <p>[00:21:04] <strong>Wes:</strong> And I would also say test your knowledge. So you&#8217;ve mentioned WordPress Playground. And as I said, we&#8217;ve incorporated into the Learning Pathways, but sometimes you watch a video, or you read something, and you feel like, oh yeah, I know this, but you know, the proof is in the pudding. So go and test it out. Use a test website or use WordPress Playground and test yourself to see if you can actually implement this or do something. So yeah, that&#8217;s definitely one of the other tips I want to highlight; you know, they also say you, you learn by doing.</p>



  <p>[00:21:38] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. And also, like if you have gotten to a point you&#8217;ve done the learning, you&#8217;ve done some practicing, you think you&#8217;ve got it and want to like try to figure out what other things can be done with it. I recommend this is how I did a lot of my early WordPress learning to organize an event with your local meetup.<br /><br />Like, I did not know enough about WordPress when I started organizing WordPress meetups. I literally knew nothing. And I basically brought people in and was like, hey, we need people to teach us about this, us being half me. Come in and teach us. And, and that can be a really good thing, partially because, like, you get to know your local folks and see what&#8217;s going on and get a sense for, like, what is out there, especially if you&#8217;re learning this in order to run a business or to accomplish something for your job that you already have, like knowing what&#8217;s out there is super helpful. But then I find that once you embrace the fact that sometimes you will look silly, and that&#8217;s the only way that we can know we&#8217;re learning something. Like once you&#8217;ve embraced it, having some people who are willing to look a little silly with you is kind of, kind of fun, kind of nice. Also, like we&#8217;re all going to look at this problem that we definitely don&#8217;t understand and hopefully look like, at the end, we know what we&#8217;re doing, but between looking at it the first time and at the end of this meetup, we&#8217;re all going to look a little bit silly, ask silly questions. And I think that that&#8217;s a really helpful thing, too. But yeah, knowing some basic information is a great place to start before you do that, especially if you get anxious about looking silly. And I think these pathways are going to really help to get folks a little bit of a leg up on those big questions that they have as you&#8217;re starting to learn how to use WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:23:18] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So we talked about, like, tips and tricks for learners in general. But if you had something that you wanted to share with us that, like, you&#8217;re really excited about for either the Training Team or for the Learning Pathways in general, I think the Learning Pathways are slated to be shipped by, like, end of September or something. So, like, a lot of them are coming quite quickly.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:23:38] <strong>Wes:</strong> So I am most excited about the website redesign and the new look and feel of the website. And also, you know, one of the goals for us as a Training Team is for learn.WordPress.org to be one of the places people come to and learn about WordPress. And I feel these Learning Pathways and the new website redesign and all the hard work that&#8217;s gone into this project is hopefully going to, make that happen. As I said, our content is also available on YouTube. So we&#8217;ve really tried to make it easy for folks to find our content and also now to digest our content in a progressive and in a structured way. Because, you know, learning is hard. And hopefully, these Learning Pathways have made it easier for folks to, as you said, to build on your knowledge. You know, a lot of times, there&#8217;s knowledge gaps. And I think that&#8217;s what makes learning so hard. And hopefully with these pathways, you can build that knowledge one step at a time.</p>



  <p>[00:24:44] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Yeah. And as is the way with open source, like we can only make these pieces of content better if you all show up and help us like try it out, learn some stuff, and tell us what was confusing. Tell us what was too big a step. Cause yeah, you&#8217;re right. There are some knowledge gaps and when you&#8217;re on the other side of knowing something, it is so hard to tell how big a step is, you know?</p>



  <p>[00:25:11] <strong>Wes:</strong> Exactly.</p>



  <p>[00:25:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And so we need y&#8217;all to come in here and tell us very plainly as a new learner like that was eventually what I needed, but this part here was especially confusing. This part over here was too like too many little steps like we just we&#8217;re trying to make sure that it works for you WordPressers, future WordPressers of the world. And so yeah, come build some learning with us over here on the Training Team.</p>



  <p>[00:25:35] <strong>Wes:</strong> And yes, please, we want feedback because, as you say, as we iterate, we want to improve. So there will be a place where you can provide feedback, and at the end of the pathway where there will also be a satisfaction survey for folks to to complete.</p>



  <p>[00:25:50] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Great. Well, folks, we&#8217;re gonna have a bunch of links in the show notes. There&#8217;s so much stuff out here to learn with and about WordPress. Wes, thank you so much for joining me today.</p>



  <p>[00:26:01] <strong>Wes:</strong> Thank you for having me. And I will see you all on Learn.</p>



  <p>[00:26:05] (Music interlude)</p>



  <p>[00:26:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> That brings us now to our small list of big things. Although I have to say we have a bunch of links that we&#8217;re going to share in the show notes. If you&#8217;re listening to this in a place where there are not show notes, you can head over to WordPress.org/news. That&#8217;s where we keep all of those. If you are lucky, we also will help you find it on Twitter/X, but I think that it&#8217;s hard to find things over there these days. So WordPress.org/news is your best bet. Now, it is time for the small list of big things.</p>



  <p>So, first up on my list is that WordPress 6.5.5 is now available. It&#8217;s got a few fixes in it, some maintenance things and some security fixes as well. I recommend that you update your sites immediately. You can download it from WordPress.org/download, or you can just visit your WordPress dashboard. If you&#8217;re on a managed host, they may have already done this for you, too. But auto-updates, manual updates, CLI updates. However, you want to get it done, get it done. But it is recommended to do this as soon as possible. 6.5.5.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:27:16] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The second thing on my list is that the WordPress Contributor Mentorship program has a call for interest out. This is a program that we launched about a year ago as well. And we had such a good bit of success at the end of the first round in February that there was significant interest in doing another cohort. So, that program connects seasoned WordPress contribution experts with folks who are new to contributing and offer a fantastic opportunity for mentees to gain hands-on experience contributing to WordPress while their mentors share their expertise and improve their leadership skills. So, most of the time, what you are going to be contributing to is probably a release of WordPress, but there are also a lot of opportunities to contribute to things like the Training Team that we&#8217;ve been talking about today and other teams as well. Not everything is focused all around our release cycle. We have things happening in the WordPress project literally all the time. It is a project that never sleeps.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:28:17] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Speaking of projects that never sleep, our next official release, our second release of the year, is coming out. WordPress 6.6 is coming out just about a week from now. It is the second major release of 2024 and has a lot of things in it that you will want to check out. If you have not yet seen the hallway hangout where we take a look at what was happening in the release, what we intended to get into the release, take a look at it. And if you haven&#8217;t tested it yet, if you are one of our plugin developers, if you are building something on top of WordPress core, now is the time to check that out and test it against your products.</p>



  <p>And then the final thing is that it&#8217;s a new month, my friends. Here we are in July, and we have a ton of things happening in the project. That&#8217;s the theme of my small list of big things: the project that never sleeps. But we have a lot of team meetings that are happening. If you haven&#8217;t attended one in a while or even if you have never attended one of these meetings and you were trying to figure out when to start, now is as good a time as any. You can join your fellow community members and contribute to the WordPress project. And there are ways that you can do that from home and from your computer and for some parts of the project, like from your phone, if you are taking photos out and about and submitting those. So check out make.WordPress.org/meetings. It&#8217;ll give you a sense for everything that&#8217;s happening. Do not get overwhelmed by that calendar. You can just choose which team you think is most interesting to you. </p>



  <p>[00:29:45] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Your small list of never-sleeping things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>[00:30:15] (Music outro)</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: Reflections on the First WordPress State of the Word in NYC 2021";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=5150";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://dothewoo.io/reflections-on-the-first-wordpress-state-of-the-word-in-nyc-2021/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19806:"<p>Now I&#8217;m not talking about the State of the Word&#8217;s that we hear from Matt at WordCamps. I am talking about the first one that was a stand-alone event and how I not only was able to attend, but I had quite the experience on the train. </p>



  <p>Also, I am moving over some content from my other site Do the Woo to here as we will no longer have text posts over there. Only podcast episodes. So as a result I am going to make this quite the post by adding the original posts from Do the Woo and linking back to some so I have this experience archived somewhere. </p>



  <p>So let me take you back to December 2021.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-follow-do-the-woo-to-the-state-of-the-word-2021">Follow Do the Woo to the State of the Word 2021</h2>



  <p><em>published December 6, 2021</em></p>



  <p>Last week on the podcast I announced the cross-country journey I am taking to attend the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/11/state-of-the-word-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>State of the Word in New York City</strong></a>. As we get closer to the date, the reality of this 8-day adventure is drawing nearer.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Join Me For the Trip</h2>



  <p>Let&#8217;s get one thing straight off. This is not about a train trip where I kick back and enjoy the scenery along the way. Well, okay, I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ll enjoy it, but this is more about bringing together the community through my ears and eyes. As much as as wish each one of you were on this train, although that is physically impossible, this is my chance to bring a different perspective on this years State of the Word from Matt Mullenweg.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Sights, Sounds and Experiences</h3>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-heading-to-the-wordpress-state-of-the-word-2021/">In this podcast I shared how this all came about</a>.</strong> And moving forward, it is almost impossible to tell you everything that will take place. But I can promise you podcasts, videos and posts with insights of the State of the Word. Plus pictures of community we meet along the way and in New York City. And I can&#8217;t do this without some snippets of the actual journey across the US. The details are not here now, but will transpire over the duration of the trip.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">How to Keep Up It All</h3>



  <p>There are two perfect ways to follow along on this adventure.</p>



  <ol class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://dothewoo.io/sotwevent/"><strong>Bookmark our special landing</strong></a> where you will find it all</li>



  <li>Follow the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WooTrainClan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>hashtag #WooTrainClan on Twitter</strong></a></li>
  </ol>



  <p>If you are subscribed to the Do the Woo podcast, you will at least catch all of the conversations and updates done via our episodes, but trust me, there will be a lot more than that.</p>



  <p>However you choose, I am hoping to bring to you the first ever unique event centered around the <strong>WordPress State of the Word</strong>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-thanks-to-these-sponsors-for-sending-do-the-woo-to-the-state-of-the-word">Thanks to These Sponsors for Sending Do the Woo to the State of the Word</h2>



  <p><em>published December 7, 2021</em></p>



  <p><strong>The WordPress and WooCommerce community never ceases to amaze me.</strong></p>



  <p>When I came up with the idea of this 8-day event wrapped the State of the Word NYC, I knew it could be big. At the same time it was nearing the end of the year and it&#8217;s not the best time to approach companies about sponsorships. In fact, when your goal is to get things solidified within a week, that is another thing.</p>



  <p>But thanks to four incredible sponsors, <a href="https://poststatus.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>Post Status</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/en-ph/pro/hub-dashboard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>GoDaddy Pro</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.cloudways.com/en/woocommerce-hosting.php?utm_source=dothewoo&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=sotwwoo&utm_id=sotw"><strong>Cloudways</strong></a> and <a href="https://mindsize.com"><strong>Mindsize</strong></a> who stepped up to the plate, the Do the Woo adventure is happening.</p>



  <p>So please visit their sites, or give them a shout out on Twitter. Because when it comes to WordPress, and yes, WooCommerce, it&#8217;s all about community.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-do-the-woo-is-talking-about-the-state-of-the-word">Why Do the Woo is Talking About the State of the Word</h2>



  <p><em>published December 10, 2021</em></p>



  <p>Over the next week or so, the content here on Do the Woo will be primarily focused on the large WordPress community and the upcoming State of the Word.&nbsp; Likely WooCommerce will poke up here and there, but you will notice an obvious wider perspective on all of the content during this time through Dec. 18th.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Woo and WordPress, It&#8217;s All Good</h2>



  <p>The first obvious reason is apparently the fact that I have created this trip/event around State of the Word.</p>



  <p>But the second reason should also be obvious and it&#8217;s something I talk about a lot here. It&#8217;s the simple fact that WooCommerce sits on top of WordPress. Right? Just about everything that happens with WordPress affects WooCommerce builders in one way or another, ultimately affecting the end user or client.</p>



  <p>Again, as I have said time and time again, if you build with Woo, you must keep on top of WordPress.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">And There&#8217;s the Community</h3>



  <p>I have been hanging in the WordPress community for 15 years. During that time I have met incredible people and yes, started doing the Woo. With a history like mine, it&#8217;s easy to build event around the bigger ecosystem. Now I will admit that this is not a WordCamp I am going to and I won&#8217;t see as many people as I would have. But the times are weird and we are all doing what we can. But it will be able to share this experience with those online as well as those I get to see in person, both on the way to the State of the Word and during it.</p>



  <p>The community will also hear reflections of Matt Mullenwegs talk from community members and myself on the return home.</p>



  <p>So yes, I do the WordPress and I Do the Woo.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-an-eat-and-run-with-chicago-wordpress-peeps-on-the-way-to-state-of-the-word">An Eat and Run with Chicago WordPress Peeps on the Way to State of the Word</h2>



  <p><em>published December 13, 2021</em></p>



  <p><em><strong>Best laid plans of mice and men</strong></em></p>



  <p>If you listen to this podcast (link coming soon), you will hear the story of how <a href="https://twitter.com/mpmike"><strong>Mike Demo</strong></a> from <a href="https://www.codeable.io"><strong>Codeable</strong></a> made his plans to jump on the train (not literally) for the leg from St. Paul to Chicago. This transpired into a dinner for some Chicago WordPress peeps. Long story short, plans where made at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Chicago and invites were sent out.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0521.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-5486" />



  <p>Then if you listen to this <a href="https://dothewoo.io/serendipity-a-chat-with-susan-ramsey/"><strong>podcast</strong></a>, you will hear how I ended up running into Susan Ramsey, longtime WordPresser and friend, from Fort Worth, Texas. Yes, and she joined the dinner.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Chicago WordPress Rules</h3>



  <p>It was so cool for both Mike and I to have dinner with <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/bgardner">Brian Gardner</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/onehappystudio">Susan Ramsey</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/sds52">Steve Stern</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/beckyddesign">Becky Davis</a></strong>, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/KKoppenhaver">Keanan Koppenhaver</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/zstepek">Zach Stepe</a>k </strong>and<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/RobertJacobi"> Robert Jacobi</a>.</strong></p>



  <p>Even from my perspective it was an interesting group relationship-wise. I have known Becky and Brian from way back at Chicago WordCamp, 2011 or thereabouts. Susan has always been on my radar with her past activities in the Genesis community and, of course, my co-hosts of this podcast, Zach and Robert. But it was also very cool to meet two new faces, Steve and Keanan. Because of the limited time and where I was sitting I got to know Steve a bit better, but hoping I will have the chance with Keanan in the future.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Trains Will Run Late</h3>



  <p>Yes, we learned how trains, especially at this distance, can and will run late. In fact two hours late. As Mike and I had done a podcast on the train and hung out and just chatted, as we grew closer, Mike would frantically check the updates as minutes were slowly being added to the delay. But, hey are we going to let what came as a 2 hour late arrival spoil the party. No way.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0515.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-5488" />



  <p>Robert Jacobi made he was there to greet everyone. When we got off the train, Mike took off to grab a cab while Susan and I looked for the place that would hold my bags. She was damn good at helping me find the right place.</p>



  <p>Mike did make it, gave the cab drive a $20 bill for a $7 fare, and started the party going. We followed and soon were enjoying appetizers and conversation.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Best Part</h3>



  <p>Sure, I arrived around 7 and by 8:00 was in the Hard Rock shop grabbing a gift for Judy. Of course I was behind Mike who was stocking up on his Hard Rock findings. As I made my way back to the train station, looking at the photo of the group, I could do nothing but smile, thinking about how much fun everyone seemed to be having, catching up IRL, laughing, telling stories. Seeing each other for the first time in awhile.</p>



  <p>It was a joy to see and made me think about this amazing community we have in WordPress.</p>



  <p>So again, thanks to <a href="https://www.codeable.io"><strong>Mike and Codeable</strong></a> for helping bring an amazing highlight to my trip of the #WooTrainClan</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-podcasts-on-the-trip">The Podcasts on the Trip</h2>



  <p><em>podcasts published from November 30, 2021 &#8211; December 22, 2021</em></p>



  <p>I ended up doing podcasts before I left, on the train, at the hotel and a few other places. Here are the links to those. One of the train podcasts was completely by luck. So happens a WordPresser I know was on the same train car. Amazing!</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-heading-to-the-wordpress-state-of-the-word-2021/"><strong>Do the Woo is Heading to the WordPress State of the Word 2021</strong></a></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/just-a-quick-note-on-the-do-the-woo-trip-to-nyc/">Just a Quick Note on the Do the Woo Trip to NYC</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-community-chat-with-cami-macnamara-in-seattle/">A WordPress Community Chat with Cami MacNamara in Seattle</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/thinking-of-my-sponsors-while-traveling-through-montana/">Thinking of My Sponsors While Traveling Through Montana to State of the Word</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/serendipity-a-chat-with-susan-ramsey/">WordPress Serendipity: A Chat with Susan Ramsey</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/random-thoughts-on-the-train/">Random Thoughts on the Train Traveling to State of the Word in NYC</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/mike-demo-riding-the-woo-train/">Mike Demo Riding the Woo Train</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/pre-state-of-the-word-2021-with-adam-warner/">Adam Warner Talks About the Upcoming State of the Word</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/pre-state-of-the-word-2021-with-daniel-schutzsmith/">Daniel Schutzsmith Shares Thoughts on the Upcoming State of the Word</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/pre-state-of-the-word-2021-with-cory-miller/">Cory Miller from Post Status on Community and State of the Word</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/post-state-of-the-word-topher-cate/">Topher and Cate DeRosia Talk HeroPress and the State of the Word</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/state-of-the-word-mark-westward/">Thoughts on the State of the Word from Mark Westguard</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/the-beginning-of-the-end-wootrainclan/">The Beginning of the End, State of the Word and the WooTrainClan</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/matt-mullenweg-on-woocommerce-at-the-state-of-the-word-2021/">Matt Mullenweg on WooCommerce at the State of the Word 2021</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/last-thoughts-on-the-state-of-the-word-from-the-community/">Last Thoughts on the State of the Word from the Community</a></strong></p>



  <p>And before I left NYC and caught that train home, had the time to grab a nice lunch out with Bud Kraus, Robbie Adair and Cate and Topher Derosia</p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_0648.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-5518" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-oh-and-then-there-was-state-of-the-word-2022-in-nyc">Oh, and Then There Was State of the Word 2022 in NYC</h2>



  <p>Of course, when it came around the next year, I opted to do this again but plane instead of train and no podcasting.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-the-woo-is-headed-to-the-state-of-the-word-nyc-again">Do the Woo is Headed to the State of the Word, NYC, Again</h3>



  <p>It&#8217;s that time of the year, or at least for the second year in a row. <strong>Matt Mullenweg will be giving the State of the Word again in New York City</strong>. And yes, once again I will be making the trek across country to attend.</p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">What is and what was</h4>



  <p>You may or may not recall that last year, due to a misunderstanding with flying and ID&#8217;s required, I ended up taking a roundtrip adventure on a train to NYC. In fact I have <strong>several posts here that not only talk about the adventure, but also podcasts that were done along the way as well at in NYC</strong>. I don&#8217;t need to go into the details again, but let&#8217;s just say I have opted for a flight this time. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f642.png" alt="🙂" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">Time for connection, reflection and optimism</h4>



  <p>So you may be asking why I used the resources to fly six hours one way for a three hour event. Well, first I feel I need to be there to represent Do the Woo. And I am able to do this because of the <strong>support of our Pod Friends</strong>.</p>



  <p>But it also is perfect timing for the end of the year.</p>



  <p><strong>Connection</strong> &#8211; this goes without saying. Although a small crowd, maximum of 50 people, I always look forward to connecting with my WordPress friends. In fact, sometimes smaller is better.</p>



  <p><strong>Reflection</strong> &#8211; when Matt reviews the year, for some it may seem to be only on the surface. But post-state of the word gives me time to think about what he has said. What it means to the community. And what it means for our efforts here at Do the Woo. For me personally, it has more meaning and goes deeper when I experience it in person. Plus it gives me something to think about on the flight home.</p>



  <p><strong>Optimism</strong> &#8211; I am by nature optimistic. And though there can be skepticism, doubts or even drama for others, each year always brings me optimism in the future of the project.&nbsp; Which lends to the whole experience that I have before, during and after the State of the Word.</p>



  <p>I do admit I am lucky that I can attend. And yes, again I have my sponsors to thank for that. Also, there is a part of me that hopes the SOTW could be worked to be given at all of the flagship WordCamps, as it had been done with WordCampUS before. But knowing that it plays on the end-of-the-year, maybe I am too optimistic there.</p>



  <p>If you are one of the few that are able to attend, and we haven&#8217;t talked about meeting up yet, let me know. NYC, here we come!</p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-state-of-the-word-dinner-with-some-woo">A State of the Word Dinner with Some Woo</h4>



  <p>As you likely know from earlier posts and podcasts, I was able to attend the State of the Word this year in New York City. All because of our Pod Friends.</p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">When a community comes together</h4>



  <p>Since I would be there on the night before the event, <a href="https://meetmichelle.online/"><strong>Michelle Frechette</strong> </a>and I started a conversation with others who were attending. &#8220;How about getting together for dinner?&#8221; Of course, as with any WordPress event, large or small, you will find those interested, both old and new friends. And the fact that the hotel we both were staying at had this very convenient restaurant and bar, well, it was an easy decision.</p>



  <p>Except when you call to make a reservation, get a failed call notice, and learn from the hotel that the restaurant is closed.</p>



  <p>This led into more conversations with those attended, and those not. Apparently with the size of most restaurants in NYC being small and, to add to that, the holidays, well, finding a reservation for 10-11 people turned into a challenge. The fact that I had left this to only a few days before the dinner didn&#8217;t help.</p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">It takes a community</h4>



  <p>We are a hearty group and don&#8217;t give up easy. Along came superhero <a href="https://nevharris.com/"><strong>Nev Harris</strong></a> suggesting he calls the American Express concierge to help and recommend some restaurants was a game saver. And although what we found was an outdoor heated patio, with temperatures in the low 30&#8217;s F, we couldn&#8217;t be picky. Luck was on the side of this WordPress group and we felt we were treated to a semi-private room where good food, drinks and conversation took the stage.</p>



  <img width="768" height="1024" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/51C33347-33A0-4015-A2D4-199FB6D0B253_1_105_c.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-5492" />



  <p>Of course, once you have had a terrific Italian dinner there is no better place to extend the holiday cheer than for a few of us to visit Rockefeller Center.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IMG_1504-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-5491" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-state-of-the-word-2023">State of the Word 2023</h2>



  <p>Which brings me right back to where we are. Will I be attending SOTW at the end of this year? You just never know, but once I get started&#8230;.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp US 2023, Another Fantastic WP Memory";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=4815";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-us-2023-another-fantastic-wp-memory/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17398:"<p>Well, it was inevitable that I should post a recap of WordPress US. I am writing this after returning to my home and office in Porto on Monday morning, this being Thursday of the same week. And I&#8217;ll tell you, I am just starting to get over my exhaustion.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="576" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/bobwp.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4941" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-trip-to-wcus">The Trip to WCUS</h2>



  <p>Flying back to the states, I loved the way over. No overnight experiences for me, and leaving at 7:30 am Porto time, arriving in National Harbor 7:30 pm EDT. Of course, during the flight I started with breakfast, then a drink and lunch and segued into dinner at some point which ended with a snack. Lot&#8217;s of food and can&#8217;t honestly remember when I ate what. </p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2733.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4934" />




  <img width="1024" height="683" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Photo-on-8-22-23-at-10.55-AM-3.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4833" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2742-3.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4834" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2743-3.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4835" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2744-1-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4837" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2753.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4836" />




  <p>I did meet a few friends when I landed, but by then I was pretty much half asleep. It was nice seeing my good friend Mark Westguard right off the bat.</p>



  <img width="768" height="487" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/mark-and-bob.jpg?resize=768%2C487&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4843" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-first-day-in-national-harbor">The first day in National Harbor</h2>



  <p>Unlike my other WordPressers who were already there, the next day I was not part of the Community Summit nor did I have the desire to be a tourist in Washington DC. The latter did not tempt me with the heat or the sights. </p>



  <p>So I spent the day hanging around the hotel/convention center to make life easy. Now the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center is enormous. And I mean freakin&#8217; huge. It kind of reminded me of those large cruise ships, although I have never been on one. It&#8217;s set up quite well. You never really need to leave and everything is overpriced. But hey, that&#8217;s America, right?</p>



  <p>The morning I spent wandering around the grounds, inside and out.</p>




  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4860" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2755-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4859" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2756.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4856" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2757-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4861" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2758.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4854" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2759.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4858" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2764.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4853" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2760.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4857" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2761-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4855" />




  <p>The other part of the day Mark and myself just did this and that. Lunchtime we went and had some drinks and nachos. After that we just roamed around the hotel and Mark was obviously delighted to find his logo with all the sponsors on the entryway to the conference center.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2769-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4862" />



  <p>Then we had Casey join us, Mark&#8217;s better half, and dinner time where at even more food. </p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2770-2-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4863" />



  <p>So after a day of local exploring, drinks and food, we did what any normal WordCamper would do. We went to a party, WP-Includes Summer Fest. </p>




  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2771-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4869" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2772-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4868" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2774.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4867" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2775.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4865" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2776.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4872" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2779.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4870" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2781.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4866" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2782.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4871" />




  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-contributor-day">Contributor Day</h2>



  <p>The next day was Contributor Day. And guess what? It was amazing. So much so that I didn&#8217;t take one photo as I was busy listening and interjecting every once in awhile. But I did snag the group photo from that day just to share the all the groovy WordPressers who were part of that day. By the way, photo credit goes to Shusei Toda. </p>



  <img width="1024" height="683" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/F4UzCE7WMAAIWhS.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4874" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordcamp-us-the-event">WordCamp US, the Event</h2>



  <p>As with most WordCamps, I find myself so busy connecting with old and new friends, and just being a happy WordCamper that I never take as many photos as planned. But, I do the best I can do.</p>



  <p>Of course, I cannot go without thanking my sponsors, A2 Hosting, Avalara, Hostinger, GoDaddy, Jetpack and Weglot. Oh, and yes, WooCommerce! </p>




  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2788.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4881" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2794-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4877" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2795.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4880" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2797-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4879" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2798.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4878" />




  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-do-the-woo-a-pseudo-sponsor">Do the Woo, a Pseudo Sponsor</h2>



  <p>And then this happened. My friends over at Multicolab were not able to use their sponsor booth. Anil Gupta was able to attend, but he had problems with getting his team over to the US. So his table sat unattended and barren.</p>



  <p>I had a chat with Anil as he is a good friend of mine, and also a past sponsor of Do the Woo. Long story short, I took over the booth and used it for the DTW hq at WordCamp US. So I had the opportunity to be able to do some podcasting as well as meet many of our listeners. </p>



  <p>Here is Anil sharing some thoughts on WordCamp. </p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2824-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4883" />



  <p>Here is my makeshift booth.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2799.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4885" />



  <p>And some of our podcast guests.</p>




  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2823-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4889" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2837-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4887" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2839.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4888" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2847.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4890" />




  <p>And a very special podcast. Three WordPressers from the Spain WordPress community did a show, and they did it all in Spanish. What fun!</p>



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2829.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4893" />



  <p>As it so happened during contributor day, also at the event I didn&#8217;t get as many photos as I would have wanted. Was just too busy enjoying IRL conversations. But here are just a few more friends that I caught.</p>




  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2851.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4895" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2825.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4898" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2787-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4899" />




  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-a-flagship-wordcamp-without-nathan-s-head">What&#8217;s a Flagship WordCamp without Nathan&#8217;s head</h2>



  <p>Now for those of you who know Nathan, you get it. For those that don&#8217;t, well I will add a mysterious moment to your life. A good friend and fellow podcaster of mine, Nathan&#8217;s head often shows up in the weirdest spots, or simply frightening people here and there. And the second day started out with just that. </p>




  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2802-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4917" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2803-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4910" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2804-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4907" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2806-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4909" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2807-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4912" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2802.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4918" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2808-3-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4914" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2815-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4903" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2803.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4911" />



  <img width="768" height="1024" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2818-2.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4904" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2804.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4908" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2809-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4906" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2813-2-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4915" />



  <img width="768" height="1024" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2817-2.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4920" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2810-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4905" />



  <img width="1024" height="768" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2812-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4916" />



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2811-2-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4913" />




  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-after-social">The After Social</h2>



  <p>As with tradition of WordCamp US, the social at the end of the second day was at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Quite the impressive museum. Now I am not a huge fan of museums. I could also say that it was mostly bones, stuffed or recreated animals, rocks and overpriced jewelry, but nonetheless it was quite breathtaking. </p>



  <p>A lot of people had a great time and it was also filled with conversation, laughter and yummy desserts with old and new friends. </p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2860-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4923" />



  <p>And what is a museum visit without posing as a museum exhibit.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2855-2-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4925" />



  <p>Of course my friend Miriam had to catch as I ventured into the fossil display where I discovered an old acquaintance, Joe the Tyrannosaurus. As I gently touch the bones of his neck on display, I pondered our prehistoric life together.</p>



  <img width="768" height="1024" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/F4f6OdpXsAAvT_w.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4928" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-why-i-do-what-i-do">It&#8217;s Why I Do What I Do</h2>



  <p>In a nutshell, I do WordPress because of the community. And events like WordCampUS is like a moment of pure oxygen. So much laughter, conversation, hugs, food and drinks with old and new friends. I wouldn&#8217;t have it any other way. </p>



  <p>And I leave you with one last photo. As I was flying home, something outside my window reminded me of that museum. Can you guess what that is?</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_2872-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4931" />



  <p>Hope to see you at WordCamp Asia in 2024.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"Do The Woo Community: WordPress 6.3. Our Heroes, the Release Squad and Contributors";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=4706";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-6-3-my-heroes-the-release-squad-and-contributors/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1386:"<p>The last time I wrote a post on a WordPress major release on this blog was sometime ago, where I was doing more tutorials and education pieces here. A previous focus of the life of this blog, now archived into oblivion.</p>



  <p>But hey, can you imagine how many posts have been published and will still be published about 6.3? I cannot fathom that number.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-release-the-people">The release, the people</h2>



  <p>I don&#8217;t have to tell you about the features. Nor do I really need to tell you about what makes this happen, and the incredible people who contribute their time and expertise to each release. </p>



  <p>Well, I lied. On the latter, I do have to tell you. Because every time that a major release comes out, and I head over to WordPress.org to see the post. It&#8217;s always fun to read about the jazz artist that it was named after, revisit the features, but I always stroll to the bottom to see my heroes first.</p>



  <p>The release squad and the contributors. And for each and every one of you, my sincere gratitude and appreciation for making this community what it is. Also, a big virtual hug.</p>



  <img width="1000" height="2645" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WordPress-6.3-Release-squad-and-contributors.png?resize=1000%2C2645&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-4713" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp Europe 2023. Amazing.";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=3702";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-europe-2023-amazing/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12637:"<p>If I could put every experience I had, every conversation, and every laugh or hug here in this post, I would. But it would be a very long post and, of course, I would have discovered something I missed, or several things, thus even a longer post. </p>



  <p>This was my second WordCamp Europe, but my first living here in Porto, Portugal. That fact alone, and the love I am getting from the community here, would be worth a post in itself.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-community">The Community</h2>



  <p>It&#8217;s never surprising when I hear from anyone talk their experience at a WordCamp, community and people are always in there, often being what they loved most. And for me there is never an exception. New friends. Connecting with old friends. And so much laughter, and yes, food.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Sponsors and the Venue</h2>



  <p>The venue was fantastic. Although I must admit at first it was a bit overwhelming as the sponsors winded around different parts and hallways. Some of the small biz sponsors were concerned being off the beaten path, but that changed quickly, at least for the ones I talked to. </p>



  <p>Fact is I started going around to the booths, meeting people, saying hi to others and stopping for so many hugs and conversations, it took me 3 hours just to do that. On the second day, I spent an hour easily just with the Small Biz sponsors. </p>



  <p>Now I talk to a lot of WordPress businesses and I know there are always questions about  sponsoring WordCamps and the value behind it. So I am going t<a href="https://barn2.com/blog/wordcamp-europe-sponsorship-story/">o share a great post from my friend Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins, where she shares their first experience sponsoring</a>. If you ever had questions about sponsoring, make sure and read it.</p>



  <p>If you missed any of the sessions, or were not able to make it, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@wordcampeurope/streams">you can find all of them here from the livestream.</a></p>



  <p>As I said, there is a lot more I am still digesting and it will also settle in my brain just in time for WCUS. But I do want to thank the organizing team, the volunteers for their hard work in making it so amazing. And of course, the sponsors who make it possible. </p>



  <p>I leave you with this. Some great WordPress peeps. (and a few taken by others, plus my mug occasionally).</p>




  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyZ9OvrXsAM3z1j-1024x683.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3773" />



  <img width="300" height="211" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FE139717-AE09-4616-BFD7-68FFC0E540C2_1_105_c-e1686922323139-300x211.jpeg?resize=300%2C211&ssl=1" alt="WordCamp Europe 2023" class="wp-image-3707" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/954C73E6-6A97-4E0F-B7FD-0D5344E9A663_1_105_c-e1686922229852.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3708" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/97A20DDC-C7E0-40B4-934F-71883C07AEDD_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3709" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/468089F2-B3FF-4A9A-9880-61302EB35D75_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3710" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/1E66450F-0FA1-49A9-9FE9-49C0BA170C3B_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3711" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0A53E9ED-D02D-4519-BB97-DE74E5B6832C_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3712" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/9ED1B5CC-F3F7-4D32-A369-65476A696D9B_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3713" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/04AAEF7F-EAA6-4E12-B9C5-007EB22A1988_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3714" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/56E4154B-2FA2-4CB4-A9E1-7CA13DBE29FE_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3715" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/02CBEC08-ACD3-43B0-982C-8CB3C16DB3BD_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3716" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/DC7362CD-ABCA-471E-8028-43052C75288A_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3717" />



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  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/4FF3C170-EC5E-4941-8A3B-2890C9CDA25E_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3721" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/B99F10C0-1893-4657-81E9-2794B8CE4A0D_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3722" />



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  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/5C4E4C74-AFAD-4E63-907D-8A1662C622B8_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3730" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/81855AE3-B086-45BD-AD63-66636F3CC94D_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3731" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/956706FF-375A-4D1A-9C16-B426B2471D42_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3732" />



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  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/785A33AD-7108-45D8-B2A3-550870FAB265_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3734" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0E9EF259-9281-47D7-B3D1-360B4BC2EF65_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3735" />



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  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/E7656355-91B6-4C38-919B-5D22E03F0D1B_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3737" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/E05393A6-6987-4AE7-976E-B8A8DEBBD6DE_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3738" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/32D8D871-D9E3-4FF1-9C65-CF245A996C33_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3739" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/D2E8EA51-E27A-42F8-83C9-430099C37E6E_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3740" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/0B8F570C-F0F2-4854-9EB2-F0C1865B6C19_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3741" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/21F627EC-41AB-45E3-822B-BEF1C1C3B615_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3742" />



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  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/8D56ABBD-81E1-4390-A69B-38DA724727EF_1_105_c-e1686921631547.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3750" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FE796986-42A9-4CCB-9C2C-39DC776C51B7_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3751" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/21D68A67-768B-427D-A927-ACC79D6A84C3_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3752" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/248F2595-1254-46A2-9938-97A3F674157F_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3753" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/EFD136F3-CDA1-4B37-8DAB-FB65E93EE8F1_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3754" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/7B22354B-95F8-4855-A978-4027958A2CD6_1_105_c.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3757" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyDGmp9akAEgRj_.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3758" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyfstMTaIAAMQWe-576x1024.jpeg?resize=576%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3759" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyIIKwJWYAclHLZ-1024x768.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3761" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyIIiQ6WYBAZEUp.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3760" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyLdeDZXgAIsG82-1024x768.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3763" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyK7abXWYAAwC_t.jpeg?ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3762" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyLe_ZnWAAACUmP-1024x768.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3764" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyLJWo4WcAEisFH-1024x768.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3765" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyP6Nb-XoAEvB4V-768x1024.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3766" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyPinCEaYAA6yoY-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3767" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyQS0qsXoAIDzlT-1024x473.jpeg?resize=1024%2C473&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3769" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyQWwDJWIAMx4kU-768x1024.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3770" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyrZEYYWAAc26z1-768x1024.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3771" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyWp6DlWIAIlw0G-576x1024.jpeg?resize=576%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3772" />



  <img src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FyQd8NDXgAAuLlN-1024x683.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-3768" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"Do The Woo Community: 20 Years. That’s a Lot of Community";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=3448";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"https://dothewoo.io/20-years-thats-a-lot-of-community/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:431:"<p>In May I was fortunate to <strong><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/05/30/20-years-thats-a-lot-of-community/">speak at WordCamp Lisboa about community</a></strong>. It had been awhile since I&#8217;ve spoken at a WordCamp, but I had a lot of fun.</p>



  <p>If you are interested in my elaboration of the future of the community, <a href="https://dothewoo.io/future-of-the-wordpress-community/">listen to this show here.</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Do The Woo Community: WordCamp Asia. Energized, Graciousness and Empathy";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=1625";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://dothewoo.io/wordcamp-asia-2023/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9885:"<p>For 13 years I have been going to the smaller and local WordCamps and when the first flagship WCUS started, I jumped on the opportunity and have been lucky enough to attend all of them so far.</p>



  <p>Last year, I attended my <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-headed-to-wordcamp-asia/">first WCEU</a></strong> which of course was far from their first. It was an amazing event and even <strong><a href="http://https//portobobwptrainer0.wpcomstaging.com">pushed us to move to Porto</a></strong>, which we are doing end of March.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-then-comes-wcasia">Then comes WCAsia</h2>



  <p>Judy and I were excited that we would be able to attend the <strong><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/">very first WCAsia</a></strong>. Neither of us had been to any part of Asia, so Bangkok was soon to be our first.&nbsp;</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_1562-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1626" />



  <p>Now with all that comes for anyone attending a WordCamp, it can be anything from intimidating, to exciting, or both. I did not know what to expect from this very first flagship event. I knew that it would be good, but I didn’t know I would be blown away.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The event itself</h2>



  <p>The event was held on the top floor of what&#8217;s called Iconsiam. A gigantic mall with a conference center.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_1748-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1627" />



  <p>And everything about the organization of the event was top notch. The sponsor area was strategically placed. And I personally experienced a volunteer approaching me a few times and asking how I was doing and if they could help with anything. It was amazing.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Contributor day</h3>



  <p>This was my second contributor day. And it did not disappoint. I spent my time with the Community team and we had several very good discussions. Of course a lot of time was put into the day-long event from both organizers and volunteers. And I had to get a shot of all the team table leads from around the world.</p>



  <img width="1000" height="519" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Contributor-day-leads-WordCamp-Asia-2023.jpg?resize=1000%2C519&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1629" />



  <p>This was just how big contributor day was.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="683" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/WordCamp-Asia-2023-Contributor-Day-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1630" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Two days of WordCamp Asia</h2>



  <p>The minute I walked in that morning and headed straight for the expo area, this is what I saw. It was one of the most busy WordCamps I had ever been to, at least from this perspective. And the vibe in the air is what I believe energized everyone.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_1595-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1628" />



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The community, the people</h3>



  <p>There is no single word to describe all the new and old friends that I met with. There were hugs, fist bumps, handshakes, and a lot of conversation. I had the chance to meet people who had literally been reading or listening to my stuff for over a decade. It was incredible humbling. </p>



  <p>Although I don&#8217;t have these tagged, here is are bunch of selfies and other pics that were taken by others and myself. </p>





  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Three things really stood out to me</h2>



  <p>As I mentioned earlier, this was likely the best WordCamp I have been to. If asked, I would have to say that there are three words that come to mind if I was to describe it as a whole.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The energy</h3>



  <p>I have never been to a WordCamp that had as much energy as I experienced here. I’m sure it was a combination of it finally happening for the Asian community (the first time it was cancelled due to covid), the pride they felt and the fact that so many of the attendees were experiencing their very first WordCamp of any size.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Everyone seemed hungry for community and education. Even the sponsors who frequent many WordCamps, the teams they brought were energized and kept very busy. There was a vibe of this energy with everyone you met.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>I know that both my brand BobWP and Do the Woo is very popular in that part of the world. But until you are able to talk, shake hands or hug, you just don’t know. I met strangers and people who I have been connected with online for a decade or more. I was in what felt like hundreds of selfies with friends and new friends. The energy there was contagious and even by day two, it did not let up till closer to the end of the day.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The graciousness</h3>



  <p>This is probably the most powerful word that stuck with us during our entire stay, both at the event and beyond. We felt welcomed wherever we went. The kindness and consideration of each individual we had contact with and I had contact with at the event, was something that added to the energy I previously talked about.</p>



  <p>Culturally, between the greeting with a bow and hands held together, and those who held their hands over their hearts as they approached you, other parts of the world could learn from those warm and loving gestures and how they made us feel each and every time.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">The empathy</h3>



  <p>Empathy has always been a huge part of my life, and I wish more people would naturally feel it in all circumstances.</p>



  <p>As I mentioned previously, a lot of the attendees where first time WordCampers. Because of the nature of our business, many are introverts and that first event experience can be overwhelming. But it was different. There was a natural born vibe of empathy coming from everyone. </p>



  <p>The vendors talking to community members. People meeting each other for the first time. Questions asked and answered. I would often catch pieces of conversation near me, and more times than not there was a tone of empathy. A tone that said we are the community and here to help each other, no matter who you are, what skill level you have or where you come from. The glass was half full, if not brimming over.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Of course all the other stuff</h2>



  <p>There was so much to the event, but at the same time the entire experience.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Having a little fun and a good laugh</h3>



  <p>There is nothing better than a good laugh. You may or may not know <strong><a href="https://wpbuilds.com/">Nathan Wrigley from WPBuilds</a></strong>. A great friend of mine and a treasure to the WordPress community. Unfortunately Nathan could not make it, so our friend <strong><a href="https://wsform.com/">Mark Westguard from WS Form</a></strong> created a &#8220;Nathan head&#8221;. And it started popping around here and there at WCAsia. Make sure and click on the images so you can easily find &#8220;Where&#8217;s Nathan?&#8221; </p>





  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Nom nom</h3>



  <p>The food was incredible. I’m not a foodie as much as many who travel, but the tastes I experienced are really beyond words. I am still deciding my favorites between Thai, Indian and Japanese.&nbsp;Unfortunately, I am terrible when it comes to taking pictures of our food. In fact, I likely got more from the food served on our flights than at the event.</p>



  <p>There was this amazing Espresso Martini that we had, in some kind of a chalice at a restaurant in a local marketplace. </p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/69856627392__9179F4B0-106B-43AC-A12F-D6A40A1FDD91-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1678" />



  <p>And the best experience I had was a cup of Spicy Coconut Soup with Scallops at a restaurant in the Iconsiam. Unfortunately I didn&#8217;t think to take a picture until I was half-finished. Trust me, the untouched presentation was pretty impressive. The taste, out of this world.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_1757-768x1024.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1679" />



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bangkok</h3>



  <p>And then there was the host city. As mentioned, this was the first time Judy and I have been in Asia. The city was interesting and amazing at the same time. The weather was another thing. We spent an extra three days and found we could spend very little time outside because of the heat and humidity. Average days temp while while there were around 94<strong>°F</strong>&nbsp;/ 34<strong>°C</strong>. We thought we would either melt away or simple pass out. But between the hotel, a boat ride down the river and a few other places, I do have a few shots to share with you. </p>





  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What have I left out?</h2>



  <p>Likely a lot. But still recovering from jet lag and a good chunk of this post was written on the flight back. </p>



  <p>If we connected at WCAsia, you are now a big part of one of my favorites memories since using WordPress.</p>



  <p>And if you were an organizer, volunteer or sponsor this year, a big thanks and hug for one amazing event. You should be proud of what you did and the community that you brought together. </p>



  <p>Until WordCamp Europe&#8230;.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/bobwp.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/IMG_1760-1024x768.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-1714" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Do The Woo Community: The State of the Word experience";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"https://bobwp.com/?p=585";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://dothewoo.io/the-state-of-the-word-experience/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5731:"<p>I have purposely chosen to not revisit the actual message delivered at State of the Word. There has been a lot already said and I don&#8217;t really need to add to that pile. In fact, I have listed a few posts at the end here that will give you that overview.</p>



  <p>I arrived in New York City late Tuesday evening. The SOTW was not beginning till noonish on Thursday. But I was pretty sure Wednesday would be my &#8220;hang out with friends and community day&#8221;. Of course I was not disappointed.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-community-is-where-community-goes">Community is where community goes</h2>



  <p>Mid-morning on Wednesday, I ran into<strong> Michelle Frechette and her friend Julia</strong> in the hotel lobby. Hungry and in need of caffeine, I joined them for a bit of time at Starbucks. Returning to the hotel, we ran into Rich Tabor, and set a time to find a restaurant and have lunch. The four of us ended up at an Italian place, which would be the first of two that day.</p>



  <p>Then came a break before I met <strong>Robert Jacobi, Rich Tabor</strong> at Nancy&#8217;s Whiskey Bar across the street. Where eventually we were joined by <strong>Robbie Adair and Bud Kraus</strong>. Although we didn&#8217;t get a group shot then, Robert did grab a shot of Rich and myself.</p>



  <img tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Rich-Tabor-and-BobWP.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&ssl=1" alt="Rich Tabor and BobWP" class="wp-image-586" width="768" height="576" />Thanks to Robert Jacobi for the photo



  <p>After that came dinner. <a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-state-of-the-word-dinner-with-some-woo/">I shared a bit of that experience on my podcast over on Do the Woo</a>, which in a nutshell ended up being a fantastic Do the Woo dinnner in a heated patio at yet another Italian restaurant.</p>



  <img width="768" height="1024" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/IMG_0063-1.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="Do the Woo Dinner in New York City" class="wp-image-587" /><em>Do the Woo Dinner at State of the Word 2023 with Michelle Frechette, Allie Nimmons, Bud Kraus, Nev Harris, Aaron Campbell, Rich Tabor, Timothy Jacobs, BobWP, Robbie Adair, Julie and Ryan Marks.&nbsp;</em>



  <p>Following that feast, a few of us ended up at the Rockefeller Center.</p>



  <img width="800" height="764" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/WordPress-people-at-Rockefeller-Centeer.jpg?resize=800%2C764&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-588" />Michelle, Nev, Ryan, Julia, Robbie and BobWP



  <p>And that was the day of true community. Friends coming together and just simply having a great time.</p>



  <img width="1024" height="576" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Rockefeller-Center-New-York-City.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1" alt="Rockefeller Center New York City" class="wp-image-589" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">State of the Word Day</h2>



  <p>Of course the day of the State of the Word has it&#8217;s fair share of community. From a casual get together at a cafe beforehand, to the event itself and rounding that off with a small dinner with Robert Jacobi, Robbie Adair and Nev Harris.</p>



  <p>The entire day, day two, filled with community. Old and new friends.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Conversations at SOTW</h3>



  <p>I cannot possibly share with you the conversations I had at the event, primarily because I had too many and cannot recall each one. But a couple of instances stick in my mind.</p>



  <p>First, I met<strong> Zandy Ring, COO at Tumblr</strong>. This was not only a fun conversation but also very timely as I dive into the Tumblr world as BobWP. It&#8217;s been an interesting platform to sort out. And the insights that Zandy shared with me confirmed I was doing the right thing by taking my time and finding my groove there. </p>



  <p>Secondly, I had a chance to chat with <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong> a couple of times. The best thing about the SOTW event if Matt is in his element there. The smaller crowd gives it a much more relaxed feeling and I sense that he is truly enjoying himself. </p>



  <p>And the cool thing. There would never be the opportunity where I would be able to share with him the new stuff we are doing over at Do the Woo in the new year. But this event gave me that chance. And even better, he loved what we were going to be doing.</p>



  <p>Now with both of these conversations, I was fortunately to be given the opportunity to have them. But I did for two simple reasons.</p>



  <p>The WordPress community is incredible, no matter who you meet</p>



  <p>I am extremely fortunate to have such amazing sponsors for Do the Woo that made it possible for me to represent DTW at the event.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Learn more about the State of the Word</h3>



  <p>Matt&#8217;s SOTW was great and there was some really cool stuff he shared. But I am not into reinventing the wheel, so here are a few options for you to catch up with it if you haven&#8217;t already. </p>



  <p>Over on WPTavern, <a href="https://wptavern.com/state-of-the-word-2022-matt-mullenweg-highlights-gutenbergs-progress-announces-new-community-tools">State of the Word 2022: Matt Mullenweg Highlights Gutenberg’s Progress, Announces New Community Tools</a></p>



  <p>The WPMinute has an a<a href="https://thewpminute.com/state-of-the-word-2022/">udio version if you are on the go, as well as some key takeaways.</a></p>



  <p>And of course, <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/sotw-2022-a-celebration-of-the-four-freedoms-of-open-source/">over on WordPress.org, you can catch the full video.</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:45:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:140:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #103 – Create Block Theme Plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and Updates from the Training Team ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=29223";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56988:"<p>In this episode, Nadia Maya Ardiani and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss the create block theme plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and updates from the training team.</p>



  <p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>



  <li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>



  <li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>
  </ul>



  <p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest: Nadia Maya Ardiani</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadiamayaardiani/">LinkedIn</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ardianimaya/">WordPress profile</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2024/01/16/contributor-spotlight-nadia-maya-ardiani/">Contributor Spotlight: Nadia Maya Ardiani</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/author/nadiaardiani">Content Specialist at Hostinger</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.hostinger.com/blog/birgit-pauli-haack">Birgit Pauli-Haack: Fostering Community Spirit Through Knowledge Sharing</a> by Nadia Maya Ardiani</li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/recap-hallway-hangout-theme-building-with-playground-create-block-theme-plugin-and-github/">Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/">Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYdkXAx7qw">Developer Hours: What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6</a></li>



  <li>July 8th, at 16:00 UTC: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/hallway-hangout-section-styles-and-other-block-style-variation-updates/">Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates</a></li>



  <li>July 9th, 2024, 15:00 UTC – Developer Hours: <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301834541/">Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6</a>.</li>



  <li>July 23, 2024, at 15:00 UTC <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/">Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives.</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Training team updates</h3>



  <p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/tag/contributor-spotlight/">Contributor Spotlight series </a></p>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">Gather Press</h4>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://gatherpress.org/">GatherPress.org</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2024/06/27/training-team-testing-gatherpress/">Training team testing </a>Gather Press</li>



  <li>&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gatherpress/">https://wordpress.org/plugins/gatherpress/</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h4 class="wp-block-heading">New Courses</h4>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-user/">Beginner WordPress User</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/intermediate-wordpress-user/">Intermediate WordPress User</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/beginner-wordpress-developer/">Beginner WordPress Developer</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s released</h2>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/">Create Block Theme plugin 2.3</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-7-03-july/">What’s new in Gutenberg 18.7? (03 July)</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.6</h3>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-rc2/">WordPress 6.6 RC2</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://nomad.blog/2024/06/26/wordpress-6-6-source-of-truth/">Source of Truth on WordPress 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4D1dHTZvQQ">WordPress 6.6 – Huge Changes Coming Soon!</a></li>



  <li>Dev Notes
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/updates-to-the-interactivity-api-in-6-6/">Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-6/">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/section-styles/">Section Styles</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/21/wordpress-6-6-css-specificity/">WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/site-wide-background-images-in-wordpress-6-6/">Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/19/theme-json-version-3/">Theme.json version 3</a></li>
  </ul>
  </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/editing-custom-fields-from-connected-blocks/">Editing custom fields from connected blocks</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in the works</h2>



  <p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentyfive">Twenty Twenty-Five</a> </p>



  <p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>



  <div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Did you like this episode? <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>



  <li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/bph">@bph</a>.</li>



  <li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>



  <li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>
  </ul>
  </div></div>



  <p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Hello, and welcome to our 103rd episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode we will talk in detail about Create Block Theme Plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and updates from the training team too. Maybe not in that order.</p>



  <p>I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress Open-Source Project sponsored by Automattic’s Five for the Future Program. </p>



  <p>I&#8217;m delighted to have again as co-host, my dear friend, Nadia Maya Ardiani from Indonesia, member of the WordPress training team, translating Learn WordPress content. And in her day job, Maya creates content for the Hostinger blog and social media. So glad you can make it this time, Maya. How are you today?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Hi, Birgit. It&#8217;s very nice to be back here. How are you by the way?</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I&#8217;m good. I&#8217;m good. I&#8217;m good. So glad we&#8217;re doing this. And it&#8217;s summer in Munich.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> It&#8217;s always summer here in Indonesia.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, I definitely have to visit sooner or later.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yes, please.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Rather sooner than later because time runs out.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. The last time you invited me, I think it was around WordCamp. After I came back from WordCamp US and you were not attending it. And this time it&#8217;s the other way around. You&#8217;re attending WordCamp Europe and I&#8217;m not, and I&#8217;m getting so FOMO of everything. So yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. FOMO is something that I&#8217;m looking at for now. Also for WordCamp Canada. There are some great speakers on there. But I am really looking forward. Are you coming to WordCamp Asia in the Philippines next year? You don&#8217;t know?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, I plan to. I plan to. So hopefully, we can meet again.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I hope so too, in-person. Well, did you know that the call for speakers is out for WordCamp Asia?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Oh, not yet.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> I haven&#8217;t checked.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So dear listeners, if you want to come to WordCamp Asia and be on the speaker roster, now is the time to get your creative juices going on what you want to talk about. All right.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements</h3>



  <p>Before I forget again, because I did the last time, I want to mention our new music for the intro and the outro. So this is the second episode actually with new music dear listeners, and I hope you like it. A 100 episodes is a great run for Homer Gaines’ music that we started out with and we used for 100 episodes. But I&#8217;m also grateful that he allowed me to use his music for free. So big prompts to Homer Gaines. And I&#8217;ll share again the link to his music channel on Spotify or what was the other one? SoundCloud.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> SoundCloud.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes. Yeah, thank you. The new jingle, or what you call it, whatever you call it, is actually created by Udio, and that&#8217;s an audio AI site. Which I just was trying out. And the prompt was Jango Edwards style intro music, and it&#8217;s called Manouche Morning. I share the link also in the show notes, so you can go to the site and try out your music tastes. But let me know what you think about it, dear listeners. And also, of course, Maya.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, I really like it, because it sounds like something that you can hear from a gramophone and take you back to another time. And it&#8217;s really a nice change of vibe. Because before we have this cool guy, a cool person, who is more very chill and very calm person, and this time it&#8217;s more happy-go-lucky. So yeah, I think it&#8217;s really great. And it&#8217;s like Morning Spirit, like the name.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You kind of get in a different mindset there. And I learned in between that music actually changes, depending on which music of course, your brainwaves. So your alpha waves and your mood. I find it really interesting. So I read more about it. Well good. So that&#8217;s music. Well, either comment on the episode or send me an email or just ping me on Twitter what you think about the music.</p>



  <p>So last episode, we talked about the upcoming events and now those events have taken place, and I can share the recordings in the show notes. If you are a theme developer, but you are not so much into code and want to use the Site Editor to create your theme, the Hallway Hangout where Beatrice Fialo demonstrated how she changes a theme and then used to create Block Theme Plugin to save all the changes that are normally in the database to the theme files and then make those theme files part of Version Control and GitHub.</p>



  <p>So that process she demonstrated very closely. And on the recap post, I actually also spelled out the steps so you can really follow along. It was really a cool event. And you can actually design a theme and Site Editor and still update the theme files and handle it in Version Control. That was one of the big questions we had on the Outreach channel.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Yeah. I personally also really love Playground because it really helps for content creation as well. Because I don&#8217;t have to keep on tweaking my WordPress site, even though that&#8217;s a special site for testing. But it&#8217;s very handy to have it. I can just test everything there and then forget about it.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> I don&#8217;t have to reset everything. So, yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Right. Yeah. You don&#8217;t mess up the site that you use for other things. Yeah. Totally get it. And so I use local or used to use local, and I have probably 25 sites in there. Because I spin up a new site for everything. But that also clogs up my computer, although I have a terabyte of hard drive. But it still clogs up my computer. Because every single site has all the WordPress files, and with Playground I have nothing stored there except what I wanted to store in the browser or something like that.</p>



  <p>So, yeah. The other event was the exploration of Grid Layouts. It was also a Hallway Hangout. And Isabel Brison, also a regular co-host here on our show, gave a great demonstration on how to handle blocks with Grid Layout or the other way around, how to work with a Grid Block, which is a subset of the Group Block. And she showed off the 6.6 features, but also what she&#8217;s working on for 6.7 in an experiment. So that&#8217;s also something, if you are keen to learn more about Grid Layout and what you can do with it, definitely watch that recording.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. People already starting to work on 6.7. It&#8217;s like, wow, so fast.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So once decided when the Beta 1 is of major release, then it was also decided which Gutenberg Plugin version will make it from the new feature point of view. So the week the Beta 1 is released, that&#8217;s the week where the Gutenberg Plugin released, and that&#8217;s the last release with new features.</p>



  <p>So Beta 1 was on June 4th and the release candidate for 18.5 was already out. So those features made it into the major 6.6. And everything else afterwards, 18.6 and 18.7hat we&#8217;re going to talk to now, are either bug fixes and they will be ported to the release on WordPress but all the new features that add UI, that are enhancement to existing things, stay in the plugin.</p>



  <p>And Isabel Brison, and I think Robert Anderson, they were working on the Grid Layout, they actually started that experiment way earlier, but they were not ready to make it public. So if you want to test out what she showed off in the Hallway Hangout, you need to enable that experiment on the experiment page in Gutenberg before you can actually see that feature.</p>



  <p>So there&#8217;s multiple levels of how you learn about new things. And if you want to get in early, the experiment page on the Gutenberg Plugin gives you a clue what people are actually working on. Some of them are pushed forward like the data views or the Grid Layout, and some of them are a little bit stale because there hasn&#8217;t been enough feedback to move forward with a lot of things.</p>



  <p>Going back to the announcements or to the upcoming events, there&#8217;s also in the show notes a link to the recording of the developer hours, what&#8217;s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6, where Nick Diego and Justin Tadlock were talking about all the good things that are coming, especially the overrides to sync patterns and also grid, but also most prominently the section styles, that&#8217;s it, block styles, and how that works with the reduced specificities for custom CSS.</p>



  <p>So you can override. Well, how you can override some custom styles and block style. It&#8217;s a little bit highly technical, and if you&#8217;re not into that, the last part might be a little bit too technical, but it&#8217;s definitely worth checking out.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>And then there&#8217;s a set of upcoming events in July on Monday, you might not have listened to that, next week, July 8th there&#8217;s a Hallway Hangout where Justin Tadlock and Nick Diego are talking about the section styles and block style variations, want to discuss with the extenders what are the challenges and what are the problems or questions. Bring them all to the Hallway Hangout. That&#8217;s on July 8th, 1600 UTC.</p>



  <p>Then on July 9th, there&#8217;s a Developer Hour, Editor, Unification and Extensibility in WordPress 6.6. That&#8217;s with Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego. And they talk about how the slot fields and all the other extensibility works now for post editor, site editor, template editor. They&#8217;re all now one interface or almost, in how you can take advantage of it. And the additional ways to add your own interfaces to the sidebar.</p>



  <p>Then July 23rd at 1500 UTC is another Developer Hours, and that covers that topic, do you really need a Custom Block? And it explores the alternative, and it was one of the things that early on, but more and more you have already built in ways to modify core blocks without having to create your own blocks. So be based on the core blocks. And with pattern overrides, there&#8217;s another feature there where you can say, okay, maybe I don&#8217;t need my Custom Block. And the other part is the Block Bindings.</p>



  <p>So for custom fields, that you don&#8217;t need a block for each custom field, your customer needs. So you could actually use the Block Bindings for that and bind those information or the values to certain core blocks. It&#8217;s not available for all the blocks, but it&#8217;s 6.6. Block Bindings came with 6.5 and all extended, especially the editing part in the interface for 6.6. All right.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Training Team</h3>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. And speaking of events, so currently the training team is, we are trying to test GatherPress. So it&#8217;s like an event management application and it&#8217;s open source. So we are thinking, why not? We&#8217;re trying to move through this platform, we are looking for a tool that can help us to improve the flow management of our Learn WordPress online workshops, for the scheduling stuff.</p>



  <p>And we hope that by testing it, we can try to meet the diverse needs of even organizers and members of the WordPress community in general. And it&#8217;s not just training team members who can test it. Everyone basically can test it. And I will put the invitation to test it in the show notes. And the main areas that we follow will be including its ease of use and then the registering process, and then the editing attendance feature, and basically any other stuff that stands out.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That&#8217;s great. Thank you so much for bringing that to the show. I totally dig it. And I remember having conversations about replacing Meetup as the tool for the local Meetups with multi-site, for all the 700 local Meetups when I was a Meetup organizer in &#8217;16 and &#8217;17, so this is great that it comes together now.</p>



  <p>Recently, the GatherPress Plugin is also now available in WordPress Plugin Repo, so you can also test it on one of your other sites. You don&#8217;t have to use it for WordPress events. But yeah, I&#8217;m going to look at the invite. So that is really cool. When I look at the plugin page, it has blocks for everything and it has for RSVP, add to calendar, the online event, event date, menu and all that. So this is really great. And maybe could even be used for other events, not just WordPress events.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. And I myself haven&#8217;t tested as well, so sharing this also became a reminder for me to test it. Because it&#8217;s really great to have this alternative.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Absolutely. Oh, and speaking of the training team, there are three courses that came out in the last couple of months. One is the beginner WordPress user. So if you start out as a WordPress content creator and/or site owner, this is definitely a course to go through because it explains some of the WordPressy things that are a little bit harder to know. It&#8217;s like your driver&#8217;s license course for WordPress. Sometimes we just need a refresher as well. And I just realized that there&#8217;s also an Immediate WordPress User course out there. So I think it just went online. And for those who are….</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s very new.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Have you worked on those?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Actually, these three stuff like Beginner WordPress User and then Beginner WordPress Developer, and then Intermediate WordPress Developer. WordPress user, sorry, they&#8217;re all part of the Learning Pathway Project. So lately we try to create learning pathway. Because sometimes people get into learn.wordpress.org and became like, oh my God, there&#8217;s so much stuff to learn. Where do I start?</p>



  <p>So we&#8217;re thinking maybe it will help if we can have separate learning pathways, for example, for people who don&#8217;t have enough technical background, they can start by the Beginner WordPress User. As you already said, it&#8217;s like the driving license for WordPress. It&#8217;s a really nice way to put it. It&#8217;s when you want to really learn from the basics. And then we have Beginner WordPress Developer. It&#8217;s for those who want to start developing for WordPress.</p>



  <p>And then we have Intermediate WordPress User. So it&#8217;s for people who already have basic fundamental knowledge and then they want to level up their use of WordPress. Maybe for content creation, they want to make it more effective, and then they want to explore the advanced features. So this is what everyone can learn from this.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. No, really, and I know there&#8217;s a lot of work that goes into that, especially because WordPress changes so much in the recent year. What I also like is that the single lessons are actually available separately. You don&#8217;t have to go through the course or finish one lesson to go to the next. You can just look at the list of the course and then pick the lessons where you want to expand your knowledge. Or when you say, okay, I need to dive deeper in that topic, and hopefully the lesson covers that.</p>



  <p>That&#8217;s a really good way also for people who actually build sites for others, to say, okay, if you want to learn that, why don&#8217;t you go to that lesson, instead of having to do that training themselves. Although it builds trust, sometimes it can be a bandwidth. You don&#8217;t have the bandwidth as a freelance developer or as a small agency to do all the training. And having an official site where you can point people to for certain explanations or for certain tools, on how to use them, is definitely a feature also very well-built for agencies that are out there and working with clients. You are pretty much the first line of support. So that definitely gives you support in supporting. I like that.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Support in supporting.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So check out the <a href="http://learn.wordpress.org">learn.wordpress.org</a> site and the three courses we will have in the show notes for you. And of course, yeah, the Beginner WordPress Developer course covers all the things that you might need to at least get started. Because there&#8217;s a lot of tutorials out there that assume a certain knowledge of certain things.</p>



  <p>And I know because I work with the writers on the developer blog on the WordPress Developer Blog, and some of it is kind of how can we get to the meat of that particular tutorial without having to explain about everything WordPress.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Everything.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So now we can point to the WordPress Developer lessons and say, okay, here you can beef up thinking about this or this and that. So it&#8217;s great fundamental work that the training team is doing there.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. And we try to facilitate the many ways people might prefer to learn. Some people prefer to learn audio/visually, some people prefer to just read it, because they can do it anytime and anywhere, and also for the accessibility reasons.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Excellent. Yeah, definitely. That was the section about the training team. Well done on the training team and everybody else out there.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; Create Block Theme Plugin<strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h3>



  <p>So that brings us to the section, what&#8217;s released. And before we dive into WordPress 6.6 some more, I just wanted to give a shout-out to the latest release of the Create Block Theme Plugin. It has become my most favorite plugin that I actually use. And the team working on has released version 2.3 with a few more capabilities.</p>



  <p>And now you can add image credits to the theme modal. So there&#8217;s a theme modal where you can put all the information about a theme that you create in there. And there&#8217;s now also a section for the image credits if you use somebody else&#8217;s images in there that are not commonly licensed or public domain. So you can add this to it.</p>



  <p>External links are now translatable. So the translation team, whoever and polyglots wants to translate a theme can do that. There is a new About section in the editor that helps you with what the various pieces are about. And the landing page in the plugin has been majorly improved from the design, and it now looks a little bit more like that plugin is. And then now the font settings. When you clone a theme, the font settings actually persist over the cloning part. So what the original theme is doing you can do. The clone theme is also respecting that.</p>



  <p>And then there were quite a few bug fixes and all that. But it&#8217;s so great how this plugin actually evolves throughout the times and goes along with the WordPress features. I think that they&#8217;re working now on some pattern management, but they need to wait for the core to finish developing. Sometimes the heart of the matter, if you want to create, you can create patterns in the interface, but you need to export them separately and not with the theme. So that&#8217;s kind of a major stepping stone.</p>



  <p>And then the styles and section styles, they haven&#8217;t implemented that yet. But it&#8217;s coming along and stay tuned.&nbsp;</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.6</h3>



  <p>So for WordPress 6.6, release candidate two is now available for testing. Today, we are recording this on July 4th, thinking July 4th to our American listeners. Happy Independence Day. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And enjoy the summer coming in. But no rest for the wicked. WordPress 6.6 is scheduled to come out July 16th. That&#8217;s 12 days away. And there is with the release candidate one, also the Source of Truth came out, a compendium, it&#8217;s a book about that, WordPress 6.6. Compiled or composed, edited, authored by and&#8230;</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Curated.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Curated By Anne McCarthy. It&#8217;s all you want to ever learn about 6.6 in any detail, about every feature. It might not interest everyone. But you can actually&#8230; She tags each feature for the intended user, like this is the theme author, plugin author, end user or enterprise level or for everybody. So you can actually use the browser, find function for the tag theme author, and then go just hop from one occurrence to the next and read it that way. That&#8217;s how I do it.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> If you need a shorter version, Jamie Marsland summarized the most important feature in this video and calls it WordPress 6.6, huge changes coming soon.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> As a content writer, I am so thankful that Anne McCarthy always creates this source of truth every time there&#8217;s a major release. So it became our source of truth, literally, to write anything about WordPress.</p>



  <p>So it&#8217;s also interesting that today&#8217;s marketing team, from the make teams shifting to Media Corps. Because it&#8217;s expanding the possibilities for the Source of Truth. Now that we are going to have that one place, one central to getting everything about WordPress and being updated on it. So it&#8217;ll be really helpful for content creators especially.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, it&#8217;s actually meant for content creators. It&#8217;s not so much for end-users, because that also can be quite technical. So Jamie Marsland, in his video, points out pattern overrides, the grid layout, and we all talked about the negative margins, the custom shadows, and as well as the data views.</p>



  <p>And there were actually for the developers additional def notes since the last episode were published, and one was the updates to the interactivity API, miscellaneous editor changes. These are smaller changes, but still don&#8217;t overlook them. A definite about section and styles, is definite about the CSS specificity. That&#8217;s a very difficult word for me.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Me, too. It&#8217;s a tongue-twister.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And it reflects how hard it is to talk about that as well.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, yeah. 6.6 specificity.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Specificity.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> So many S.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And then there&#8217;s a roster of the design tools per block that&#8217;s just a table of lists, all the blocks, and then which design tool, line, typography, color, dimensions, background image, gradient, yay, duotone, which block does what. And then there&#8217;s another dev notes about the theme JSON version three that also covers the style variations or the section style variations, how you can manage them through theme JSON.</p>



  <p>Maya, from all the small and big features, what intrigues you as a content creator the most?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> I actually want to say the zoom out view, but sadly, based on the 6.6 Source of Truth, it&#8217;ll be available on a future release. But I was like, if it&#8217;s finally available, it&#8217;ll be a game changer, because I can&#8230; Instead of cut and then move it to somewhere else by scrolling up or down my mouse and put it on the wrong part of the website, being able to zoom it out will be, oh my God, it will be&#8230; What is it in English? Sorry. It&#8217;ll be really time-saving.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I can definitely see that. Because we are so focused on the block or on the section kind of thing that sometimes you need a full view of a page. And the zoom out view is&#8230; We are looking at things sometimes only for the block section and what&#8217;s in front of us, but the zoom out view gives you actually a view of the full page and how everything fits together.</p>



  <p>That&#8217;s very important when you look at template previews or on pattern previews or even on when you go through the categories of patterns and then you see the pattern, how would that fit in into your full page kind of thing? Yeah. But if I understood it correctly, it wasn&#8217;t all that seamless to use. It was always a little bit of a surprise when it happened that the team still wanted to&#8230; And nothing is hated more than a surprise by an end user. What did I do?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Did I do something wrong?</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. That&#8217;s the first question I always ask. What did I do? And how did that happen? So they wanted to finesse that a little bit more and make that usage a bit more intuitive. So apart from what&#8217;s not in 6.6.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> What else?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> I think it&#8217;s the unified editor experience. It just makes sense to me to have the featured image position way higher than before, because before it&#8217;s down there. Now it&#8217;s way up there. Because when we create a blog post after finishing the text, the first thing that comes to mind is what feature image we will put there to represent the blog post.</p>



  <p>Because having a proper and featured image is also important for the SEO and for branding, especially if we name the featured image with the keyword that we target, it&#8217;ll boost the SEO performance as well. And I like how the publish flow looks more compact and less distracting. Because some stuff gets inside when we click something and&#8230;</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> The three-dot menu.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yes. It can be also less intimidating for newbies because there&#8217;s not so much stuff right there. And then I&#8217;m also interested in the pattern overrides, because it will be so handy and time-saving. And also help create a cohesive design across the site, especially for no-code or no designer, non-designer users, and then also the negative margins because it unlocks the design possibilities for us who don&#8217;t really design in our daily lives. So yeah, it will look really cool, I think.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, absolutely. And I like the combination between the grid block and the custom shadows. And then now you can have some overlap of images and text, and you don&#8217;t have to use a cover block to have that because it&#8217;s hard to organize that. Yeah,</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>It&#8217;ll be so fun to play with.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Great tools in there for designers that are no-coders. Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of cool. Yeah. I&#8217;m a total fan of the pattern enhancement that comes with 6.6. It&#8217;s not only the set pattern overrides that were punted from 6.5, I like the additional time, which really helped with the feature to bring it in. Because now you see it in the sidebar which content you can override and how they&#8217;re called.</p>



  <p>And to create this, you can actually guide your users, which piece of the pattern you can override. So there&#8217;s a sidebar on that, when the pattern comes in you really see it. And there&#8217;s also the full pattern management, is made available for sites that use a classic theme. So they get a menu item in the WP admin and also all the pattern management screens. So that&#8217;s a big deal for the classic themes because they still dominate the space of course.</p>



  <p>Not everybody changes themes every two years, but users can take advantage of the broader template part and pattern management. And theme developers can also make those available for their users. So I&#8217;m really happy about that. Yeah, we talked about the grid layouts. I&#8217;m absolutely a fan of that. And because you can have so much more design, although I want to do something like a Pied Mondrian kind of style, and I am….</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani</em>: Oh, yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Looking forward to doing that. And now you can also create your own drop shadows and you don&#8217;t need a theme developer or a developer for it or wait for core. You can create your own drop shadows with the color, how they lean, what&#8217;s the angle and what&#8217;s the distance from the thing. It&#8217;s not available for all blocks. But I think it&#8217;s still only for four blocks, but it&#8217;s definitely changed for the content creators to make some interesting things.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Yep, yep.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And one thing I really like is that it&#8217;s finally coming to WordPress, and that is, to use….</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>What is that?</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The tab button to indent list items?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Oh, yeah, yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Every time.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani</em>: Yeah, I forget about that too. It&#8217;ll be really nice too.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And because it trips me up every time I know I&#8217;m going to use it very much. I have not learned to work around it. Why can&#8217;t I do this? So I try it every time I use a list that needs to have multiple hierarchies. So I&#8217;m really happy about that. Thank you.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Finally.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>The time that I don&#8217;t spend in WordPress, I spend in Google Docs. So some things from Google Docs. What drives me crazy in Google Docs is that I can&#8217;t just highlight something and put a link underneath with copy paste. That kind of trips me up in Google. And I was like, Google, get on with it. And GitHub can do it, WordPress can do it, you can do it too. And this was the other way around. Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of what Google does nicely and WordPress does.</p>



  <p>We talked a little bit on the podcast already about the new screens coming, called the data views. And those are the admin screens, that insight editor to manage pattern pages, styles, navigation and templates. And as they are tested for more admin redesigns to come. And yeah, I&#8217;m really excited about that because it kind of gives you a little view into the future, and also lets you already use it and see how that works well for you.</p>



  <p>I know for 6.7, they&#8217;re looking at making those available for the media library and also for the post because those two things on the content side, they still use the old WP admin for various reasons. Most of it because of the extensibility that needs to be built in, because a lot of plugins kind of tap into these screens right now.</p>



  <p>But the 6.7 is probably going to have at least some first versions of that in that. If you&#8217;re a plugin developer, you might want to check out theWordPress&nbsp; component package data views. And there&#8217;s also one that contributors are working on, it&#8217;s called data forms, maybe to make them work for your plugins or at least test them out, and what it would bring for you later on in a year or so.</p>



  <p>And then of course, the last feature that I am really happy about is the extensions of the Block Bindings, they were a big deal in 6.5, but the enhancements that coming in 6.6 is even more useful for site owners and site content creators, because WordPress now offers various ways where you can update the custom fields through the Block Binding screen.</p>



  <p>So the meta boxes that are on bottom of your screen are not the best interface. They also don&#8217;t have any validation and all that, but you can now change it right in the block. So if you have a typo of inner value for the meta, thinking of a book, if you have a typo in the author. Or you can change the author right there in the block, as well as if that&#8217;s in the archive, you can use those Block Bindings also in the archive pages through your templates, but users can then change, oh, this is a wrong date, or this is a wrong location. They can change it right there in the archive pages in the editor.</p>



  <p>So it&#8217;s kind of nice to have that now built into the Block Editor, what before you actually needed custom blocks for it or you needed ACF for it or parts or something like that. But now you can just have the custom fields connected with blocks still in the early stages of course, but it&#8217;s not complicated fields or complicated connections. But it&#8217;s a start and it might make….</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>We&#8217;re getting there.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s getting there. And it might make quite a set of custom blocks redundant if you could use those for that. And you don&#8217;t have to maintain the code for that. Yeah, that&#8217;s what I think about 6.6. What I like and what&#8230; I am really looking forward to it.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> It&#8217;s less than two weeks from now, I think.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> 12 days from today.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> 12 days.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So this comes out on Sunday, and you have only 10 days once you listen to that.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> 10 days.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Or maybe today, Thursday. Well, it comes out on Sunday, so you only have eight days.&nbsp;</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 18.7</h3>



  <p>But that was not the only thing that was released today or this week. The WordPress 6.6 release candidate two, it was Gutenberg 18.7. Total of 115 PRs were merged in Gutenberg 18.7 with seven first time contributors. Yay.</p>



  <p>I was going to look at that and hope they contribute not only their first contribution, but also because now they&#8217;ve got the process right that there will be many, many more contributions from those users.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Of course, of many contributions after this.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Right, right. Yeah. And with WordPress 6.6 at our doorstep, many contributions are focused on bug fixes. So there&#8217;s not a whole lot of new features in there, but what we are talking about, some of them are really&#8230; We will find in 6.7, but let&#8217;s talk about them.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Enhancements</h3>



  <p>So there is now a content panel for template parts, and that is good because now developers, and when you create templates in the editor, you can add a description and that shows up in the content area for that template. So you can make your theme a little bit more descriptive. Then the next one is, we talked about the published workflow, right?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Mm-hmm. Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And there is the Sticky Toggle, which is something that means the sticky post.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yes.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> That is&#8230;</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> It&#8217;s now under&#8230; It will be under&#8230; Wait, I forget.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Those three dots.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;ll be under the status and visibility. And I think that will be great because it makes it more clear what sticky means, especially for non-English speakers and beginners. Because I remember the first time I learned using WordPress, I was confused what does this sticky mean? Because I was trying to make my first blog post and then I tried this sticky feature and nothing happened. Of course, because my post is only one. So I cannot see what this feature actually does. So by moving it under status and visibility, I think it makes it more intuitive. Because by that we know that, oh, this sticky might be related to the visibility. Oh, it&#8217;ll stick to somewhere in the website.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I think you&#8217;re right. And it&#8217;s also not the first&#8230; The first few blog posts you probably wouldn&#8217;t need to know about Sticky Post to get that into your feature set that you would need. So why is it there? Yeah, you&#8217;re totally right. Yeah. What they also did in 18.7, why am I still two years, in 16?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Numbers are also hard.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, numbers are hard, especially for writers. But I&#8217;m actually a number person, so&#8230;</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Ahh. Yeah, yeah. Number person and alphabet person.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I used to say, so it&#8217;s a real miracle what word people do with numbers. Because I looked at budgets from word people that didn&#8217;t work out. But off my tangents now. So one feature that comes with 18.7 is the alignment of the naming models. So we are renaming and naming quite a few things. One is we renamed the sections in the pattern overrides. We renamed template parts, we renamed posts and pages, titles, and all these models, they looked a little bit differently every time. So they are now aligned and use the same design.</p>



  <p>So it makes it less of a friction, because every time you see something different, you think there might be something different, but there isn&#8217;t. So that&#8217;s really good for quality of life improvement on that. So we haven&#8217;t talked a lot about the writing mode support for blogs. What is that? That is&#8230; Do you know what that is? Have you ever used it?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> I tried it, but not really applied it to my daily process. But I think it opened more design possibilities. Because we can make any other element to be vertical or there are so many possibilities that we can do with the layout and then with the message that we want to share to the world.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so you could pretty much say in the fonts you see in the three dot menu in your font, typography, things you see, vertical alignment or orientation, is I think what you see. Font orientation.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Oh, yeah, orientation.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So you can then say, okay, I want this headline to be vertically aligned with the paragraph that it kind of comes after. So it actually will be on the left-hand side instead of on top of it, but it is vertically aligned. And yeah, as you said, it&#8217;s a nice design tool to break up the wall of text, I call it.</p>



  <p>So when you use headers and list items and all that, they need to be visually attractive at one point, so you can end this PR or with 18.7, the feature of the vertical alignment comes to other blocks. The writing mode support is now also available for buttons and verse and side tagline blocks and side title blocks. Not just for headings and paragraphs. There&#8217;s a theme JSON settings in there, and you can also kind of see it then in your style blocks. So I think that&#8217;s a great feature to have, that is added to a few more blocks.</p>



  <p>So wonderful. Another tool, it&#8217;s not a tool, but what has changed, and you will see it in 6.6, is that with the entity that you&#8217;re editing. So what do I mean by that? Is it a pattern or is it a block or is it a template? And now you get a document bar on top of the screen that actually tells you where you are. And that document bar is now also available in 18.7 Gutenberg with the style book and the style revisions. So it&#8217;s one more piece of getting the orientation right for a content creator. So what am I actually doing? And I liked it for templates and for pages. So am I in template mode or am I in page editing mode, which is kind of a little different.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah, I checked the GitHub issue and still cannot really comprehend what we will get from this feature? But then you just explained about it. It makes me, oh, yeah, yeah, I will&#8230; looking forward to this. That&#8217;s why even though I&#8217;m not really a technical person, I&#8217;m still keeping notes and updating myself of all these updates. Because, oh, this one, I might need this. And just taking notes of everything.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. And the last one, it&#8217;s also a very small thing, but it&#8217;s really improved the quality of life of these new features. And I&#8217;m sad it&#8217;s not going to come to 6.6. Not that I&#8230; Because it&#8217;s the tool top to hover over the color and to typography presets. So if your theme has, or if you&#8217;re a theme developer and you create color and typography presets for your theme, then the user can hover and identify that color palette or what typography, what&#8217;s the font like or what do you call those fonts. And you can then point people to it in your documentation and say, well look at that. Well look at this. And the Tooltip helps you identify really the things that are on screen. All right. Do you want to add something to the Tooltip?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Yeah, I just want to say that this will be very handy for working with teams because you don&#8217;t have to pick that one that is the third one from the top. You can just say the name of, what is it? The color presets. The color palette. So yeah.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Bug Fixes</h3>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. No, you&#8217;re right. Yeah, it&#8217;s really hard to organize it. So we mentioned quite a few bug fixes in there. And there is one in there that we are talking about, that&#8217;s the writing flows, split the heading into a default block. You can split a block and then it&#8217;s still going to be a heading.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. Because sometimes when we enter in the middle of the heading and then it creates another H1, let&#8217;s say. It just didn&#8217;t make sense to have&#8230; Why do we want to have two heading one in a row? So yeah, it just makes sense to have when we enter, it automatically becomes a normal text like that.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, a normal paragraph block. Or when you get carried away with writing a headline and say, ah, no, I want to break it and do that as a subheading. Yeah. Yeah. So that&#8217;s a very good fix. You can also now, it fixes the custom color palette. Because that was always a little bit hard to use when you wanted to create new ones.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. I also found this one really useful because sometimes, especially for brands, some brands have that very specific color and by being able to create the custom color palette, it will help us to have a website in our signature color.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Right. Yeah. And this fix actually makes that workflow much smoother and you don&#8217;t have to fiddle around with it too much. And the next one is that for the grid, we talked about the experiment, about the grid interactivity, and it now allows blocks to be positioned in manual mode using drag and drop.</p>



  <p>So the handing of grid and grid cells is going to be much easier. And even in the manual mode you can use drag and drop to place your blocks on the grid. There were two things that I want to&#8230; There are quite a few documentation PRs that fix or add to the documentation, which is always appreciated.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Documentation</h3>



  <p>The interactivity API docs now have an addition of the WP-async directive documented. It&#8217;s for the developers when they go out and grab some data from somewhere and how to push that into the website. And then for the Query Loop Block, it clarifies some explanation about the variation examples that are in core, so developers can handle them. And I think that was it, what we have for Gutenberg&#8217;s 18.7. Yes, we are almost through.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>



  <p>We have one section for the&#8230; What&#8217;s in active development or discussed, and I just wanted to let you know that the GitHub repo for the next default theme can&#8217;t….</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Twenty Twenty Five.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Very good. We did not plan this.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Yeah.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And I connected with Carolina Nymark who created the repo, and she just said that it&#8217;s pretty much right now just to put the placeholders in. Because the release team for 6.7 hasn&#8217;t been announced yet. And the default theme Co leads, will be part of the release team. So we need to wait for that. But if you have any input or any ideas for Twenty Twenty Five, you can definitely create issues there and start and raise your hand if you want to contribute however you want.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> The Twenty Twenty Five will be part of the last release of this year.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Which is WordPress 6.7.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> 6.7. Oh, yes.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes. Yeah, it&#8217;s the next release and it will come out in November. But I think the release date is before Thanksgiving, so it&#8217;s November 12th. So it&#8217;s way before Black Friday and all the holidays are going to start. At least in America, between Thanksgiving and New Year, nobody really, everybody shops and not a whole lot of people work.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Yeah. It&#8217;s time for&#8230; Have fun.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, it&#8217;s time to have fun, but also to keep websites stable so the online shopping spray is not interrupted. And because that&#8217;s where most people make the year&#8217;s revenue.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Gift giving time.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s giving time, it&#8217;s buying time. It&#8217;s Black Friday time, it&#8217;s Cyber Monday time. It&#8217;s all the discounts that come around for that. Yes. Yeah. So I&#8217;m so happy that you were on my show, Maya. Or on our show.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Me, too.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And it&#8217;s always wonderful to chat with you about WordPress and all the things content creators do with it. So when people want to connect with you, where would they find you?</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> So you can find me on wordpress.org, of course. And then I have LinkedIn as well, and Twitter and Instagram. But lately I&#8217;ve been taking social media time off.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Okay.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> So if anyone wants to get in touch with me, I think wordpress.org. And maybe if you want to read anything related to me, so in training team, we recently developed&#8230; We have a new initiative, so it&#8217;s Contributor Spotlight. So we celebrate the journey of training team contributors. It&#8217;s initiated by Courtney Paulo-Kranzke or Courtney PK, we call her. It started this January, I think. And yeah, you can all read it on the training team made WordPress Blog.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, wonderful, wonderful. I&#8217;m going to put a link in the show notes to that profile.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Thank you.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, thank you for that initiative. It&#8217;s always good to read the stories, contributor stories. And I will add your LinkedIn and your WordPress Slack profile or WordPress Slack account as well to the show so you can all follow up with Maya.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Thank you so much.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You&#8217;re welcome. As long as the show notes ,dear listeners, will be published on gutenbergtimes.com for WordPress Podcast. This is episode 103. And if you have questions or suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>, that&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. Or just ping me on Twitter like many people do. And if you enjoy the show, please, please leave a review on Apple or Stitcher or whatever your favorite podcast directory is, so other people can find it too. Again, thanks to Maya and thanks for listening, and goodbye.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani: </em>Thanks to Birgit as well.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, thank you.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> It&#8217;s always an honor.</p>



  <p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Thank you. And a great pleasure for me. All right, this is the outro. Listen to it and I&#8217;ll see you in two weeks or talk to you in two weeks. Bye-Bye.</p>



  <p><em>Nadia Maya Ardiani:</em> Bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 07 Jul 2024 08:59:49 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"Gutenberg Times: Grid Layouts, curate the Editor experience, WordPress 6.6 — Weekend Edition 298";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=29127";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19986:"<p>Hi there, </p>



  <p>It was a fairly normal WordPress week, apart from the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2024/06/29/password-reset-required-for-plugin-authors/">general password reset for all plugin committers</a> on the repository. That was highly unusual. </p>



  <p>The release of WordPress 6.6 is moving along right on schedule.  <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-rc2/">Release candidate 2</a> is out. The video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF_UJQ0369c">Watch the Build: How WordPress Release Pages are Created in the Site Editor</a> allows you a look behind the scene of this part of the release process. </p>



  <p>Gutenberg 18.7 was also released. Together with my friend Maya, I recorded  a Gutenberg changelog episode again, number 103. I just can&#8217;t get my head around that we already recorded over 100 shows. We also added new music.</p>



  <p>This Weekend Edition has quite a few videos linked on what&#8217;s coming in WordPress 6.6, on Grid layouts, and Interactivity API. Something for everyone. To learn about new features and grasp their impact, it&#8217;s much easier to see them demo&#8217;ed in a video setting or screen share than just learn about it via a blog post or a podcast. </p>



  <p>Wishing you a fabulous weekend! </p>



  <p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>


  <div width="100%" class="wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block">
  <p><em>PS: Thank you to <a href="https://x.com/chris_c">Chris Clarke</a> for sharing his <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/554667b23a/">Hong Kong Harbor photo</a> on WordPress Photo directory. </em></p>
  </div>


  <p></p>



  <div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
  <p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



  <ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/#upcoming-events">Upcoming events</a></li></ol></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/grid-layouts-curate-the-editor-experience-wordpress-6-6-weekend-edition-298/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ol>
  </div></div>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



  <p>First time release lead, <a href="https://x.com/kevin940726"><strong>Kai Hao</strong></a>, published Gutenberg plugin version 18.7 and highlighted in his release post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-18-7-03-july/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 18.7? (03 July)</strong></a>, the feature of moving grid items around via drag and drop in manual mode, and new content panels for template parts, allowing developers and users to add descriptions to those sections.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Nadia Maya Ardiani</strong> and I reviewed the latest Gutenberg version for our <strong>Gutenberg Changelog episode 103</strong>. We also discussed the latest learning path courses by the training team, upcoming events and WordPress 6.6. The episode will be published over the weekend and arrive shortly after at your favorite podcast app. It was lovely to chat with my friend, Maya from Indonesia again.</p>



  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast"><img width="652" height="185" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Screenshot-2024-07-04-at-17.07.21.png?resize=652%2C185&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29190" /></a>



  <p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-bd161c98d845ccce6904985904015b6a">🎙️ Latest episode: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/">Gutenberg Changelog #103 – Create Block Theme Plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and Updates from the Training Team </a> with Nadia Maya Ardiani</p>



  <p><strong>Tammie Lister</strong> <a href="https://x.com/karmatosed/status/1808098791708315820">wrote on X </a>(former Twitter): &#8220;Being sponsored to work on the WordPress default theme task force has been one of the most rewarding contribution areas for me in a while. I wrote a post about what has gone on so far. Thank you to everyone who supported me and collaborated.&#8221; You can read more about the project on her <strong><a href="https://binatethoughts.com/update-on-default-theme-focus/">Update on default theme focus</a>.</strong></p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>The work on the default theme <strong><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentyfive">Twenty Twenty-Five</a> </strong>has begun with a fresh GitHub Repo. There isn&#8217;t much information available yet. After checking in with <strong>Caroline Nymark</strong>, who created the repo, I learned that the release squad for WordPress 6.7 hasn&#8217;t been announced; the repo is more a placeholder until the new theme leads are picked.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="upcoming-events">Upcoming events</h3>



  <p><strong>July 8th, 2024 at 16:00 UTC &nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/hallway-hangout-section-styles-and-other-block-style-variation-updates/">Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates</a></strong>&nbsp;with Justin Tadlock and others: &#8220;At a technical level, the expanded tool set does not add too many new concepts to learn. However, in practice, working with these updates can present challenges and may even have you rethinking your approach to theme design.&#8221; says the description. </p>



  <p><em>As already mentioned in <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/796-block-themes-games-a-changing-for-custom-fields-more-dev-notes-weekend-edition-297/#upcoming">Weekend Edition 297</a></em></p>



  <p><strong>July 9th, 2024, 15:00 UTC </strong>–&nbsp;<strong>Developer Hours</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301834541/"><strong>Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6</strong></a>.</p>



  <p><strong>July 23, 2024</strong>, at 15:00 UTC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><strong>Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives.</strong></a>&nbsp;</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



  <p><strong>Isabel Brison</strong> showed us in a Hallway Hangout how to work with the Grid block and what will be in WordPress 6.6. After answering questions, Brison also showed us what she is working on in a Gutenberg Experiment. Learn more via the post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/"><strong>Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts</strong></a>. </p>



  <p>You can also try things out via this <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wordpress/blueprints/trunk/blueprints/grid-variations/blueprint.json">Playground instance</a>. The experiment is already enabled. </p>



  <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
  </div>Find summary, transcript shared resources via the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/">Recap post</a>



  <p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published videos on YouTube around WordPress 6.6. for content creators and site builders.</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdh1hKAuXSQ">Negative Margins, Grid Block, &amp; Custom Shadows</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidqPCJhze8">The power of a shared publishing flow &amp; unified extensibility APIs</a> </li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhvEhnjbdyM">Bringing a Modern Patterns Experience to Classic Themes</a></li>
  </ul>


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  <p><strong>Bud Kraus</strong> selected for you the <a href="https://www.hostinger.com/blog/wordpress-6-6-preview"><strong>6 Hot Changes Coming to WordPress 6.6</strong></a> on the Hostinger Blog. He highlights Pattern overrides, the Grid block, Sections Styles, Data views, Pattern management for classic themes and negative margins. Kraus provides screenshots and instructions on how to use the features. </p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>You might have waited for the video of WordCamp Europe&#8217;s edition of the Speed Build Challenge live on stage. <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> published the actual Speed Build challenge and cut in from the Matt&#8217;s Summer Update and the Q &amp; A after. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVW4vdBdtuk&t=116s"><strong>Epic Showdown: Who will win WordCamp Europe&#8217;s First-Ever WordPress Speed Build?</strong></a> with Jessica Lyschik and Rich Tabor.</p>



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  <p><strong>Stephanie Pi</strong> just announced <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/06/18/woocommerce-9-0-our-most-accessible-checkout-and-much-more/"><strong>WooCommerce 9.0: Our most accessible checkout and much more</strong></a>. It comes with an improved check-out experience, the next iteration of Product blocks, new REST-API endpoints for the refunds and much more.  Actually, <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/06/20/woocommerce-9-0-1-dot-release/">WooCommerce 9.0.1</a> came out a few days later, fixing what caused a fatal error on installations. </p>



  <a href="https://developer.woocommerce.com/2024/06/18/woocommerce-9-0-our-most-accessible-checkout-and-much-more/"><img width="652" height="416" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image.png?resize=652%2C416&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29184" /></a>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <p><strong>Carlo Daniele</strong>, blogger at Kinsta, has all the pertinent information about WordPress 6.6 in his post <strong><a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-6-6/">What’s new in WordPress 6.6: Pattern overrides, Block Bindings API, Data Views, new design tools, and much more!</a></strong> You&#8217;ll find short explanations, screenshots, and code examples on how to implement some new features into your projects.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



  <p>One of my favorite plugins lately is the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/"><strong>Create Block Theme</strong></a> plugin. The team working on it just released version 2.3&nbsp;</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Add image credits edit capabilities to the edit theme modal by <a href="https://github.com/matiasbenedetto">@matiasbenedetto</a> in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/create-block-theme/pull/662">#662</a></li>



  <li>Make external links translatable by <a href="https://github.com/t-hamano">@t-hamano</a> in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/create-block-theme/pull/663">#663</a></li>



  <li>Add an about section in the editor by <a href="https://github.com/matiasbenedetto">@matiasbenedetto</a> in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/create-block-theme/pull/667">#667</a></li>



  <li>Landing Page: Improve design by <a href="https://github.com/t-hamano">@t-hamano</a> in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/create-block-theme/pull/673">#673</a></li>



  <li>Persist font settings when cloning a theme by <a href="https://github.com/mikachan">@mikachan</a> in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/create-block-theme/pull/678">#678</a></li>
  </ul>



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  <p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong></p>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <p><strong>Nick Diego</strong> collected <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/07/04/15-ways-to-curate-the-wordpress-editing-experience/"><strong>15 ways to curate the WordPress editing experience</strong></a> and explained each of them in his latest post for the WordPress Developer Blog. Diego covered all possible ways from disabling parts of the design tools, Block directory or Pattern directory to Openverse. Also, how to unregister core block styles and variations or formatting options for RichText blocks. If you build bespoke themes for client projects, some of this might be quite useful to make the block editor a streamlined experience for the client&#8217;s content creators, and stay true to branding and design requirements.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



  <p><a href="https://x.com/perezcarreno"><strong>Armando J. Perez-Carreno</strong></a> had a two-part conversation with <strong>Seth Rubenstein</strong> from the Pew Research Center, on how he and his team use the Interactivity API for their website. Rubenstein demonstrated the use of facets and the Interactivity API in creating dynamic and interactive blocks, as well as the concept of &#8216;atomic&#8217; blocks. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otFjPLOWWsc"></a></p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXoZQRVJcY">The Interactivity API in Action, a conversation with Seth Rubenstein</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXUMh1S2ws"></a></li>



  <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDkvVTmVSRQ">Interactivity API: Getting Creative with Atomic Blocks</a></li>
  </ul>



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  <p><a href="https://x.com/olawanle_joel"><strong>Joel Olawanle</strong></a>, technical writer at Kinsta, set out to help developers <a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/react-19-wordpress/"><strong>Preparing for React 19: a guide for WordPress 6.6 users</strong></a>. </p>



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  <p><strong>Magdalena Paciorek</strong> gave a talk on <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2024/07/03/building-custom-post-types-with-blocks/"><strong>Building custom post types with&nbsp;blocks</strong></a> at WordCamp Europe. The recording made it to WordPress TV for your perusal. In this session, she took a look at how to create bespoke WordPress websites that make use of custom post types directly in the site editor. Paciorek also explored how to build templates with blocks and examined different ways to extend the editor, including the use of block filters, block formats, custom block styles, block patterns, inner blocks, block locking, interactivity API, building our own blocks, and more. </p>



  		
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  <p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



  <p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



  <p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>Featured Image: <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/554667b23a/">Hong Kong Harbor</a> photo by <a href="https://x.com/chris_c">Chris Clarke</a>, found in the WordPress Photos space. </p>



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  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:20:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:11:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"HeroPress: An Essay From Japan, Interviews From Italy, Photos From Romania!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"https://heropress.com/?p=7226";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:189:"https://heropress.com/an-essay-from-japan-interviews-from-italy-photos-from-romania/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=an-essay-from-japan-interviews-from-italy-photos-from-romania";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12318:"<img width="1024" height="576" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/1566614a4ecc542f1.48731483-1024x576.jpeg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Colorful sunset at Sugar Beach, Costa Rica." /><div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-7226_5cc667-2b"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_83e99e-fb alignfull has-theme-palette9-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-2-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_ac77f0-9d"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/freed-from-the-soil-lab/" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="300" height="300" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2015-WCORL-professional-300x300.jpg" alt="Jesse Petersen" class="kb-img wp-image-755" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_f0688f-e1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <p class="kt-adv-heading7226_bbac4c-c5 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">This week&#8217;s banner image is in memory of <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/freed-from-the-soil-lab/">Jesse Petersen</a> who left us on this date in 2017. Godspeed Jesse.</p>
  </div></div>

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  <div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-7226_cec507-06"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_d1d005-3e alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_f7f055-32 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h2 class="kt-adv-heading7226_fa34bf-0f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">HeroPress At WordCamp Europe 2024</h2>



  <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/accessibility-and-inclusivity/"><img width="1024" height="296" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/wceu_updates-1024x296.jpg" alt="WCEU Latest Updates" class="wp-image-6680" /></a>



  <p>Well, WordCamp came and went.  We had a wonderful time, and like always met some people I&#8217;ve known for years, but never expected to get to meet in real life.</p>



  <p>We did 4 interviews, check out these amazing people:</p>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_ef682a-a5 alignfull has-theme-palette9-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-2-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_86e4c2-f5"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-karolina-vyskocilova/" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="768" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IMG_8348-768x1024.jpg" alt="Karolina pointing at her name on the contributor wall" class="kb-img wp-image-6929" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_b49a16-9f"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h3 class="kt-adv-heading7226_181d04-ef wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-karolina-vyskocilova/">Karolína Vyskočilová</a></h3>



  <p class="kt-adv-heading7226_5d395a-8d wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Karolina is from Prague and has been active in the WordPress community for many years.  Despite that fact, I had never heard of her, which is one of the main points of these interviews.  Find all the new people!</p>



  <p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wceu2024_karolina.mp3">Here&#8217;s the audio from our talk.</a></p>




  </div></div>

  </div></div>

  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_7c50a9-ba alignfull has-theme-palette9-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-2-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_1f8bb5-b7"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <img width="1024" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/aida-1024x1024.jpg" alt="Aida Correa-Jackson" class="kb-img wp-image-7089" />
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_677a35-3b"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h3 class="kt-adv-heading7226_6cd39f-8c wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-aida-correa-jackson/">Aida Correa-Jackson</a></h3>



  <p class="kt-adv-heading7226_c5c0ec-57 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Aida is from Florida, but grew up in Brooklyn New York. She works hard on Kids Camp, and I won&#8217;t spoil the rest of it for you.</p>



  <p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wceu2024_aida.mp3">Here&#8217;s the audio from our talk.</a></p>




  </div></div>

  </div></div>

  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_fbc5c2-04 alignfull has-theme-palette9-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-2-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_94fcc7-79"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <img width="768" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/IMG_5117-768x1024.jpg" alt="" class="kb-img wp-image-7229" />
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_8d7f86-12"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h3 class="kt-adv-heading7226_9d47e0-82 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-josephine-rahissa-ngo-nonog-and-herman-ngembu/">Josephine (Rahissa) Ngo Nonog and Herman Ngembu</a></h3>



  <p class="kt-adv-heading7226_c5dbd2-df wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Rahissa and Herman came to Italy from Cameroon and someone suggested they try WordCamp!</p>



  <p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wceu2024_josephine_herman.mp3">Here&#8217;s the audio from 4.</a></p>



  Josephine (Rahissa) Ngo Nonog and Herman Ngembu Interview
  </div></div>

  </div></div>

  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_87b923-87 alignfull has-theme-palette9-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-2-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_68abf8-22"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <img width="576" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/thabo_topher-576x1024.jpg" alt="Thabo Tswana and Topher" class="kb-img wp-image-7194" />
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_43cf02-5d"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h3 class="kt-adv-heading7226_02c072-53 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-thabo-tswana/">Thabo Tswana</a></h3>



  <p class="kt-adv-heading7226_e267ab-ab wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Thabo is from Zimbabwe originally, but since doing an Essay has had the means to move to South Africa!</p>



  <p>Here&#8217;s the audio from our talk.</p>




  </div></div>

  </div></div></div></div>

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  <div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-7226_b7d0f5-fb"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7226_019df4-d1 alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_295130-1d inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h2 class="kt-adv-heading7226_f693a5-0a wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/">HeroPress.com</a> &#8211; <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity/">A welcoming community that embraces authenticity – 本物らしさを受け入れる温かいコミュニティ</a></h2>





  <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity/"><img width="600" height="600" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ben-2023-square-extra-small-1-scaled-1.avif" alt="Ben Evans" class="wp-image-7135" /></a>



  <p>Ben Evans had a love for teaching that he was able to leverage in the WordPress community when the pandemic hit.</p>



  <p><em>I had opportunities to be part of educational projects within Automattic. I coached Japanese support agents, created internal training materials, and developed a new onboarding program for new employees. These experiences rekindled my love for education.</em></p>



  <p>Ben&#8217;s essay is <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity/">available</a> on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress.com</a>.</p>
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  <div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-7226_c424c9-73"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>


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  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7226_72e536-04 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h2 class="kt-adv-heading7226_2e134d-fe wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://hallwaychats.com">WPPhotos.Info</a></h2>





  <img width="200" height="300" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/97066503502793e94.69715830-scaled-1-200x300.jpg" alt="Kid on bike with yellow helmet on gravel, bird-eye view" class="wp-image-7234" />



  <p>This week&#8217;s <a href="https://wpphotos.info">WPPhotos Info</a> is called &#8220;<a href="https://wpphotos.info/yellow-helmet-from-bird-eye-view/">Yellow helmet from bird-eye view</a>&#8220;.</p>



  <p>This photo was taken by&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/psdtohtmlguru/">Hapiuc Robert</a> on an iPhone 15, wide camera. In the photo is his daughter riding her bike. He used to be a professional photographer and he takes advantage of every opportunity to get a good photograph.</p>



  <p>The photo it’s an instant photo, he just takes out the phone, plane it above her and press the shutter button a couple of times.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>His taught was that her helmet will look amazing a bird eye view, and it does! The photo was taken around the house on a gravel road.</p>



  <p>Read more of the story at WP<a href="https://wpphotos.info/yellow-helmet-from-bird-eye-view/">https://wpphotos.info/yellow-helmet-from-bird-eye-view/</a>Photos.info!</p>
  </div></div>

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  <p>The banner at the top of this post is a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/1566614a4e/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/pastelito/">Ericka Barboza</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</p>





  <p>That&#8217;s it for this week! If you&#8217;d like to get this post in your email every week, <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/newsletter">make sure you sign up</a>!</p>
  <p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/an-essay-from-japan-interviews-from-italy-photos-from-romania/">An Essay From Japan, Interviews From Italy, Photos From Romania!</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 05 Jul 2024 21:51:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 14.0.0 Release Candidate";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=334508";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://buddypress.org/2024/07/buddypress-14-0-0-release-candidate/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3734:"<p>The first release candidate for BuddyPress 14.0.0 is now available!</p>



  <div class="wp-block-buttons is-horizontal is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-1 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">
  <div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-white-color has-text-color has-background wp-element-button" href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buddypress/buddypress/master/tests/blueprints/14-0-0-RC1.json" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Let&#8217;s test it!</a></div>
  </div>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <p>&#8220;Release Candidate&#8221; means that we think the new version is ready for release, but with the many possible specific WordPress configurations, hundreds of BuddyPress plugins and Thousands of WordPress themes, it’s possible something was missed.</p>



  <p>BuddyPress 14.0.0 is slated for release&nbsp;on&nbsp;<strong>July 12, 2024</strong>, and&nbsp;<em>your</em>&nbsp;help is needed to get there — if you haven’t tried 14.0.0 yet,&nbsp;doing it now is a great idea!</p>



  <p>You can test the&nbsp;<a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.14.0.0-RC1.zip">14.0.0-RC</a>&nbsp;pre-release in 5 ways :</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Try the&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-beta-tester/">BP Beta Tester</a>&nbsp;plugin.</li>



  <li><a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.14.0.0-RC1.zip">Download the release candidate here (zip file)</a>.</li>



  <li>Check out our SVN repository:&nbsp;<code>svn co https://buddypress.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/</code></li>



  <li>Clone our read-only Git repository:&nbsp;<code>git clone git://buddypress.git.wordpress.org/</code></li>



  <li><a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buddypress/buddypress/master/tests/blueprints/14-0-0-RC1.json" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Preview it into WP Playground</a></li>
  </ul>



  <p>A detailed changelog will be part of our official release note, but&nbsp;you can get a quick overview by reading the post about the&nbsp;<a href="https://buddypress.org/2024/06/buddypress-14-0-0-beta-1/">14.0.0 Beta1</a>&nbsp;release.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Plugin and Theme Developers</h2>



  <p>Please test your plugins and themes against BuddyPress 14.0.0. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to this specific&nbsp;<a href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-14-0-0-release-candidate/">support topic</a>&nbsp;so we can figure those out before the final release. We strongly advise you to have a look at the&nbsp;<a href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/category/development-notes/14-0/">14.0.0 developer notes</a>&nbsp;to figure out what to focus on during your testing.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">How you can help</h2>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English?&nbsp;<a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/buddypress/">Help us translate BuddyPress into as many languages as possible!</a>&nbsp;This release also marks the&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#string-freeze">string freeze</a>&nbsp;point of the 14.0.0 release schedule.</p>



  <p><em><strong>If you think you’ve found a bug</strong>, you can share it with us replying to this <a href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/buddypress-14-0-0-release-candidate/">support topic</a> or if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report,&nbsp;<a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/">file one on BuddyPress Trac</a></em>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 05 Jul 2024 04:15:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"Do The Woo Community: How Much Woo Can One Cram in a Short Podcast with ChatGPT?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=5572";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://dothewoo.io/how-much-woo-can-one-cram-in-a-short-podcast-with-chatgpt/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3526:"<p>A bit of fun today, or maybe not. I asked ChatGPT to <em>Give me a shorter script of a podcast where I mention WooCommerce or Woo, short for WooCommerce as many times as I can.&nbsp;</em>Well, if you know me, and my personality, I am a basically a mellow guy. So I took this one step further seeing that ChatGPT obviously doesn&#8217;t know me well and will deliver a monotone version of the results.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <p>[Intro Music]</p>



  <p>Host: Welcome, Woo enthusiasts, to another exciting episode of WooWonderland, where we dive deep into the magical world of WooCommerce. I&#8217;m your host, [Your Name], and today&#8217;s episode is going to be an exhilarating journey through the enchanting landscape of Woo-commerce. Yes, we love saying Woo!</p>



  <p>[Transition Music]</p>



  <p>Host: Woo, woo, woo! Before we jump into the heart of today&#8217;s discussion, let&#8217;s take a moment to appreciate the incredible community that surrounds WooCommerce. Woo, you guys are amazing! Whether you&#8217;re a seasoned Woo expert or just starting your Woo journey, there&#8217;s always something new and exciting happening in the world of Woo.</p>



  <p>[Woo Chanting]</p>



  <p>Host: Now, let&#8217;s talk about the latest Woo updates because, you know, staying current with Woo-commerce is crucial for all you Woo enthusiasts out there. The Woo team has been working tirelessly to enhance the Woo experience, and guess what? The latest Woo update is nothing short of spectacular. Woo!</p>



  <p>[Applause]</p>



  <p>Host: Speaking of updates, have you ever wondered how other businesses are utilizing Woo-commerce to elevate their online presence? Well, wonder no more because we have some incredible Woo-commerce success stories lined up for you today. These stories showcase the versatility and power of Woo. Woo-hoo!</p>



  <p>[Background Cheers]</p>



  <p>Host: Now, let&#8217;s Woo our way into the realm of e-commerce trends. Woo-commerce is not just a platform; it&#8217;s a trendsetter! From headless commerce to mobile commerce, Woo-commerce is at the forefront of shaping the future of online businesses. Woo, it&#8217;s like the trendiest kid on the e-commerce block.</p>



  <p>[Transition Music]</p>



  <p>Host: And here&#8217;s a pro tip for all you Woo enthusiasts out there: if you want to optimize your Woo-commerce store for success, pay close attention. Speed up your Woo site, master the art of SEO, enhance the user experience — because a well-optimized Woo store is a happy Woo store. Woo-hoo!</p>



  <p>[Background Cheers]</p>



  <p>Host: Now, let&#8217;s take a moment to celebrate the Woo experts in our community. Being a Woo expert is like having a VIP pass to the coolest e-commerce party in town. If you&#8217;re not part of the Woo expert program, what are you waiting for? Join the Woo party and let the Woo-magic unfold!</p>



  <p>[Transition Music]</p>



  <p>Host: As we near the end of this Woo-tastic episode, I want to thank all our Woo fans for tuning in. Remember, whether you&#8217;re a Woo novice or a seasoned Woo master, there&#8217;s always something Woo-nderful to discover in the world of Woo-commerce.</p>



  <p>[Closing Music]</p>



  <p>Host: That&#8217;s a wrap for today&#8217;s WooWonderland episode. Until next time, keep woo-ing and stay enchanted by the magic of Woo-commerce. Woo you later!</p>



  <p>[Music Fades Out]</p>



  <p>Well, now you can see the reason why I shared this in text vs. audio. LOL</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"Do The Woo Community: Building Community Without the Noise";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=4750";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"https://dothewoo.io/building-community-without-the-noise/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8328:"<p>When I first launched this site Do the Woo, I had written a post about this. I wanted to pull a bit from that before I bring you to-date.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-first-thoughts-on-community-and-noise">My first thoughts on community and noise</h2>



  <p><strong>Dated October 20, 2020</strong></p>



  <p>Tomorrow comes the official launch of this new site. And let me tell you, it’s been an amazing journey of learning and understanding myself as well as the audience I will be speaking to.</p>



  <p>One interesting aspect of this is the main goal, connecting the Woo builder community. I talked about this on a previous post, but I would like to dive into the concept of connecting. And conversation.</p>



  <p><strong>I was asked about  groups for Do the Woo</strong></p>



  <p>What brought the idea of Facebook groups to mind was something that happened as I have been chatting with various people about my new site. When I talk about connections, conversation and community, a few times I was asked,</p>



  <p>Are you creating a Slack Channel? Starting a Facebook group? Perhaps a forum? Where are you growing your community and letting them have a conversation?</p>



  <p>When we go into or lurk in community chats, whether it’s a Facebook group, regular chatter on any social platform or even Slack, often we end up in the middle of a massive amount of noise. There is a lot going on. Conversations going left and right. Sometimes with a bit of anxiety, bitterness, and yes, anger.</p>



  <p>Now I’m not saying that nothing good comes out of these conversations. But that isn’t the only way to connect and grow a community.</p>



  <p>It can start with this, the art of listening. Remember when that was part of connecting? Taking the time to listen to someone else share their insights and perspectives. Getting a better understanding of that person, and often, the community they are representing. In fact, get three people together for a good conversation and I can guarantee that you will get a lot more out of it vs. endless streams and threads of online chatter.</p>



  <p>Let’s take it a step further, though: personal connection. Learning about someone and then reaching out to them. Or perhaps, even having a connector that will help to introduce you to others in the community.</p>



  <p>Yes, that’s it. I am the connector.</p>



  <p>Whether it’s via a podcast conversation or a post interview, I am connecting you to a new face. Or it might even be me connecting you personally with someone else.</p>



  <p>I get enough of that noise, or what you might consider chatter amongst dozens of people via social and other platforms. And yes, I enjoy that. But with Do the Woo, I am cutting through that noise while bringing the Woo builder community together.</p>



  <p>So in the end, when I do conversations, they are one-on-one. A Zoom chat. A DM on Slack. Email and a variety of other ways. The point is, again, no matter how or where you do it, listen.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-now-it-s-today">Now it&#8217;s today</h2>



  <p>So I was hoping as you read that you hung onto the fact that I wrote this over three years ago.</p>



  <p>Since then, it has since resonated with me and, to be honest, I think it has always been a part of how I have built my own communities. The fact is we all do it in some way. For Woo builders, while keeping it on the business side of things, it may be a community of customers or clients. It may also be a community within a business you work for, or perhaps, colleagues of yours.</p>



  <p>You may also build communities around you brand or business on your site, on social, on Slack, you name it.</p>



  <p>There are community experts out there that will give you advice. There are also social media consultants that will do the same, specifically for social communities. The thing is that one size doesn&#8217;t fit all. And often that is what you will discover over and over when seeking advice on building your own community.</p>



  <p>I have been building community long before I got into the WordPress space in 2006. With our other business, there were ways that we built our community, and some of this was long before we did it online. I don&#8217;t proclaim to be an expert on community building, but I can share my own experiences that have worked for me. No promises here that I will deliver the perfect piece of advice for your needs, but I am hoping this will give you a bit of a different perspective on community building and something to ponder on.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-community-does-not-need-a-bunch-of-noise">A community does not need a bunch of noise</h3>



  <p>Now before I get into this part, understand that this is how it works for me, and in these last few years with Do the Woo, it has proven right for me. And by no means am I saying it&#8217;s the right way, or the only way.</p>



  <p>I just feel that a lot of people never think about other options when building community. They tend to &#8220;jump on the bandwagon&#8221; of <em>engagement</em> and <em>active conversation</em> as the only way to build all communities.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-engage-or-die">Engage, or die</h3>



  <p>Community and social media experts say you must engage. Or else why do it? Your community will not thrive without this engagement. It often is literally rammed down your throat. At the same time, engagement isn&#8217;t always clearly defined, and seen as this constant need to reply, comment and add your own opinion, advice or simply be part of the conversation, no matter what.</p>



  <p>In fact, I have seen social media experts take &#8220;engagement&#8221; to a new and disturbing level. They constantly drop into conversations with replies like &#8220;nice&#8221;, &#8220;that&#8217;s great&#8221;, &#8220;cool&#8221; and &#8220;yeah&#8221;. If that is considered engagement, well, count me out. In fact, shouldn&#8217;t engagement also mean bringing value to a conversation. Not simple, meaningless replies that help you as they build up your metrics in your social media engagements.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-everyone-has-an-opinion">Everyone has an opinion</h3>



  <p>This is the beauty of the human race. We all have an opinion and can freely express it. But on the other hand, at times, it&#8217;s nothing but added noise. How often do you see a thread of a conversation and it appears that most of the comments are left by people who never read what others have said. And alarmingly, more people appear to never have read the original comment.</p>



  <p>As a result, it comes across as being all about &#8220;you&#8221;. You and what your opinion. It&#8217;s like a freaking room of people just shouting out what they are thinking, and ignoring everyone else. Nothing gets resolved and more times than not, it can turn sideways and end up being a never-ending debate or argument, instead of a discussion.</p>



  <p>Now with both engagement and conversations, it&#8217;s not cut and dry. And neither of them are something that you should consider totally dismissing. In fact, depending on the goal of your own community, you may just ignore the advice I have given you so far.</p>



  <p>With that all said, I simply bring these up to give you another thought to ponder on as you build your own community.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-is-this-all-going">Where is this all going</h2>



  <p>This has turned into quite the long post and if you are still with me, I&#8217;m amazed. But hey, it also means you are listening, or perhaps, reading.</p>



  <p>Do the Woo now has 14 co-hosts and more coming on board. On top of that I am constantly having people come in and host their own show, more of a one-off opportunity. And who knows what is next.</p>



  <p>The fact is that each time you hear a show on Do the Woo, and you don&#8217;t hear me, well, that&#8217;s because I was listening. Behind the scenes, taking notes, and enjoying the conversations. Sure there is what you might consider noise in our community, but it&#8217;s softer, more viable and easy to focus on. There is a time and place for lots of noise in many communities, and that is where it will thrive and stay.  But for now, I&#8217;m in my happy place.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"Do The Woo Community: The Perfect Marriage of Content and Community";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=5385";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"https://dothewoo.io/the-perfect-marriage-of-content-and-community/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2303:"<p>I typically don&#8217;t spend a lot of time in the past, but every once in awhile I become reflective. As I move into the next phase here at Do the Woo, well, that is when it happens.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-content-and-community-a-combo-that-hit-me-hard">Content and Community, a combo that hit me hard</h2>



  <p>If you have been following my journey, you know that, since diving into WordPress 16 years ago, community and content have played a key role in what I do.</p>



  <p>But when I set this site aside, BobWP in October of 2020 and <a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-is-live-connecting-the-woocommerce-builder-community/">turned my focus on Do the Woo</a>, it was a transition that grew not only from the previous months of 2020, but all the years before that. </p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-an-interesting-thing-happened-back-in-2020">An interesting thing happened back in 2020.</h3>



  <p>It can best be described as two-pronged: <em>community and content.</em></p>



  <p>As we all know, in-person connections went down the toilet during COVID. Although I had not been traveling as much over the years prior to COVID, still, I found myself reaching out to more people online. More one-to-one conversations. More digital meetups. More forms of smaller online events. But, to be honest, I probably connected more with the community that than I have in any of the previous years in the space.</p>



  <p>During that same year I found myself burning out on content creation around blog post tutorials. I have done these for years and I just couldn&#8217;t poke one more out at the keyboard.</p>



  <p>So I decided to focus on more community-focused content, such as my podcasts and virtual meetings. It became a natural marriage of content and community.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-between-now-and-then">Between now and then</h3>



  <p>So on reflection, this was one of the best moves I have made in my WordPress career. I continued on building the community at Do the Woo. Online connections grew, and then when IRL events started back up, well, they blossomed. That tie between content and commiunity have grown to be such a huge part of Do the Woo, and everything I do these days. And now on to 2024, the biggest year yet for Do the Woo.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Do The Woo Community: 16 Years Later, the WordPress Origin Story by BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=3325";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"https://dothewoo.io/16-years-later-my-wordpress-story/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4535:"<p>As I celebrate my own birthday today, many more than 20, I am reflecting on the years WordPress has been there for me. Oddly, I&#8217;m not sure where to begin except the beginning. And if I was to write a post to publish on the 20th anniversary of WordPress, it&#8217;s gotta be done here on BobWP.</p>



  <p>Also, there lies the fact that I just returned from WordCamp Lisboa where I gave a talk on 20 Years of WordPress community. So it&#8217;s a bit on my mind.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-george-clooney-was-named-people-s-sexiest-man-alive-and-i-discovered-wordpress">George Clooney was named People’s sexiest man alive and I discovered WordPress </h2>



  <p>These two events have nothing more in common than it was the same year, 2016. I can&#8217;t say I think George deserved it, but I had other things on my mind. In fact two things.</p>



  <p>First this was the year I became a bit intrigued with blogging. Nothing that had me gasping at the thought of writing posts, but simply a curiosity. At the same time I was trying to step into the world of web design as we had been running a marketing and design company for 13 years. And as much as building a site thrilled me, which was equal to having my hand smashed in a door, I figured there had to be a better way than html and flash.</p>



  <p>Time drifted by. Judy had started a blog on Typepad and didn&#8217;t give a crap where it was. She just wanted to write. As I eased into the next year, WordPress slipped into my consciousness more and more. It seemed apparent that this thing called WordPress was going to become part of my life one way or another. Seriously though, I didn&#8217;t have a clue to what extent.</p>



  <p>For the next few years, up to 2010, bit and pieces fell together. I found a theme on a fairly new site called iThemes. The concept of these seemed to be luring me into creating a site for our business that didn&#8217;t look like shit. And that&#8217;s exactly what WordPress and the Corporate theme from iThemes did for me. Without any freaking code!</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">The BobWP brand rises out of the ruins of ancient web design</h2>



  <p>Now I am avoiding going through my 16 years of WordPress history, simply for the reason that I cannot afford to lose you through my years of pivots, twists and turns. It may make you dizzy and I don&#8217;t want you vomiting before I wrap this up.</p>



  <p>But 2010 was the pivotal moment in my WordPress Story. Why? Well, I had been doing some blogging workshops the two years prior to that year. I was getting my feel for where I need to go with WordPress. I was starting to explore the community more and more from that day in 2006. And I liked what I saw.</p>



  <p>So the time came to make the transition from our marketing and design firm, Cat&#8217;s Eye Marketing, to something that would let me do my WordPressy thing, whatever that meant and wherever it led.</p>



  <p>I got rid of all our our &#8220;print&#8221; clients or the last few that we were hanging onto. Mentally I told myself I&#8217;m going all in on WordPress. Design, training and whatever else would come my way. And it was time to rebrand. Not the business, per se, but myself. I was going to be the brand. So after some contemplation, possible consumption of alcohol and severe mumbling to myself, I came up with BobWP. </p>



  <p>Mmmmmmm. It was short and sweet. And the domain was available, go figure. But would people get it? Would someone that doesn&#8217;t know what I do, and doesn&#8217;t know WordPress find it to be puzzling? Would people say my business is Bobwup? </p>



  <p>Honestly, those concerns and questions did not weigh heavily on me. Nor did the fact that I was tying myself into a personal brand, that, well, would likely die with me. I bought the domain, and made it happen.</p>



  <p>And you may know the rest, the rest is history.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">I&#8217;m a WordPresser at heart</h2>



  <p>I really do love the community. And at this point I&#8217;m here to stay. Right now I&#8217;m doing what motivates me the most. Connecting people. Raising voices. And meetings some of the coolest people I have ever known, both in these last 16 years and moving forward.</p>



  <p>So as much as I find it kind of weird singing Happy Birthday to my dashboard, my computer or any part of the software, or thinking that WordPress could be my grandchild, I will say this.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Happy 20th Anniversary, WordPress Community</h2>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"Do The Woo Community: Are We in WordPress Community Version 3.0?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=4975";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"https://dothewoo.io/are-we-in-wordpress-community-version-3-0/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3740:"<p>I was recently on <a href="https://wpmainline.com/podcast/wp-mainline-episode-19-godaddy-acquires-pagely-doing-the-woo-and-wordpress-contributor-churn/"><strong>Jeff&#8217;s podcast over at WPMainline</strong></a>. A good part of the conversation was about the GoDaddy acquisition of Pagely. We also chatted about community and how some frustrations have led to great people moving on.</p>



  <p>But with the acquisitions, blocks, community disruption, etc. etc. etc., a thought occurred to me. We focus on the versions of WordPress, but what about community?</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-three-versions-ago">Three Versions Ago</h2>



  <p>I like to think of it this way.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-community-version-1-0">WordPress Community Version 1.0</h3>



  <p>This is when it all started. WordPress moved on from being a sparkle in Matt&#8217;s eye to something on the web.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-community-version-2-0">WordPress Community Version 2.0</h3>



  <p>I&#8217;m not sure exactly when this came out, but am looking at the 2007 &#8211; 2010 time frame. Why? This is when I started using WordPress. Ha. Well, that isn&#8217;t the reason. This was the time period a lot of the veterans in the space started up businesses. Or entered the space themselves.</p>



  <p>But more importantly I think around 2010 WordPress really started to gain traction. Why do I feel this way. From experience and having talked to others, this we a sweet spot. Where the rubber hit the highway. And again, from conversations with others, this seemed to be a ripe time to really dive into the space.</p>



  <p>And lastly, what followed in that time, I can guess that the community started kicking up a few notches.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-community-version-3-0">WordPress Community Version 3.0</h3>



  <p>This one happened in the last couple of years, or maybe when 5.0 came out for WordPress. This is when the stuff hit the fan. More rapid innovation and more rustling in the community. Acquisitions are on the journey to become a norm. Rumblings were hot and heavy. And the community, well, started feeling different. Depending on who you are and what you perceive, those feelings where either really good, kind of sucky or a mix of everything between.</p>



  <p>Now rest assure, this is something that came to me as I was driving back from the grocery store at 7:30 am while having just listened to Cory from Post Status talk to Josh from Pagely about the acquisition.</p>



  <p>I suppose I could go on to fill a lot of versions of the community between those versions. That would be fun, but obviously time-consuming.</p>



  <p>All I know is that I am curious now about version 4.0.</p>



  <p><em><strong>Update/Sidenote:</strong></em></p>



  <p>I had the chance to go on the<a href="https://poststatus.com/post-status-excerpt-no-41-wordpress-community-versions-past-present-future/"><strong> Post Status podcast and take a deep-dive with David Bisset on this topic</strong></a>.</p>



  <p>And here is a poll he took on Twitter with some interesting results and comments as well.</p>



  <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> folks: based on <a href="https://twitter.com/BobWP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BobWP</a> post here what WP generation do you feel you belong to?<a href="https://t.co/bjNynPvjL6">https://t.co/bjNynPvjL6</a></p>&mdash; David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia/status/1476956055448006656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2021</a></blockquote>
  </div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:44 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"WPTavern: #126 – Aaron Jorbin on Navigating WordPress Major and Minor Releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=156753";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/126-aaron-jorbin-on-navigating-wordpress-major-and-minor-releases";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44100:"Transcript<div>
  <p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



  <p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how WordPress gets updated.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast, player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



  <p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature in the podcast while I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox .</p>



  <p>And use the form there.</p>



  <p>So on the podcast today, we have Aaron Jorbin. Aaron has led teams responsible for some of the largest and most prominent WordPress sites in the world, including Rolling Stone, Variety, WIRED, The New Yorker and The White House. He&#8217;s also a WordPress Core committer who focuses on improving developer happiness, and making the internet usable by everyone.</p>



  <p>He&#8217;s been an integral part of the WordPress community since 2010, and today Aaron opens up about the crucial importance of major and minor WordPress releases, and the need for user trust, which forms the backbone for features like auto updates that enhanced WordPress security.</p>



  <p>We get into the process behind WordPress releases, discussing how major and minor releases a planned and executed. Aaron explains the dynamics of the Core Committer community, a group of around a hundred dedicated individuals, about 50 of whom are currently active, whose decisions and hard work keep WordPress robust up to date and secure. The commitment to transparency, minimal egos, and the ability to handle criticism are mentioned as key elements for maintaining trust inside this community within a community.</p>



  <p>We talk about how communication and decision-making take place mostly in public forums, ensuring openness and collaboration. The conversation also touches on the ebb and flow of volunteer and sponsored contributors. The challenges of coordinating across global time zones, and the need for asynchronous decision-making.</p>



  <p>Aaron explains what it takes to move from a small contributor to a key player in the WordPress ecosystem, emphasizing the burden of responsibility that comes with making changes affecting millions of non-technical users. Whether you&#8217;re a developer tester or enthusiastic user, Aaron encourages contributions in various forms, from sharing ideas to testing and providing feedback.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;ve ever wondered how WordPress is maintained and updated, this episode is for you.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



  <p>And so without further delay, I bring you Aaron Jorbin.</p>



  <p>I am joined on the podcast today by Aaron Jorbin. Hello Aaron.</p>



  <p>[00:03:42] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Hello Nathan.</p>



  <p>[00:03:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This is going to be a really interesting episode, and I confess, dear listener, that this is an episode that I basically know almost nothing about. So everything that comes out of Aaron&#8217;s mouth is going to be schooling me in a process that I know nothing about.</p>



  <p>But it is probably the most important process. Without the process that we&#8217;re going to discuss today, the entire enterprise of WordPress doesn&#8217;t exist, because we&#8217;re going to be talking about the way that WordPress is released, goes from one version to another.</p>



  <p>Before we get into the meat of the podcast though, Aaron, can I just offer you the opportunity to tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you come from, where you are at the moment, because that&#8217;s kind of interesting, and what your role in the WordPress community is, please.</p>



  <p>[00:04:26] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> So I am Aaron Jorbin. I have been a Core contributor since 2010, and have been involved in WordPress since about a year or two before that. I went to a WordPress meetup and got sucked into the community, got lucky. And it was right before WordCamp Portland 2009, which was sold out in like three hours. And so I had not gotten a ticket, and there was a raffle for tickets. And so I was able to win the raffle and get a ticket, and get to go to a WordCamp, and start meeting the people that I had known from IRC in real life, and got brought in then.</p>



  <p>And my role, I am one of the Core committers, so I&#8217;m one of the one hundred or so people that can make changes to WordPress Core itself. And for the last year, I&#8217;ve been specifically focusing on the minor releases of WordPress, so the maintenance and security releases.</p>



  <p>And these are ones that are much smaller in scope, these aren&#8217;t bringing in new features, but in my opinion, some of the more important ones. They&#8217;re the ones that are auto updated by default.</p>



  <p>And so the changes that we make in these releases go to every site. And it is a terrifying moment when you start rolling them out, and you just have to cross your fingers that everything is going to go smooth. And so we&#8217;ve put a lot of processes in place to help them go as smooth as they possibly can.</p>



  <p>That has been my main focus, but I&#8217;ve also worked a lot on the build tools of WordPress, and on the more low down systems. I haven&#8217;t done a lot with many user facing features. I think the last user facing feature that I had a heavy hand in was the ability to log out of other, where you were logged in elsewhere. And we did user testing for that at the final WordCamp San Francisco, so I think that was 2014.</p>



  <p>[00:06:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Honestly, what a fascinating story. Can I just ask though, if we go back to 2010, I think that was the year that you said you began your WordPress journey. So it&#8217;s a long time, you&#8217;ve been doing this software now for 14 years. What was the path of escalation that took you from, I&#8217;m brand new to WordPress, to Core Committer?</p>



  <p>Because it feels like, if you&#8217;re into the software of WordPress, Core Committer is, that&#8217;s like where the road ends. There&#8217;s not really too many places to go beyond there. You know, you&#8217;ve got the capacity to improve WordPress. You could destroy it if you so wish to. So how did that path happen? And I&#8217;m guessing it was a sort of slow, incremental community journey, but I&#8217;d love to hear that.</p>



  <p>[00:07:07] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Yeah, so my first code contribution was, so Jen Milo, who was at the time the UX lead of WordPress. She published a blog post about a few small UX changes she would like to see in WordPress Core. And I was like, well, I&#8217;ve got some extra time on my hands. I&#8217;m going to try to work on one of these.</p>



  <p>And I sat down for a couple of days, and worked on the initial patch for it, and went back and forth with Andrew Nacin, who was a new committer at that time, and we came up with a solution. This was during the 3.0 cycle, and it was for the ability for you to see, if you attempted to change the admin email in WordPress, it sends an email that you need to confirm, but there was no notice whatsoever that there was a pending change. So it was just adding a notice that there was a pending change, so you could know that someone had tried to change it.</p>



  <p>And so, worked on that, and that got accepted. I was very excited. I ran home to my then girlfriend, and told her, oh my God, oh my God, you&#8217;re not going to understand any of this, because she was not a techie. This is what I did. My code is now going to help power almost 20% of the internet. That also shows how old this was.</p>



  <p>From there it was, well, now I&#8217;ve seen this process, now I&#8217;ve been involved in this process, what can I do to continue being involved in this process? And so I was working on a few small enhancements, or bug fixes, every release. And did that for, probably about three years before I got a job at Condé Nast, the magazine publisher. And part of my role there was to really help the company used WordPress better.</p>



  <p>And so that gave me a lot of freedom and time, and I found one of the best uses of that time was to help make WordPress itself better. If it&#8217;s better for Condé Nast, it&#8217;s probably going to be better for everyone. And at the time, one of the challenges, it was right as the Git mirrors were added for WordPress. And I was like, okay well, now we have patches that are coming in through Git, coming in through SVN, coming in against the old Core repo, versus against the modern develop repo.</p>



  <p>And so I worked on a tool called Grunt Patch WordPress, that made it easy for you to apply patches from anywhere. And you could just enter a ticket number, it would list all of the patches, and it would apply it automatically, no matter how it had been created. And working on that, I got involved more in the build tools, and was asked during the 4.1 cycle, if I would be willing to become a committer, and if I was willing to help maintain WordPress.</p>



  <p>And it was a huge honour, and a huge burden that I would be willing to take on. My friend Daniel Bachhuber gave a talk a number of years ago, my condolences, you are now the maintainer of an open source software project. And in many ways, like you are taking on a great weight. Your changes are going to affect other people, and you are going to be responsible for making these changes.</p>



  <p>It is still an honour that the community and other committers trust me enough to stay in this role, and that I have been able to make a number of changes, and hopefully make WordPress better in the process.</p>



  <p>[00:10:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It is such an interesting tale that. And really, I think the word that&#8217;s coming out of it for me was one that you just said, and it was trust. It feels like this whole process, from 2010 until the moment you were offered the Core Commiter status, it feels like it&#8217;s a work of building up trust, of doing things in a way which is fully transparent. People can see what you&#8217;re doing. You&#8217;ve done something important. Things worked, I guess, as well. And over time, people just begin to say, oh okay, yeah, Aaron, oh yeah, his name&#8217;s come up a little bit. And then eventually, that moment where you get the ability to alter WordPress Core.</p>



  <p>But also, I guess the journey between 2010, okay, it was 20% of the internet. It was still big. But it&#8217;s like going from 20 to 43, let&#8217;s say about there at the moment. That&#8217;s a big jump. To be approaching half of the internet is incredible. And you illustrated, or you alluded to the fact that you sometimes probably feel the burden of that a little bit. You commit something, and millions of people are going to feel the effect of that. And millions of them will be utterly non-technical. And so they will not know when something goes wrong. They will not understand where to go and seek resolution to that, potentially.</p>



  <p>And so that must add to the burden even more because, you know, if something goes wrong at my local shop, I just take it back and get another one. If something goes wrong with a website and I&#8217;m non-technical, then, yeah, that&#8217;s really interesting. So trust is what I&#8217;m imagining is the sort of essence of what you&#8217;re doing.</p>



  <p>[00:12:14] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Yes. So ultimately, user trust matters. I think it was Andrew Nacin who first said to me that, what makes WordPress work as well as it does, is the trust the users place in the software. The fact that users trust WordPress to auto update. Without auto updates, WordPress would be less secure. Without the ability to have a bug fix, or a security bug fix go out nearly instantaneously, it would be weeks before many people logged into WordPress. Potentially, you know, some people will set up a site, and set it and forget it. And they would get hacked if it wasn&#8217;t for auto updates. And so having that user trust really is a requirement for WordPress to be as successful as it is.</p>



  <p>[00:13:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So there&#8217;s the trust from the community, but also presumably there must be a fairly high level of trust between you Core Commiters. And I think you said about the number 100, something like that. Have I got that right? Is it roughly around there?</p>



  <p>[00:13:17] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> It is about a hundred people that have committed over the course of the 21 years that WordPress has been involved. I think there&#8217;s about 50 active at the moment in some way, shape, or form.</p>



  <p>[00:13:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But a hundred broadly speaking, over the course of WordPress, and maybe 50 at the moment. I guess the trust between all of you must be fairly high. And I presume you must have back channels. Well, of course you do. But I&#8217;m really just leading you down the garden path of, tell us what these are.</p>



  <p>How do you communicate? How do you maintain that trust? Is the trust, dare I ask it, is the trust ever taken away, and somebody has to be removed from that role? So yeah, let&#8217;s just get into that. How do you communicate? How do you ensure that trust is kept going? What are the ways that you build all of that up?</p>



  <p>[00:14:03] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> First off, there&#8217;s very little back channel. There&#8217;s very little that is not discussed in the open, related to WordPress Core. Security is about the only thing that does not get discussed openly. Otherwise, there might be some conversations, especially when things are just not known. When people have, what I would refer to as a very half-baked idea. You might back channel, and have a quick side discussion with one or two other people, to try to make that idea a little bit better, so that you don&#8217;t feel like you&#8217;re going to embarrass yourself by sharing the idea.</p>



  <p>Other than that, it is all in public. It is in Slack, it is on Trac tickets , it is on GitHub issues, it is on pull requests. That discussion is happening in public, and is open for anyone to really contribute their thoughts and their ideas.</p>



  <p>And where the trust amongst us comes in, is the fact that I think, generally, there is very little ego involved in the people that are committers. We don&#8217;t feel bad if another person tells us our idea was wrong, or our idea isn&#8217;t the right solution.</p>



  <p>It is okay for someone to tell me that my code is, bad or that my code doesn&#8217;t solve the problem. That&#8217;s not an insult to me personally. I think that all of the committers, there&#8217;s that idea that we are all going to be okay. We&#8217;re not going to insult each other. It&#8217;s not an instance of, what idiot made that decision? That&#8217;s not the type of thing that would ever be said amongst committers. It&#8217;s, okay, what information was had that guided that decision? How can we improve that information?</p>



  <p>[00:15:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Does the Core Commiter community, you mentioned that it was, over time it&#8217;s been a hundred, and at the moment it&#8217;s 50. Does it ebb and flow a little bit? In other words, are there people who just take a step back, maybe come back in six months time or something? Or are many of those people in some way able to commit to Core on a more or less permanent basis because, I don&#8217;t know, maybe they&#8217;re sponsored, or seconded by their company or something like that?</p>



  <p>[00:16:08] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Yeah so, I mean, I would say most of the people that are active are given support in some way, shape, or form. So myself, I have GitHub sponsors that, right now, are covering a portion of my life expenses. But others are paid full-time, whether it be by a hosting company, by a product company. And so most of the people that are active are supported, but not all of them. There are a number of committers that are still doing this on a very volunteer basis.</p>



  <p>And people&#8217;s activity does ebb and flow. And so, I think a good example of this is myself. So I was very active, especially during the 4.1 to about 4.9 timeframe. But then I took on a different role, and didn&#8217;t have as much time. And so I stepped back from necessarily doing as many active commits, and more was there to help be in meetings, and provide some historical context, or to work on a couple of small things here or there.</p>



  <p>And then after I left my most recent job, I was like, I&#8217;m taking a break. I stopped looking at computer screens for nearly six months. It was incredible. But decided that, ultimately, I like WordPress. I like contributing to what I view as a very important mission to democratise publishing. I think that, even if I don&#8217;t necessarily agree with everything everyone has to say online, I think they have a right to share it and a right to say it.</p>



  <p>I want to help people do that. I want to help, whether it be a small business that just wants to get word out about its hours, to a large media company that wants to do journalism, to politicians who I may or may not agree with, wanting to get elected. I think that everyone has a right to share their beliefs online, and WordPress helps unlock that, and I like working on that.</p>



  <p>[00:18:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice. I think, if we were to poll every single person that&#8217;s used WordPress ever, which should be a difficult thing to do, but let&#8217;s imagine that we could. I&#8217;m imagining that the vast majority of those people would not necessarily have technical expertise or any interest in the project. They&#8217;re just using it, it&#8217;s functional to them. They may not even know that it&#8217;s called WordPress. They log into their website, and they do their thing. They create their content, and they click publish, and what have you.</p>



  <p>But yet It just magically updates itself from time to time, whether that&#8217;s at the click of a button, or something, a little bit more automated. It just sort of happens in the background. And also, I would imagine that the listeners to this podcast, even though it&#8217;s very likely that they&#8217;re really quite crazily into WordPress, there&#8217;ll be this curtain between what they experience, and what Core is doing. How all those decisions are made, and how those changes get pushed.</p>



  <p>Now, they may have noticed, obviously, that there are minor releases. So we go from 6.5, to 6.5.1, to 6.5.2, and then there are more major releases, 6.5 to 6.6, or 7 at some point, you know. But the major releases kind of have dates in the calendar, stretching right out into the future. So we try to get those dates for the whole year, and you can look those up online, and may provide that in the show notes. But you can see, in theory, they&#8217;re provided for. We&#8217;ve got a north star. We know that on this date we should be shipping the next version of WordPress.</p>



  <p>But in between those major ones, we get these little ones which come around, like today. Little ones just happen, might happen in a week, might be two weeks, there might be a few weeks that go between them. How are those decisions made, and could we break it into the two parts? Could we do the major first, and then the minor afterwards? Because I think the major is more, how to describe it, there&#8217;s more thought goes into it on a long term basis.</p>



  <p>There&#8217;s more north star of that, and the minor ones feel like sometimes it&#8217;s reactive instead of proactive, because of security and so on. So let&#8217;s do the major releases. How is it decided what features go in, what we&#8217;re aiming for, what we want to ship?</p>



  <p>[00:20:05] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> So, I mean ultimately it&#8217;s decided what is going in by what is ready to go in, for a major release, and what people want to work on. Whether that is individuals that have a improvement that they really want to drive forward, whether it&#8217;s a company that decides that they want to donate, or devote, resources to working on maybe a larger feature that they think that will benefit their users, or hopefully benefit all users.</p>



  <p>The decisions of what is ready to go in is basically a decision of the committers as a whole. And it&#8217;s often based on a consensus. And it&#8217;s not necessarily that everyone agrees, it&#8217;s that no one disagrees. So we will work in Slack, there will often be people that are guiding it. There are individuals that are wholly focused on just looking at the backlog of requests, and every idea that ever has been proposed. And saying like, okay well, this is a common theme, and this is a way to solve that problem. And we&#8217;ll be working towards that.</p>



  <p>And so those major releases will often be set, generally by the project leadership, by Josepha and by Matt. And the dates might flux. Oftentimes we&#8217;re looking at trying to find a date that works for everyone in the world can be hard. There are holidays nearly everywhere, or nearly every day in some countries, and so trying to minimise the impact of those releases. And so not doing a release on a major Christian holiday, or a major Muslim holiday, is generally best possible solution.</p>



  <p>For the minor releases, like you said, there&#8217;s kind of the reactive ones, in which case, those would generally be decided sometimes hours ahead of time. In the case of 6.4.1 two weeks ahead of time in other cases. So the recent 6.5.3 there was about one month of process.</p>



  <p>And basically what it was was, it started with, some discussions in Slack of, okay, I think we&#8217;re going to want a maintenance release. Let&#8217;s try to put together a group of people that can lead it. And then, okay, amongst that group, let&#8217;s discuss possible dates. Let&#8217;s look at calendars. Let&#8217;s look at our personal calendars to make sure that we will be available. Let&#8217;s look at the holiday calendars to make sure that we&#8217;re not scheduling it during a bank holiday, or a religious holiday. And let&#8217;s try to do our best to make sure that people will be available for that release.</p>



  <p>As far as what goes into the minor releases, it&#8217;s a lot of times like what bugs are known, what bugs are people reporting, what things can we fix in that timeframe? And so, a way that people can get involved is, there will generally be a post on Make Core about the release, and if you don&#8217;t see one, there&#8217;s always the weekly Dev Chat agendas, where you can comment on there. And commenting about a bug of, I think that this bug needs to be fixed in this.</p>



  <p>We keep the scope rather tight, and that we try to focus the bug fixes solely on recently introduced bugs, rather than longer standing bugs, but anything can be discussed. If someone wants to try to make the case for it, they can try to make the case for it. The idea that, in the presence of new rationale, a good maintainer changes their mind often. And so even if the answer is initially no, that doesn&#8217;t mean the answer is no forever, and adding new information, adding data can really change minds a lot of times.</p>



  <p>[00:23:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You talked about a consensus there, and in fact, I think the implication of what you said was that, broadly speaking, the consensus is often there. There&#8217;s often broad consensus amongst you Core Committers about what needs to go in. In a way that kind of seems surprising, because you&#8217;d imagine that with 50 minds staring at a problem, there&#8217;s going to be 50 different solutions, and a lot of arguing and tussling.</p>



  <p>But, again, I suppose that goes back to the trust thing that we talked about earlier, and maybe something different to trust, maybe it&#8217;s accommodation, or the ability to defer to somebody politely, as opposed to just wanting to railroad them.</p>



  <p>And I feel maybe that in the corporate world, that whole governance model would break down reasonably quickly. Is that what you&#8217;re saying? That the 50 of you, or however many are in the, air quotes, room at the time, you really do have that? There is a consensus of almost everything that goes in. That&#8217;s remarkable.</p>



  <p>[00:24:46] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> I would say we get to consensus. There is not always one to begin with. There is absolutely disagreements that happen, and disagreements that take place. And I would say that there are very few changes that aren&#8217;t without some sort of, often minor, disagreement. Of whether it be, I think this line needs more documentation, or I don&#8217;t like the variable name used here, ultimately nitpicky things.</p>



  <p>All the way up to major, I don&#8217;t think that this is something that should be in Core disagreements. And you will have discussions, and sometimes that discussion will peter out, and not necessarily get to a quick resolution. Oftentimes though it will get to a resolution.</p>



  <p>And another saying that I often use to guide me is, no is temporary, but yes is forever. Saying that code is not ready for WordPress isn&#8217;t saying that this code is never going in WordPress, or this feature is never going in WordPress.</p>



  <p>There&#8217;s very few things I can think of that I would be like, this should never go into WordPress. But once it is in WordPress, it is the responsibility of all maintainers, all of the committers to maintain it, and to make it as best as it possibly can. Once it&#8217;s released from WordPress, because there will be features that are added that might get removed.</p>



  <p>And so I think the font library is a good example of this. This was originally targeted for, I think, 6.3, and wasn&#8217;t quite ready. And then 6.4, it got very close, but then ultimately was pulled back. And then 6.5, after a lot of disagreement that people probably saw publicly amongst many committers, we did find solutions in a way to ship that, in a way that I think ultimately has been beneficial for the users of WordPress.</p>



  <p>[00:26:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is the release lead for each release, so that, let&#8217;s say, for example, 6.5 or 6.6, has a release lead. Is the release lead ultimately responsible for the go, no go decision? In other words, if the 50 of you are, yeah, you can&#8217;t quite get that consensus that would be lovely, then it falls on the shoulders of an individual, and if you follow the project, you&#8217;ll know that that individual changes from time to time.</p>



  <p>[00:27:05] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Yeah. So, I mean ultimately it is Matt&#8217;s decision. And I for one, think that Matt has very good product sense, and WordPress is largely successful because of Matt. And I think that there are very few cases where I can think of where a problem has needed to be escalated to Matt to make a decision. Ultimately, you know, it&#8217;s often there will be a decision that gets made amongst the people that are most active, and working on it closely. And it&#8217;s not a highly conflicted situation. It&#8217;s very rare that the release lead needs to decide between two camps, if you will.</p>



  <p>[00:27:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think sometimes the impression, out in the wider world, probably not in the community of WordPressers who follow the project really, really closely, but I do wonder sometimes if there is an impression that decisions, like any hierarchy, there must be somebody at the top making all these decisions and what have you. So that&#8217;s really nice to hear. That&#8217;s nice to hear that you think that&#8217;s a fair and equitable way of doing it.</p>



  <p>However, I wonder how you feel about the, I can&#8217;t think of a better word, so I&#8217;m going to use the word chaos. The open source nature of the project can at times be fairly chaotic, because everybody gets a voice, everybody can put time into things, everybody can push their own agenda. I guess in a more corporate structure, it would be top down, whereas we&#8217;ve got a much flatter structure in WordPress. Everybody gets their go. Does it sometimes feel a little bit like that? And I&#8217;m not asking you to throw any names out, or throw anybody under a bus. But, does it occasionally feel, oh, can we just make the decision? Can we just do this, or this, which one?</p>



  <p>[00:28:45] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> I think chaos actually is a great term for it because it often is, and especially when working around the clock. There are people contributing in nearly every time zone. And I think you would struggle to find a time of day where someone isn&#8217;t working on WordPress.</p>



  <p>Luckily there&#8217;s very few decisions that need to get made at a snap of a hat. It is almost always a case where the decisions can be made asynchronously, where the discussion can continue possibly over the course of multiple days, or weeks. And the chaos works. And I know that a lot of people struggle with the chaos, and with understanding, well, how can I get involved? Who&#8217;s the person in charge that I need to talk to? Everyone is in charge, so you talk to everyone.</p>



  <p>[00:29:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s not like if you&#8217;re in the corporate world where you just whip out the company Rolodex, for want of a better word, and you discover that, oh okay, they&#8217;re in charge of that department, that&#8217;s them. It&#8217;s a little bit more fine grain and nuanced, and things change all the time, and somebody&#8217;s gone on holiday. I love that then. So there is a kind of chaotic element to it, which I think you embrace, I guess. This is just the way it works, and it&#8217;s probably got massive upsides, as well as some interesting downsides as well.</p>



  <p>In terms of the project, it feels like, since the dawn of the internet, so whenever that was, Tim Berners Lee, 35 years or whatever. Open source, at the beginning of the internet, was a real crucial underpinning for all sorts of things. The servers that we use, the CMSs that we use, and so open source projects just popped up everywhere. But then it feels, more recently, that competitive, market-based, commercial CMSs have come along, with probably a corporate governance structure. So not as transparent, but maybe more top down. So perhaps easier to manage in that way.</p>



  <p>Do you have any feelings, or misgivings about open source in the near future, because of the competitive landscape that a CMS finds itself in now?</p>



  <p>[00:30:50] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> I think that ultimately open source always wins. I think that you are better off betting on open source. I saw a tweet the other day about someone that has a shop on Shopify, and they woke up one morning and Shopify had turned them off. And they were like, well, our target was to make $25 million this year, but now it might be zero, because this decision by this company was to turn us off.</p>



  <p>And thankfully with WordPress, you don&#8217;t have to deal with that. WordPress cannot turn a site off. WordPress cannot decide that a specific website is no longer going to be allowed to use WordPress. WordPress has the benefit of the GPL, GNU public license. And in that there are the four freedoms, and one of those is the freedom to run the software in any way you choose.</p>



  <p>So that freedom, I think, ultimately is what gives open source its power, and its sustainability. WordPress itself is a fork of another project. I am never upset if someone says, well, I&#8217;m going to fork WordPress to do this, it&#8217;s like, okay. If your software is going to be better, that&#8217;s awesome. Open source wins.</p>



  <p>I am not someone that&#8217;s ever been a big Drupal user, but I love Drupal. Drupal&#8217;s open source software. I don&#8217;t view Drupal as the enemy of WordPress. I think that, if a site wants to use Drupal because that&#8217;s the best open source software, or the best software it can find, awesome.</p>



  <p>WordPress has been lucky to, you know, at various times, collaborate with people in the Drupal community. A number of years ago, I was running the WordPress meetup in Washington DC, and we organised what we refer to as the open source barbecue. And so it was the WordPress meetup, the PHP meetup, the Android meetup, and the jQuery meetup. And we just threw a barbecue for 200 people to come and celebrate open source, and eat barbecue.</p>



  <p>[00:32:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If we were just concentrating on the features, so not the ethics of owning the technology, who owns it, who gets to shut you down or not. Do you think that it&#8217;s easy for an open source project, of the breadth, and scale, and depth, and enormity of WordPress, to keep up with the features that the proprietary CMSs ship? Because they know their users, and because they don&#8217;t have to make decisions in committee.</p>



  <p>Well, they probably do but, you know, the committees are probably much smaller, and managed from the top down. And they can ship features like this, and like that. They don&#8217;t need to necessarily worry. It&#8217;s a difficult question to encapsulate, but do you understand where I&#8217;m going with that? They can ship features perhaps more quickly than WordPress can.</p>



  <p>[00:33:33] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Absolutely. But I don&#8217;t think it is the ability to ship features quickly that leads to success. I think it&#8217;s the ability to ship the right features, and provide the right experience for users. And I think that experience includes the ability for them to decide to move. If you are not happy with your WordPress host, you can move hosts. If you are not happy with the agency that you are using, you can move agencies. If you are using a closed source CMS, your ability to move is a lot harder.</p>



  <p>You get locked in, and ultimately that is harder for you. It might mean that you get features quicker. It might mean that you get up and running quicker, but at what cost? Everything has a benefit, everything has a cost. And I think that the benefits of open source just drastically outweigh the costs of using it. The fact that you are going to deal with volunteers running your software project in many cases.</p>



  <p>There&#8217;s the old XKCD article, which has the tiny twig of holding up the software is one random guy in Omaha, Nebraska. And as much as possible, I think one of the benefits of WordPress is that there&#8217;s very few things where it&#8217;s one twig being held up by a single person. There are very few parts of the code base that multiple committers aren&#8217;t familiar with. And the beauty of how it&#8217;s been developed is we can look back in many cases, and understand why changes were made.</p>



  <p>You&#8217;ll see in, if you ever look at a WordPress commit, there&#8217;s often be a long section. There will be a one sentence description, and then there might be a paragraph or two explaining what the change is. And then there&#8217;s also links to tickets, and often very important, the props of who worked on it along the way.</p>



  <p>And so you can see, okay, well, these 15 people contributed to this. Oh, 12 of them aren&#8217;t active anymore, but there&#8217;s 3 of them that are. Maybe they remember, or I can look at the tickets that are referenced, and I can find the discussion that took place leading up to it. And that ticket, maybe that links to an IRC conversation from 15 years ago. We have the logs of that conversation, and can look back at what was discussed, and how did we get to this solution.</p>



  <p>[00:36:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think history shows that people seem to like open source. You only have to look at the numbers, and the enormity of a lot of open source projects to realise that it definitely tends towards winning. I don&#8217;t know quite how to phrase that but, does that make sense? The graph tends towards open source on the whole.</p>



  <p>Okay so, Aaron, given all of this, if somebody&#8217;s listening to this and they think, actually, I&#8217;d like to get into that, I&#8217;d be curious to see what this is like, dip my feet. Nobody&#8217;s suggesting that you have to show up and stay there for the rest of your life but, how do people begin this journey? Where are the best places to go?</p>



  <p>[00:36:36] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> So if you want to contribute to WordPress Core, and I hope that everyone does at some point in their life, the best way to get started is to join the new contributor chats, which take place biweekly in WordPress Slack. And so if you go to make.wordpress.org/chat, you can join the WordPress Slack. If you go to make.wordpress.org/core, you can see the Core discussions, and you can see the meetings that are taking place.</p>



  <p>Get involved. Find a issue that is bothering you, or that you think is going to make WordPress better, and add your thoughts. Think about like, if someone isn&#8217;t thinking about this, what is going to get them to think about this? Add context, add information. Even if you are not someone that can write code, maybe you can quickly sketch out an idea, take a picture of that and upload it.</p>



  <p>Maybe you can share some data or share some stats from your company of, hey, this change took place and it&#8217;s actually caused a 10% drop for us in user signups. That is like, okay, well, that&#8217;s a data point that we can look at, and maybe use to come up to a better solution. This change would help speed up our website.</p>



  <p>You can also test the changes that other people have proposed. There is the WordPress Playground now, that allows you to very easily test out a change. Just earlier today, there&#8217;s a change that was being proposed for 6.6 to remove the revisions panel from the sidebar. And a handful of us were like, I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s quite right, here&#8217;s some alternate ideas. And then someone coded one up. A couple people looked at it and we&#8217;re like, that&#8217;s not the right way, how about this other way? And it was coded up, and I tested it and just was like, all right, here&#8217;s what I see. And it just took a couple of clicks of my mouse. It wasn&#8217;t a hard process to test and share a little bit of feedback for the project.</p>



  <p>[00:38:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So it&#8217;s not all about committing code. There are many more ways that you could help Core. So it may be that you identify problems, or test possible things that could go in, and just give your opinions. There&#8217;s loads of different ways that you can help in this initiative. And I will make sure that the, bits and pieces that Aaron has mentioned today all make it into the show notes. If you go to wptavern.com/podcast, and search for this episode, you&#8217;ll be able to find the show notes all attached there. It only remains for me, Aaron, to ask, if anybody is interested in just connecting with you personally, do you have a favorite place online where you send people?</p>



  <p>[00:39:16] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> My WordPress site is my favorite place, which is at aaron.jorb.in. I&#8217;m also on a number of social media networks, generally with the username of Aaron Jorbin. A handful of them I think I use just Jorbin. Yeah, I would love to chat with people. If people see me at a WordCamp, please come up and talk to me. I can be a bit of an introvert at those, and so I might not approach people, but would love to chat with as many people as I can.</p>



  <p>Something I used to do, that I&#8217;m going to try to get back into is, one lunch during the WordCamp, I&#8217;d sit down at a random table and just ask people, so how do you use WordPress? And you never know who you&#8217;re going to meet, and what they&#8217;re going to have to share if you do that.</p>



  <p>[00:39:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s nice. And by the way, I&#8217;m incredibly jealous of your domain name. That&#8217;s just a stroke of luck that there&#8217;s a whole top level domain with your final two letters of your name in there. That&#8217;s lovely. I&#8217;ll add that into the show notes as well. But, Aaron Jorbin, thank you so much for chatting to me today. A real pleasure, thank you.</p>



  <p>[00:40:14] <strong>Aaron Jorbin:</strong> Thank you so much for having me.</p>
  </div>



  <p>On the podcast today we have Aaron Jorbin.</p>



  <p>Aaron has led teams responsible for some of the largest and most prominent WordPress sites in the world including Rolling Stone, Variety, WIRED, The New Yorker, and The White House. He is also a WordPress Core Committer who focuses on improving developer happiness and making the internet usable by everyone.</p>



  <p>He’s been an integral part of the WordPress community since 2010, and today Aaron opens up about the crucial importance of major and minor WordPress releases, and the need for user trust, which forms the backbone for features like auto updates that enhance WordPress security.</p>



  <p>We get into the process behind WordPress releases, discussing how major and minor updates are planned and executed. Aaron explains the dynamics of the Core Committer community, a group of around 100 dedicated individuals, about 50 of whom are currently active, whose decisions and hard work keep WordPress robust, up to date and secure. The commitment to transparency, minimal egos, and the ability to handle criticism are mentioned as key elements for maintaining trust inside this community within a community.</p>



  <p>We talk about how communication and decision-making take place mostly in public forums, ensuring openness and collaboration. The conversation also touches on the ebb and flow of volunteer and sponsored contributors, the challenges of coordinating across global time zones, and the need for asynchronous decision making.</p>



  <p>Aaron explains what it takes to move from a small contributor to a key player in the WordPress ecosystem, emphasising the burden of responsibility that comes with making changes affecting millions of non-technical users. Whether you&#8217;re a developer, tester, or enthusiastic user, Aaron encourages contributions in various forms, from sharing ideas to testing and providing feedback.</p>



  <p>If you’ve ever wondered how WordPress is maintained and updated, this episode is for you.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>



  <p><a href="https://www.condenast.com/">Condé Nast</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/03/28/grunt-patch-wordpress-1-0-0/">Grunt Patch WordPress</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://wordpress.org/download/releases/">Previous WordPress releases</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpressdc/">WordPress DC meetup</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://xkcd.com/2347/">Dependency cartoon from xkcd</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/chat/">WordPress Slack</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://wordpress.org/playground/">WordPress Playground</a></p>



  <p><a href="https://aaron.jorb.in/">Aaron&#8217;s website</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"Akismet: What is reCAPTCHA? How Does It Work?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=284031";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"https://akismet.com/blog/what-is-recaptcha/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28876:"<p>There are few things in this world as annoying, and pervasive, as spam. You probably get spam phone calls, spam texts, and spam emails. <em>You’ve won a prize. You’ve broken a copyright law. You’ve placed an order and need to verify your account details.</em> <em>You can make $3,956 a day working from home doing this one cool trick</em>. It sucks up our time and, if we fall for it, can be downright dangerous.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>But there’s also spam on many websites. Comment sections filled with links to less-than-reputable pages designed to phish for sensitive info or initiate a malware download.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>For site owners, spammy comment sections, fake user registrations, and false contact form submissions can add hours of work each week, make your site seem less legitimate, and put visitors and your entire reputation at risk.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>That’s where reCAPTCHA comes in. Owned by Google, reCAPTCHA is a free service that distinguishes real human users from automated bots. But there are pros and cons to implementing reCAPTCHA on your site, so you’ll need to weigh your options carefully in order to find an effective solution.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>In this post, we’ll take a closer look at reCAPTCHA and how it works. Then, we’ll explore the main drawbacks of reCAPTCHA, and consider a better alternative. Let’s jump right&nbsp;in!</p>


  <span id="more-284031"></span>



  <p>.</p>


  <h2 id="what-is recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">What is&nbsp;reCAPTCHA?</h2>


  <p>reCAPTCHA is a free Google service that protects websites from spam. <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/what-is-captcha/">CAPTCHA tests</a> were first introduced in 1997 as an extra layer of security against hackers and bots.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>These tests were deployed primarily on login pages and <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/how-to-add-wordpress-contact-form/">contact form pages</a>. They generated distorted text and users had to decipher the words to pass the test. Since then, CAPTCHAs have become more complex to keep up with evolving technologies and bots.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>The advanced nature of CAPTCHA can cause problems for the user experience (UX) since it demands more input from site visitors. In fact, reCAPTCHA (introduced in 2007) presents more complicated challenges like puzzles and image identification, which typically require user&nbsp;interaction.</p>


  <img width="434" height="627" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image.png" alt="example of a CAPTCHA with images of cars" class="wp-image-284033" />



  <p>In 2009, reCAPTCHA was acquired by Google. The original version is no longer available since it was found to be too easy for bots (using algorithms trained in pattern recognition) and too difficult for humans.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>So now, there are different versions of reCAPTCHA, which we’ll explore later in the&nbsp;post.</p>

  <h2 id="how-does-recaptcha work" class="wp-block-heading">How does reCAPTCHA&nbsp;work?</h2>


  <p>reCAPTCHA uses artificial intelligence (AI) to differentiate between humans and bots. While the traditional CAPTCHA issued tests before allowing visitor access, algorithms trained in pattern recognition could quickly solve these challenges.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Therefore, reCAPTCHA was introduced. As we discussed, the original version is no longer in use, but there are still two versions available.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>reCAPTCHA v2 requires users to select images or check the “I’m not a robot”&nbsp;box.</p>


  <img width="371" height="480" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-1.png" alt="example form with ReCAPTCHA" class="wp-image-284034" />


  <p>Meanwhile, reCAPTCHA v3 aims to minimize the disruption to the user experience. Instead of requiring user interaction, it calculates scores based on user behavior. The website administrator can then allow or block access, but they can also issue further v2 tests, if needed, for&nbsp;verification.</p>

  <p>The latest version of reCAPTCHA (v3) uses a JavaScript API to determine a score between 0 and 1. While a score of 0 is judged to be a bot, a score of 1 is almost always a human user. It uses a concept called “actions” which lets you define steps in your typical user&nbsp;journey.</p>


  <p>This way, the reCAPTCHA technology learns how real users interact with your site so that it’s able to detect bot traffic. In fact, some websites deploy reCAPTCHA across all pages so that the technology has more user activity to work with.&nbsp;</p>


  <h2 id="distinction-between-captcha-and recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">Distinction between CAPTCHA and&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</h2>

  <p>You might still be wondering about the <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/akismet-vs-captcha-vs-recaptcha/">difference between CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA</a>. First off, CAPTCHA is an umbrella term used to describe any website authentication test to separate humans from&nbsp;bots.</p>


  <p>On the other hand, reCAPTCHA is a type of CAPTCHA test owned by Google. Note that there are several types of CAPTCHAs owned by different companies, and reCAPTCHA is just one of many.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>As we discussed, the original reCAPTCHA test was much more simplistic, primarily relying on word tests disguised with twisted letters. But now, there are different types of reCAPTCHA including images, checkboxes, and tests that require no user input at&nbsp;all.</p>

  <h2 id="the-different-types-of recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">The different types of&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</h2>

  <p>Now, let’s take a look at all <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/recaptcha-v2-vs-v3/">the different versions of&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</a>.</p>


  <h3 id="recaptcha-v1" class="wp-block-heading">reCAPTCHA v1</h3>


  <p>reCAPTCHA v1 isn’t widely used anymore and was discontinued by Google in 2018. But this version of reCAPTCHA came the closest to emulating the traditional CAPTCHA tests that relied on object&nbsp;recognition.</p>


  <p>In this instance, a user would be presented with a pair of words, one of which functioned as a control word and could be understood by a bot. The other word could only be recognized by human users.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>This CAPTCHA method was developed in the late 1990s and continued to be used throughout the 2010s. It also started using scanned words and photographs to make the tests more challenging, but it has since been replaced with more sophisticated reCAPTCHA&nbsp;tests.</p>


  <h3 id="recaptcha-v2" class="wp-block-heading">reCAPTCHA v2</h3>



  <p>After reCAPTCHA v1 was shut down, it was replaced with reCAPTCHA v2, which currently consists of three versions.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>The first one is the reCAPTCHA v2 for Android, which is an API that can protect Android apps from bot traffic. The API integrates directly into Android apps, and in an attempt to preserve the UX, the API allows low-risk users to pass through easily. When needed, the API will present a challenge to the user to verify that they are human.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Then there’s the reCAPTCHA v2 that most users are familiar with. This is the “I’m not a robot” checkbox. In this case, all that users have to do is check the box, rather than solve a complex test or problem.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>As such, it’s considered more user&#8209;friendly than previous methods. Though it sounds simple, Google analyzes various factors like mouse movement and browsing history to detect bot&nbsp;activity.</p>


  <p>Even more sophisticated is the invisible reCAPTCHA badge which requires no user input at all. Similar to the previous method, Google evaluates activities like mouse movement and typing patterns. This version of reCAPTCHA is triggered via a JavaScript API call or when a user clicks on a button.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>It’s still not a perfect solution since sophisticated bots that use AI technology can bypass the reCAPTCHA. And, it isn’t immune to CAPTCHA farms — which are businesses that employ human workers to solve reCAPTCHAs to aid cybercriminals and hackers.&nbsp;</p>



  <h3 id="recaptcha-v3" class="wp-block-heading">reCAPTCHA v3</h3>


  <p>In further attempts to improve the UX, Google introduced reCAPTCHA v3, which works similarly to the invisible reCAPTCHA badge. This version of reCAPTCHA works in the background, so it’s completely invisible to users and presents no&nbsp;tests.</p>

  <p>The reCAPTCHA v3 method tracks all requests made by a user on a website, and every request is given a score between 0 and 1. As we discussed earlier, a score close to 0 is likely to be a bot whereas a score closer to 1 is judged as&nbsp;human.</p>


  <p>The interactions monitored by the reCAPTCHA vary between websites. For instance, the administrator can provide examples of normal user interactions&nbsp;so that the reCAPTCHA can pick up on any deviation from the norm.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>reCAPTCHA v3 is the best version of the technology in terms of efficacy and UX. That said, it’s more difficult to implement since the scores must be defined by the administrator, which can be time&#8209;consuming to set&nbsp;up.</p>


  <p>With this in mind, you might automatically block users who return a score below 0.2. Then, scores between 0.2 and 0.6 may generate a CAPTCHA challenge to verify that the user is human.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Meanwhile, any score above 0.6 may instantly be granted access. The issue is that a strict scoring system holds the potential to block out legitimate users while a lenient system may allow bots to bypass the reCAPTCHA.&nbsp;</p>


  <h2 id="challenges-and-downsides-of recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">Challenges and downsides of&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</h2>


  <p>Now that you know the different types of reCAPTCHA, let’s take a look at the main limitations.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="1-impact-on-users-with disabilities" class="wp-block-heading">1. Impact on users with&nbsp;disabilities</h3>


  <p>It’s imperative to design web content in a way that’s accessible to people with disabilities. This way, your enterprise site can comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).&nbsp;</p>


  <p>The problem is that many reCAPTCHA tests are visual and require users to identify images or text. This has been shown to <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3524010.3539498">discriminate against users with visual impairments</a>. And since they’re designed to be unreadable by machines, screen readers are unable to interpret&nbsp;them.</p>


  <p>Additionally, audio reCAPTCHA tests alienate users with hearing impairments. Meanwhile, the mathematical equation tests are believed to be more accessible to users with vision impairments, but these can exclude those with cognitive disorders like dyscalculia.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="2-annoyance-and frustration" class="wp-block-heading">2. Annoyance and&nbsp;frustration</h3>

  <p>Many users may find reCAPTCHA annoying. When you expect instant access to a page, and instead you’re required to check a box or complete a task, it’s natural to become&nbsp;frustrated.</p>

  <p>This can lead to early exits. High bounce rates can send signals to search engines that users don’t find your website valuable. Therefore, it can result in both traffic and revenue&nbsp;loss.</p>

  <h3 id="3-data-collection-and-privacy concerns" class="wp-block-heading">3. Data collection and privacy&nbsp;concerns</h3>

  <p>In order to differentiate between bots and humans, reCAPTCHA v3 and the invisible reCAPTCHA badge analyze data like mouse navigation and click patterns. Since this is classified as personal data, this method of reCAPTCHA requires privacy&nbsp;compliance.</p>


  <p>There are plenty of laws and legislations that exist to protect user privacy on the internet. Most notable, perhaps, is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, but there’s also the Colorado Privacy Act, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and many more.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>Therefore, it’s important to gather consent from users if you plan to implement reCAPTCHA. <a href="https://developers.google.com/assistant/console/policies/privacy-policy-guide">Google recommends a privacy policy</a> that informs users of the data collected, the data shared, and a statement that tells users how the data will be&nbsp;used.</p>


  <p>That said, this is considered the bare minimum in terms of privacy, so it’s useful to have a proper look into what should be included. This is very important since non-compliance can damage your reputation, erode customer trust, and lead to heavy financial penalties.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="4-recaptchaâs-decreasing effectiveness" class="wp-block-heading">4. reCAPTCHA’s decreasing&nbsp;effectiveness</h3>


  <p>Another potential problem with reCAPTCHA is its effectiveness given the emergence of artificial intelligence. In fact, researchers from the University of Columbia <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7467367">created reCAPTCHA attacks</a> that managed to solve 70 percent of all challenges.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>This shows that reCAPTCHA is no longer as effective as it once was, whether that’s down to AI, CAPTCHA farms, or internal logic. What’s more, reCAPTCHA v3 requires the analysis of user&nbsp;behavior.</p>

  <p>reCAPTCHA needs a large volume of data to determine normal human interactions and tell them apart from bots. But this technology relies on a client&#8209;side fingerprinting approach, which advanced bots can bypass&nbsp;easily.</p>

  <h3 id="5-potential-for-false positives" class="wp-block-heading">5. Potential for false&nbsp;positives</h3>


  <p>The final drawback to reCAPTCHA is that there is still the potential for false positives, which can block legitimate users from your site. For instance, enterprises that prioritize security may adopt a strict scoring system for reCAPTCHA v3. This makes it harder for users to score 1.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>To give you an example, many administrators grant low scores to users who submit forms very quickly. That said, some human users are naturally quick typers, but going by this system, they may be flagged and denied access to your website.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Additionally, researchers from the University of Toronto found that <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.01003">reCAPTCHA gives lower scores</a> to users who don’t have a Google account. Therefore, privacy-conscious visitors who use private browsers or VPNs are more likely to be mistaken for bots.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>


  <h2 id="akismet-the-better-alternative-to recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">Akismet: The better alternative to&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</h2>

  <p>Considering the challenges and drawbacks of reCAPTCHA, you may be cautious about deploying it on your website. Instead, you might prefer an alternative anti&#8209;spam solution that is more inclusive and doesn’t disrupt the&nbsp;UX.</p>

  <p><a href="https://akismet.com/">Akismet</a> was developed by Automattic (the same team behind WordPress.com) and it’s one of the <a href="https://akismet.com/features/">leading anti&#8209;spam plugins</a>. It protects you against form, comment, and text&nbsp;spam.</p>


  <img width="1600" height="732" src="https://akismet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/image-2.png" alt="Akismet homepage with the text " />


  <p>Since 2005, Akismet has removed over 500 billion pieces of spam across 100 million sites. The plugin is powered by machine learning, which explains how Akismet detects spam with a 99.99 percent accuracy&nbsp;rating.</p>

  <p>Unlike reCAPTCHA, Akismet doesn’t require too much from your visitors. Instead, it operates behind the scenes, so it doesn’t add friction to your UX. This means that users may be more likely to stay on your website, helping you <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/form-conversion-rate/">get more conversions</a> and&nbsp;sales.</p>

  <h2 id="how-akismet works" class="wp-block-heading">How Akismet&nbsp;works</h2>

  <p>Akismet analyzes every piece of user&#8209;submitted content to prevent a range of online attacks. This analysis takes place in real time, so you can block suspicious activity before it even reaches your&nbsp;site.</p>

  <p>It’s best to think of Akismet as a filter, where legitimate submissions are allowed to pass through, but spam submissions are denied. This saves you from manually reviewing every&nbsp;submission.</p>

  <p>As mentioned earlier, Akismet is powered by machine learning algorithms. This enables the plugin to compare the content of submissions against a database of known spam. Plus, it integrates with popular form plugins, so you’re not limited to <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/comment-spam/">blog comment&nbsp;spam</a>.</p>


  <p>You’ll also get access to monthly and annual spam charts. This way, you can check your spam accuracy rating, false positives, and more.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>The Akismet plugin is simple to install on WordPress, but you will need an API key to connect to the Akismet&nbsp;database.</p>

  <h2 id="benefits-of-akismet-over recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">Benefits of Akismet over&nbsp;reCAPTCHA</h2>


  <p>Now that you know more about Akismet, let’s look at the benefits of using this plugin over reCAPTCHA.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="1-improved accessibility" class="wp-block-heading">1. Improved&nbsp;accessibility</h3>

  <p>As we discussed earlier, one of the limitations of reCAPTCHA is that some versions require users to decipher visual or auditory information. Other versions contain mathematical equations or ask users to complete&nbsp;checkboxes.</p>


  <p>This can exclude those with cognitive, hearing, or visual impairments. Therefore, if you want to keep an accessible website, you’re better off <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/captcha-alternatives/">using a CAPTCHA alternative</a> like Akismet.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Akismet doesn’t require any user interaction. It works silently behind the scenes, so users can submit content without running into any obstacles.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="2-enhanced-user experience" class="wp-block-heading">2. Enhanced user&nbsp;experience</h3>


  <p>All kinds of reCAPTCHA (except v3) add friction to the user experience, as they require individuals to check a box or complete a test. This delays access to a page or resource, which can lead to frustration on the user’s part.&nbsp;</p>


  <p>Akismet doesn’t interfere with the UX. It operates in the background, so most users aren’t even aware of it. Additionally, the spam data is stored in the cloud, so the plugin doesn’t impact site&nbsp;speed.</p>

  <h3 id="3-privacy protection" class="wp-block-heading">3. Privacy&nbsp;protection</h3>


  <p>While reCAPTCHA can reduce spam submissions, it does so by gathering personal data, which means you have to obtain explicit consent from users. Plus, privacy-conscious users may be perturbed by data collection.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Akismet also collects personal data, but only that which is needed to carry out spam protection. According to the GDPR, this is classified as a “legitimate interest” use of that data.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>In the plugin settings, you can easily enable a privacy notice that informs users about this. The company never sells personal data gathered through the plugin. You can check out the <a href="https://automattic.com/privacy/">full privacy policy here</a>.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="4-better-spam detection" class="wp-block-heading">4. Better spam&nbsp;detection</h3>

  <p>reCAPTCHA is primarily an anti&#8209;spam measure, but the <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/do-captcha-and-recaptcha-protect-wordpress-sites-from-bots/">effectiveness of reCAPTCHA</a> has been challenged by advances in AI technology and the growth of CAPTCHA&nbsp;farms.</p>

  <p>Akismet has a long reputation for detecting spam with very high accuracy. Currently, the plugin boasts an overall accuracy score of 99.99 percent, but you can view the exact spam accuracy score within your Akismet&nbsp;dashboard.</p>

  <h3 id="5-reduced-false positives" class="wp-block-heading">5. Reduced false&nbsp;positives</h3>

  <p>Earlier, we mentioned the fact that some versions of reCAPTCHA frequently result in false positives which block legitimate users from websites. This is especially true in the case of reCAPTCHA v3 (where administrators have to define their own rules) and for users who opt for private browsers and VPNs. Not only is this frustrating for users, but it can also result in revenue loss for&nbsp;organizations.</p>


  <p>With Akismet, submissions are analyzed in real time and with incredible accuracy. Additionally, there are systems in place that make it easy for websites to <a href="https://akismet.com/support/general/akismet-unblocking-a-spam/">report false positives</a>.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>When it comes to forms, you can simply remove submissions from the spam list. For comments, all you have to do is check the relevant boxes and use the <strong>Bulk actions </strong>dropdown menu to select <strong>Not spam.&nbsp;</strong></p>


  <h2 id="frequently-asked questions" class="wp-block-heading">Frequently asked&nbsp;questions</h2>

  <p>This guide has answered questions like “what is reCAPTCHA” and “how does reCAPTCHA work”, but you may still be looking for clarification on this technology. We’ll answer some other common questions in the next&nbsp;section.</p>

  <h3 id="what-is-the-primary-purpose-of recaptcha" class="wp-block-heading">What is the primary purpose of&nbsp;reCAPTCHA?</h3>


  <p>The primary purpose of reCAPTCHA is to differentiate human users from bots in order to block spam and other forms of online abuse. It is a type of technology that deploys adaptive challenges like image identification and checkboxes that detect suspicious behavior.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="how-does-recaptcha-differentiate-between-a-human-and-a bot" class="wp-block-heading">How does reCAPTCHA differentiate between a human and a&nbsp;bot?</h3>


  <p>Depending on the version of reCAPTCHA, different factors are considered to distinguish between bots and humans. For example, some reCAPTCHA tests track cursor movement, typing patterns, and browser history.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>reCAPTCHA v3 evaluates these factors to generate scores. Scores closer to 0 are judged to be bots while those closer to 1 are considered human.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="what-are-the-key-differences-between-recaptcha-v2-and v3" class="wp-block-heading">What are the key differences between reCAPTCHA v2 and&nbsp;v3?</h3>


  <p>There are some key differences between reCAPTCHA v2 and v3. reCAPTCHA v2 includes three different methods including the Android API, the “I’m not a robot” checkbox, and the invisible reCAPTCHA badge. All of these, except the badge, require user interaction.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>reCAPTCHA v3 doesn’t require user input. Instead, it monitors certain factors like mouse movement and typing patterns to return a score between 0 and 1, which helps systems detect bot traffic.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="is-recaptcha-completely-effective-against-bots-and-automated attacks" class="wp-block-heading">Is reCAPTCHA completely effective against bots and automated&nbsp;attacks?</h3>

  <p>reCAPTCHA is an <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/best-anti-spam-wordpress-plugins-compared/">anti&#8209;spam service</a> that attempts to block bots and prevent automated attacks like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The problem is that several researchers have questioned the effectiveness of reCAPTCHA. For instance, researchers from the University of Columbia launched low&#8209;risk bot attacks that solved over 70 percent of all&nbsp;challenges.</p>

  <h3 id="how-does-recaptcha-impact-the-overall-user-experience-on websites" class="wp-block-heading">How does reCAPTCHA impact the overall user experience on&nbsp;websites?</h3>

  <p>Most versions of reCAPTCHA require users to solve mathematical problems, decipher images and text, or simply check a box. While this may not sound too problematic, it adds friction to the user&nbsp;experience.</p>


  <p>It delays users from accessing the desired page or resource, which can be frustrating. In turn, this can lead to early exits — which affect bounce rates, traffic volume, revenue, and more.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="can-recaptcha-be-bypassed-or-tricked-by-sophisticated bots" class="wp-block-heading">Can reCAPTCHA be bypassed or tricked by sophisticated&nbsp;bots?</h3>


  <p>There are ways for cybercriminals and bots to bypass reCAPTCHA tests. To do this, all they have to do is raise the trust score by mimicking normal human behavior on a web browser.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>They can achieve this effect by using a resistant TLS fingerprint. Plus, hackers can execute JavaScript using browser automation tools, and rotate JavaScript fingerprint details.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="what-are-the-implications-of-recaptcha-for-user privacy" class="wp-block-heading">What are the implications of reCAPTCHA for user&nbsp;privacy?</h3>


  <p>Since reCAPTCHA gathers personal data about the user’s browser and device, certain states and countries require companies to get user consent. In particular, the GDPR ensures that visitors know how websites use, process, and store their information.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Therefore, you’ll need to obtain explicit consent. It’s also important to display a privacy policy on your site. Otherwise, you may encounter hefty financial penalties.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="are-there-any-alternatives-to-recaptcha-that-offer-similar-or-better functionalities" class="wp-block-heading">Are there any alternatives to reCAPTCHA that offer similar or better&nbsp;functionalities?</h3>

  <p>Although reCAPTCHA is capable of blocking some spam, it can interfere with the UX and discriminate against those with disabilities. Therefore, you might prefer a more user&#8209;friendly alternative, like&nbsp;Akismet.</p>


  <p>Akismet works in the background of your site, so it requires no user interaction. It also filters spam with an impressive accuracy rating of 99.99 percent, which means it rarely produces false positives.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="how-accurate-is-akismet-at-stopping spam" class="wp-block-heading">How accurate is Akismet at stopping&nbsp;spam?</h3>

  <p>Akismet filters comment, form, and text spam with a 99.99 percent accuracy rate. Plus, it analyzes submissions in real time to maximize threat protection. And there are systems in place to report false positives, which makes Akismet much more effective than&nbsp;reCAPTCHA.</p>

  <h3 id="how-many-sites-use akismet" class="wp-block-heading">How many sites use&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>

  <p>Akismet is installed on over 100 million websites, and the plugin has blocked over 500 billion spam submissions. Better yet, it’s trusted by plenty of enterprise brands like Microsoft, ConvertKit, Bluehost, and&nbsp;WordPress.com.</p>

  <h3 id="are-there-any-case-studies-of-companies-that-use akismet" class="wp-block-heading">Are there any case studies of companies that use&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>


  <p>If you want to know how Akismet has helped real brands, you can check out some case studies.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>For instance, <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/">ConvertKit</a> implemented Akismet to filter out spam and automate spam prevention. <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/saying-no-to-spam-on-smitten-kitchens-popular-food-site/">Smitten Kitchen</a> automated spam detection in the comments section of recipes, which has helped prevent the presence of affiliate links and irrelevant promotions.&nbsp;</p>


  <h3 id="where-can-i-learn-more-about akismet" class="wp-block-heading">Where can I learn more about&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>


  <p>If you want to learn more about the service, you can find a lot of <a href="https://akismet.com/resources/">free resources</a>. Akismet also has a <a href="https://akismet.com/support/">dedicated support page</a> to help you set up and use the plugin. And the <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/">Akismet blog</a> is frequently updated with useful articles.&nbsp;</p>


  <h2 id="akismet-the-best-spam-solution-for-your website" class="wp-block-heading">Akismet: The best spam solution for your&nbsp;website</h2>

  <p>Spam is a concern for any site administrator, since it can make your site appear less trustworthy and lead to cyberattacks. While reCAPTCHA is one solution for preventing spam, it may not be the best option in terms of user&nbsp;experience.</p>

  <p>reCAPTCHA v3 runs in the background of your site, but it can still be frustrating for visitors. Additionally, it can exclude those with disabilities and incorrectly block legitimate visitors. Therefore, you might prefer a better alternative, like&nbsp;Akismet.</p>

  <p>With a 99.99 percent accuracy rating, Akismet is excellent at blocking comment, form, and text spam. It also analyzes submissions in real time, and it doesn’t interfere with the UX. <a href="https://akismet.com/pricing/">Get started with the Akismet&nbsp;today</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Jen Swisher";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: Recap of Do the Woo 4.0 Launch and WordPress dot com Post";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84450";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://dothewoo.io/recap-of-do-the-woo-4-0-launch-and-wordpress-dot-com-post/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1839:"<p>As you know, during the week of WordCamp Europe 2024 last month, June 10 &#8211; 15, we led up to our huge launch of 4.0 at the event. A lot of content was pushed out, plus a so many conversations at WCEU about the launch. If you happened to miss any of it, here are the links to the episodes.</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>June 10: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-4-0-this-week-at-wordcamp-europe/">Do the Woo 4.0, This Week at WordCamp Europe</a></strong></li>



  <li>June 11: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-new-show-scaling-enterprise-wordpress-and-oss/">A New Show, Scaling Enterprise, WordPress and OSS</a></strong></li>



  <li>June 12: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-pre-launch-chat-with-jay-walsh-at-woocommerce/"><strong>A Pre-Launch Chat with Jay Walsh at WooCommerce</strong></a></li>



  <li>June 13: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/thinking-about-our-launch-on-wceu-contributor-day/">Thinking About Our Launch on WCEU Contributor Day</a></strong></li>



  <li>June 14: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-podcast-channel-4-0-official-launch/">Do the Woo Podcast Channel 4.0 Official Launch</a></strong></li>



  <li>June 15: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/learn-about-all-the-shows-on-the-do-the-woo-podcast-channel/">Learn About All the Shows on the Do the Woo Podcast Channel</a></strong></li>
  </ul>



  <p>Also, BobWP published a guest post on WordPress.com about the launch and partnership with WordPress.com, Woo and Jetpack.</p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/06/14/partner-spotlight-do-the-woo-4-0/">WordPress.com Partner Spotlight: Do the Woo 4.0</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/press-release-do-the-woo-4-0-launches-at-wordcamp-europe/">And if you missed our press release, check that out here.</a></strong></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 03 Jul 2024 08:30:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:124:"HeroPress: A welcoming community that embraces authenticity – 本物らしさを受け入れる温かいコミュニティ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=7139";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:170:"https://heropress.com/essays/a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23262:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/070224_min.webp" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull quote: Every conversation can either build or destroy safety." />
  Here is Ben reading his own story aloud.





  <p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#japanese">この記事は日本語でも読む事が出来ます。</a></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-interactions-with-tech-growing-up">My interactions with tech growing up</h2>



  <p>The first time I remember interacting with tech was on my parents’ Macintosh computer when I started primary school. I loved drawing with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint">MacPaint</a> and found it much cooler than my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch">Etch A Sketch</a>.</p>



  <p>Then, my parents got a Windows 95 computer and we were connected to the internet. My parents would check for important calls before unhooking the telephone to plug in the computer. When Google search came out, my family would sit around the screen, amazed at the “dozens” of search results. We even played a game to see whose name got the most results. I won by a long shot because my middle name Luke (Japanese: ルカ) appears in the word “digital camera” (デジタルカメラ).</p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>In junior high, I joined the table tennis club but quickly realized sports weren’t my thing. </p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>I switched to the computer club, where I edited my first video, learned about spreadsheets and word processors, and built my first website using a Japanese software called Homepage Builder. I started maintaining a website for my church, self-teaching myself about staging environments and FTP through help docs and online manuals.</p>



  <p>In senior high, I started looking at the HTML code produced by Homepage Builder. I realized I didn’t have to use the drag-and-drop editor to make edits and taught myself basic HTML and CSS. That’s when I created my first game, an HTML game where players clicked on doors to navigate a maze. I remember someone “hacked” my game by figuring out the URL logic and jumping to the goal. That was my introduction to cyber security and encryption.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-information-ethics-opened-my-eyes-to-the-diversity-in-the-world">How information ethics opened my eyes to the diversity in the world</h2>



  <p>In university, I studied information science, which pulled me deeper into the tech world. I continued to master’s and doctorate programs, and started teaching tech classes at three universities. I taught in both Japanese and English to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Subjects included programming basics (C, Java), informatics, and image processing.</p>



  <p>But my most favorite subject was information ethics, which highlighted how different cultures have varying ethical values in tech. </p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>For instance, some communities pirate software out of necessity, some share login credentials to bypass censorship, while other communities consider both these practices unethical. </p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>Teaching this course really opened my eyes to global diversity. It taught me the importance of open dialogue, empathetic listening, and creative thinking.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-i-met-wordpress">How I met WordPress</h2>



  <p>I first heard about WordPress in my university lab. A senior student returning from overseas said it was all the hype in the west, so we moved our lab’s website to WordPress. I didn’t fully understand what WordPress was then, but I decided to ride the hype and move my church websites to WordPress too.</p>



  <p>Since making the switch in 2014, WordPress has become my Content Management System (CMS) of choice. I tried a brief stint with Wix, but it just confirmed my loyalty to WordPress. And after joining Automattic, I discovered the community behind the software and my love for WordPress has grown even more.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-i-joined-automattic-and-the-wordpress-community">How I joined Automattic and the WordPress community</h2>



  <p>At one point, I installed the VideoPress plugin on one of my sites and needed support with a subscription mix-up. The agent resolved my issue in one email and signed off as a “Happiness Engineer,” which made me smile. Years later, I saw a job opening for Happiness Engineers at <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> and remembered that interaction. I volunteered on the WordPress.com support forums for a couple months building up my support skills before getting accepted into Automattic in 2019.</p>



  <p>Soon after joining, I learned that WordPress is more than just a CMS. It’s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/">a community</a> built on open-source principles. I didn’t wait long to attend my local WordPress Meetups later that year, and was amazed at the selflessness and dedication of the participants. At those Meetups, I learned the WordPress ecosystem extends beyond the community that creates it. </p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>WordPress is composed of the people who use it &#8211; the developers, designers, analysts, hobbyists, hosts, marketers, etc. </p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>It is a common bond that brings people together from different walks of life to a safe space of diversity and acceptance. It was the first time I had interacted with people quite like that.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-journey-in-the-wordpress-training-team">My journey in the WordPress Training Team</h2>



  <p>In 2020, the pandemic canceled in-person events, but I had opportunities to be part of educational projects within Automattic. I coached Japanese support agents, created internal training materials, and developed a new onboarding program for new employees. These experiences rekindled my love for education.</p>



  <p>It was around that time that WordPress launched its educational site, <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress</a>. I was selected for an internal position at Automattic to become a full time contributor to the Learn WordPress initiative, and joined the WordPress project’s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">Training Team</a> in June 2022. I started in the team by understanding the team’s values, priorities, and challenges. Over the next six months, I worked on improving team processes and documentation. At the end of 2022, I was honored to be nominated as a team rep, since which I’ve led projects like migrating from Trello to GitHub and building an onboarding program. These efforts have increased team member engagement and activity, which in turn is contributing to traffic and engagement increases on the Learn WordPress site, too.</p>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7139_e29120-08 alignfull has-theme-palette1-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-3-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_ab010b-f3"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wordcamp-asia-2023.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wordcamp-asia-2023-1024x683.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Asia 2023" class="kb-img wp-image-7148" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_f7f196-5a"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-at-wordcamp-tokyo-2023.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="579" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-at-wordcamp-tokyo-2023-1024x579.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Tokyo 2023" class="kb-img wp-image-7149" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_fcf7c6-6d"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wrodcamp-europe-2024-scaled.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wrodcamp-europe-2024-1024x683.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Europe 2024" class="kb-img wp-image-7150" /></a>
  </div></div>

  </div></div>


  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-a-safe-space-to-be-authentic">WordPress &#8211; a safe space to be authentic</h2>



  <p>Reflecting on my tech journey, the moments I felt most energized were when I contributed to creating a safe space of diversity and acceptance. Teaching information ethics laid the foundation, customer support as a Happiness Engineer let me practice this in 1:1 interactions, onboarding new employees allowed me to create these spaces for larger groups, and contributing to the WordPress Training Team extended this to a global community. These were moments when I felt most authentic.</p>



  <p>Building a safe space where one can be authentic isn’t a one-time project; it’s formed through humble and curious interactions. Every conversation can either build or destroy safety. I remember the excitement of my first WordPress Meetup, where I felt accepted for who I am. My hope is that everyone who interacts with the WordPress community experiences that same acceptance. I look forward to continuing contributing to this safe space &#8211; WordPress &#8211; so that both I and those around me can continue to be our authentic selves.</p>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7139_300d56-8f alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_c998c3-e2"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <h2 id="work-environment" class="kt-adv-heading7139_ace920-e9 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Ben&#8217;s Work Environment</h2>



  <p>We asked Ben for a view into his development life and this is what he sent!</p>


  	<div class="hotspots-image-container">
  		<img width="2560" height="1920" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/workspace-scaled-1.jpg" alt="Ben Evans Desk" class="hotspots-image skip-lazy" />
  	</div>




  <p class="kt-adv-heading7139_6bbaea-89 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading has-theme-palette-9-background-color has-background">HeroPress would like to thank <a href="https://wpdrawattention.com/">Draw Attention</a> for their donation of the plugin to make this interactive image!</p>
  </div></div>

  </div></div>




  <p class="has-small-font-size"></p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="japanese"><strong>本物らしさを受け入れる温かいコミュニティ</strong></h2>



  ベンさんが以下の記事を読んでいるのを聞くことができます。





  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-幼少期の-it-技術との触れ合い"><strong>幼少期の IT 技術との触れ合い</strong></h3>



  <p>私が初めて IT 技術と触れ合ったのは、小学校に入学したころ、親のマッキントッシュ・コンピューターを通してでした。<a href="https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint">MacPaint</a> でのお絵描きが大好きで、それまで遊んでいた <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch">Etch A Sketch</a> よりもはるかにかっこいいと感じました。</p>



  <p>その後、親が Windows 95 コンピューターを購入し、インターネットに接続しました。両親は重要な電話がくる予定がないかを確認してから電話線を外し、コンピューターを接続していました。Google 検索が登場したとき、家族で画面の周りに集まり、「数十件」もの検索結果に驚いていました。私たちは、誰の名前が最も多くの検索結果を引き出すかを競うゲームもしました。私のミドルネーム「ルカ」が「デジタルカメラ」に含まれているため、私が圧倒的に勝ちました。</p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>中学では卓球部に入りましたが、スポーツが自分に合わないとすぐに気付きました。</p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>そこでコンピュータークラブに転部し、初めてのビデオ編集、スプレッドシートやワードプロセッサの学習、そしてホームページビルダーという日本のソフトウェアを使った初めてのウェブサイト作成を経験しました。その頃から教会のウェブサイトの管理を始め、ステージング環境や FTP についてヘルプドキュメントやオンラインマニュアルを読みながら独学で学びました。</p>



  <p>高校では、ホームページビルダーが生成する HTML コードを見始め、ドラッグ＆ドロップエディタを使わずにサイトを編集できることに気付き、基本的な HTML と CSS も独学で習得しました。初めてのゲームを作成したのもその頃です。プレイヤーがドアをクリックして迷路を進む HTML ゲームでしたが、誰かが URL の論理を解読し、ゴールにいきなり飛ぶ「ハック」をしたことを覚えています。これが私のサイバーセキュリティと暗号化の世界への初めての導入でした。</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-情報倫理を通して多様性に目が開かれる"><strong>情報倫理を通して多様性に目が開かれる</strong></h3>



  <p>大学では情報科学を学び、IT 技術の世界にさらに深く入り込みました。修士課程と博士課程に進み、三つの大学で情報系の授業を教え始めました。日本語と英語の両方で、学部生と大学院生にプログラミングの基本（C、Java）、情報学、画像処理などを教えました。</p>



  <p>しかし、最も好きだった科目は情報倫理でした。これは、様々な文化が IT 技術に対して異なる倫理的価値観を持っていることを強調するものでした。</p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>例えば、あるコミュニティは必要に迫られてソフトウェアを海賊版で使用し、あるコミュニティは検閲を回避するためにログイン情報を共有し、他のコミュニティはこれらの行為を非倫理的と見なします。</p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>この科目を教えることで、世界の多様性に目が開かれました。オープンな対話、共感的な聞き方、そして創造的な思考の重要性を強く感じました。</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpressとの出会い"><strong>WordPressとの出会い</strong></h3>



  <p>大学の研究室で初めて WordPress について聞きました。海外から帰国した先輩が、西洋ではこれが大人気だと言って、研究室の Web サイトを WordPress に移行しました。その時は WordPress が何であるか完全には理解していませんでしたが、流行に乗って自分が管理していた教会のウェブサイトも WordPress に移行しました。</p>



  <p>2014年に移行して以来、私がサイトを作るときのコンテンツ管理システム（CMS）の選択肢は WordPress 一択になりました。Wix を試したこともありましたが、WordPress への忠誠を再確認するだけでした。その後 Automattic に入社し、ソフトウェアの背後にあるコミュニティを発見した時には、WordPress への愛がさらに深まりました。</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-automattic-と-wordpress-コミュニティへの参加"><strong>Automattic と WordPress コミュニティへの参加</strong></h3>



  <p>ある時、私のサイトに VideoPress プラグインをインストールした際、サブスクリプションの問題でサポートが必要でした。担当者はただ一通のメールで問題を解決し、署名には「ハピネス・エンジニア」と書いていました。それを読んだ時、私は笑顔になりました。数年後<a href="https://automattic.com/">、Automattic</a> でハピネス・エンジニアの求人を見かけ、当時のやり取りを思い出しました。私は WordPress.com のサポートフォーラムで数ヶ月ボランティアをしてサポートスキルを磨き、2019年に Automattic に入社しました。</p>



  <p>入社して間もなく、WordPress は単なる CMS 以上のものであることを知りました。それはオープンソースの原則に基づく<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/">コミュニティ</a>だったのです。その年の後半には地元の WordPress ミートアップに参加し、参加者の無私と献身に驚かされました。そのミートアップでは、WordPress がそれを作るコミュニティを超えて広がっていることを学びました。</p>



  <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
  <p>WordPress は、使用する人々、すなわち開発者、デザイナー、解析者、趣味の人、ホスト、マーケティング担当者などで構成されていました。</p>
  </blockquote>



  <p>それは異なる背景を持つ人々を、多様性と受容性を大切にする安全な場所に結びつける共通の絆です。そのような人々と初めて触れ合った瞬間でした。</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-トレーニングチームでの経験"><strong>WordPress トレーニングチームでの経験</strong></h3>



  <p>2020年、コロナ禍によって対面イベントが中止される中、Automattic 内で教育プロジェクトに参加する機会がありました。そこで日本のサポートチームを指導し、内部トレーニング資料を作成し、新入社員向けの新しい教育課程を開発しました。これらの経験は私の教育への想いを再燃させました。</p>



  <p>その頃、WordPress は教育サイト <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress</a> を立ち上げました。私は Automattic 内でフルタイムのコントリビューター（貢献者）として Learn WordPress プログラムに参加するために指名され、2022年6月に WordPress プロジェクトの<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/">トレーニングチーム</a>に加わりました。最初はチームの価値観、優先事項、そして課題を理解することから始めました。次の6ヶ月間で、チームのプロセスとドキュメントを改善するために取り組みました。2022年の終わりにはチーム代表に推薦され、Trello から GitHub へのシステム移行やオンボーディングプログラムの構築などのプロジェクトをリードしました。これらの努力はチームメンバーのエンゲージメントと活動を増加させ、その結果、Learn WordPress サイトへのトラフィックとエンゲージメントの増加にも寄与しています。</p>


  <div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id7139_67c6bb-b3 alignfull has-theme-palette1-background-color kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-3-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">

  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_2978b6-8b"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wordcamp-asia-2023.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wordcamp-asia-2023-1024x683.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Asia 2023" class="kb-img wp-image-7148" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_b385b7-0e"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-at-wordcamp-tokyo-2023.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="579" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-at-wordcamp-tokyo-2023-1024x579.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Tokyo 2023" class="kb-img wp-image-7149" /></a>
  </div></div>



  <div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column7139_f93224-d3"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">
  <a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wrodcamp-europe-2024-scaled.jpg" class="kb-advanced-image-link"><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ben-wrodcamp-europe-2024-1024x683.jpg" alt="Ben Evans at WordCamp Europe 2024" class="kb-img wp-image-7150" /></a>
  </div></div>

  </div></div>


  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-自分らしくいられる安全な場所"><strong>WordPress &#8211; 自分らしくいられる安全な場所</strong></h3>



  <p>私の IT 技術との関わりを振り返ると、多様性と受容性を大切にする安全な場所を作ることに貢献していると感じた瞬間が最も活力を感じました。情報倫理の教育はその基盤を築き、ハピネス・エンジニアとしてのカスタマーサポートは1対1のやり取りでこれを実践させてくれました。新入社員の教育では、これをより大きなグループに対して作ることができ、WordPressトレーニングチームへの貢献はこれをグローバルなコミュニティにまで広げました。こういった働きをしている時こそ、自分は最も自分らしいと感じます。</p>



  <p>自分らしくいられる安全な場所を作ることは一度きりのプロジェクトではなく、謙虚で好奇心旺盛な人との関わりを通じて形成されます。すべての会話は安全を築くか、破壊するかのどちらかです。私は最初の WordPress ミートアップで感じた、受け入れられる喜びを鮮明に覚えています。私の希望は、WordPress コミュニティと触れ合うすべての人が、その同じ受容性を経験することです。私も周囲の人々も本当の自分であり続けるために、WordPress というこの安全な場所に貢献し続けることを楽しみにしています。</p>
  <p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/a-welcoming-community-that-embraces-authenticity/">A welcoming community that embraces authenticity &#8211; 本物らしさを受け入れる温かいコミュニティ</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 02 Jul 2024 23:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9:"Ben Evans";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.6 Release Candidate 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=17469";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/07/wordpress-6-6-release-candidate-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10513:"<p>WordPress 6.6 RC2 is ready for download and testing!</p>



  <p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development</strong>.<strong> Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, please evaluate RC2 on a test server or a local environment.</p>



  <p>Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.</p>



  <p>You can test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in four ways:</p>



  <table><tbody><tr><th>Plugin</th><td>Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</td></tr><tr><th>Direct Download</th><td>Download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.6-RC2.zip">RC2 version (zip)</a> and install it on a WordPress website.</td></tr><tr><th>Command Line</th><td>Use the this <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/">WP-CLI</a> command:<br /><code>wp core update --version=6.6-RC2</code></td></tr><tr><th>WordPress Playground</th><td>Use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D">6.6 RC2 WordPress Playground instance</a> (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.</td></tr></tbody></table>Please test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in one or more of these four ways.



  <p>The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is <strong>July 16, 2024</strong>. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-6/">6.6 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-6/">6.6-related posts</a> in the next few weeks for further details.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in WordPress 6.6 RC2?</h2>



  <p>Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 19 bug fixes for the Editor and more than <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&milestone=6.6&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">20 tickets for WordPress Core</a>.</p>



  <p>Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-beta-1/">Beta 1 announcement</a>. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.6?since=2024-06-24&until=2024-06-30">GitHub commits for 6.6</a> since June 25</li>



  <li><a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&changetime=06%2F25%2F2024..07%2F01%2F2024&milestone=6.6&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Closed Trac tickets</a> since June 25</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a>. Then, check out this list:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/hallway-hangout-section-styles-and-other-block-style-variation-updates/">Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/07/01/recap-hallway-hangout-exploring-grid-layouts/">Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/editing-custom-fields-from-connected-blocks/">Editing custom fields from connected blocks</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/updates-to-the-interactivity-api-in-6-6/">Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/dev-notes+6-6/">All 6.6-related developer notes</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can contribute. Here&#8217;s how</h2>



  <p>WordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get involved in testing</h3>



  <p>Testing for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">This detailed guide</a> will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you&#8217;re new to testing, follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">this general testing guide</a> for more details on getting set up.</p>



  <p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">WordPress Trac</a>. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



  <p>Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Search for vulnerabilities</h3>



  <p>From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 9), the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2024/06/04/wordpress-6-6-is-coming/">financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities</a> doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Update your theme or plugin</h3>



  <p>If you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. </p>



  <p>Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC2, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the <em>“Tested up to”</em> version in your <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/">plugin’s readme file</a> to 6.6.</p>



  <p>If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">support forum</a>.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Help translate WordPress</h3>



  <p>Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev/">help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages</a>.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Release the haiku</h2>



  <p>6.6 draws near.<br />In two weeks the final&#8217;s here.<br />Test. Test. Then test more.</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-right"><em>Props to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/juanmaguitar/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>juanmaguitar</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>meher</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>desrosj</a></em> <em>and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/atachibana/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>atachibana</a> for peer review.</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 02 Jul 2024 17:09:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8:"marybaum";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:11:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50:"HeroPress: Voices Of WordCamp Europe: Thabo Tswana";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"https://heropress.com/?p=7211";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:143:"https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-thabo-tswana/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=voices-of-wordcamp-europe-thabo-tswana";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:884:"<img width="1024" height="895" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/thabo_topher_short-1024x895.webp" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" /><p>When I needed more Africans for HeroPress I went looking and quickly found Thabo Tswana. Since then nearly every African I&#8217;ve spoken to about how they got started in WordPress, Thabo&#8217;s name comes up. He makes things happen and he helps people grow and advance. He&#8217;s one of the people I admire most in WordPress.</p>



  <p>I didn&#8217;t know he&#8217;s be at WordCamp Europe, so I was super excited to get to meet him in person. Here&#8217;s our interview.</p>



  Thabo Tswana Interview


  <p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-thabo-tswana/">Voices Of WordCamp Europe: Thabo Tswana</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 02 Jul 2024 15:49:54 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"Do The Woo Community: Accessibility Certification with Regine Gessner";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84341";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"https://dothewoo.io/accessibility-certification-with-regine-gessner/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20215:"<div class="wp-block-group has-border-color has-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-19 wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-df14f0e3ece767c29248940486a8055c">This show is sponsored by&#8230;</p>



  <div class="wp-block-group is-vertical is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-18 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
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  <img width="500" height="500" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Omnisend-square.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-78802" />
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  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
  <p class="wp-container-content-8"><strong><a href="https://your.omnisend.com/onlywoo_dothewoo">Omnisend</a></strong>: Whether it&#8217;s for integration into your Woo product, or building sites for clients, <strong>Omnisend</strong> is the solution for email and SMS marketing with their CRM solution for WooCommerce shops and your own website.</p>
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  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
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  <img width="1224" height="1224" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/dothewoo.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Hostinger_Vertical_Purple-e1668465093968.jpg?resize=1224%2C1224&ssl=1" alt="Hostinger" class="wp-image-73505" />
  </div>
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  <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
  <p class="wp-container-content-10"><strong><a href="https://hostinger.com">Hostinger</a></strong>: As a builder or an agency managing multiple sites, check out <strong>Hostinger</strong>. Whether you are building a WordPress site or specifically, a Woo store, their infrastructure brings your clients sites speed, uptime and security.</p>
  </div>
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  Episode Transcript
  <div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p>Anne:<br />Hello everybody. Welcome to the next episode of All Things WordPress and WooCommerce in regards to accessibility. My name is Anne Bovelett. I&#8217;m an accessibility specialist. I have a lot to say about accessibility, and I try to teach anyone who wants to hear it and probably those who don&#8217;t want to hear it too. Accessibility is very important. Since we&#8217;re talking e-commerce, we&#8217;re also talking about revenue. It doesn&#8217;t really matter why you make something accessible, as long as you do it. If your web shop is losing revenue by the thousands or millions because you&#8217;re not making it accessible, you&#8217;d have good reason to do it, right?</p>



  <p>I know that came out a bit harsh, but I don&#8217;t mean it that way. We&#8217;re trying to come from a kind place. One of the things we&#8217;ve learned lately is that people are saying, &#8220;We don&#8217;t know where to go. We don&#8217;t know who to turn to. We don&#8217;t know who to ask or who to trust.&#8221; I can understand that this is a very uneasy situation to be in.</p>



  <p>I&#8217;m sure that if my co-host Taeke Reijenga could have been here today, he would have started filling us in on a lot of stuff in that regard. Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, he couldn&#8217;t be here today, but he&#8217;ll probably be back next episode. So, let&#8217;s see how far we get today.</p>



  <p>This show is not just about the people that everybody already knows. We love the familiar faces, but it&#8217;s also about introducing some people you may not know yet. Today, I&#8217;m super excited to introduce Regine Gessner from the IAAP. I&#8217;ll ask her to explain what the IAAP is, who she is, what the IAAP is doing, and about an interesting discussion we had in December about certification. Hi Regine, welcome.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Hello Anne. Thank you very much for having me here today. I&#8217;m very happy to join in. My name is Regine Gessner, and I am working for the IAAP, which stands for the International Association of Accessibility Professionals, an association based in the U.S. The IAAP started 10 years ago and has developed several chapters in different regions. Four years ago, we started the German-speaking chapter, called IAAP DACH, which stands for Deutschland, Austria, and Switzerland. We are in charge of the German-speaking community and are the contact point for these countries.</p>



  <p>The IAAP&#8217;s mission is to network and exchange ideas. That&#8217;s one of our key pillars. Another is certification and advanced training. These are our key points. Since we started here in the German-speaking area, we have more than 350 members, including organizations. When you become a member, you are a member of the global IAAP, but then you will be directed to the region where you are based. Worldwide, IAAP has 6,500 members and about 220 organizations.</p>



  <p>So, that&#8217;s basically what the IAAP is. My position, since a bit more than a year ago, is to manage everything full-time, as it became too much to handle voluntarily. I am the main key contact for all people interested in membership and certifications. I&#8217;m the connection to the global team in the US and coordinate our working groups, board, and some of our tools.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Alright, so just for our audience, because we have mentioned certification several times, this is about the certification for specialists in accessibility in several disciplines. These certifications are sometimes a topic of discussion regarding their value and importance. We will get into that later on because this was the basis of our discussion in December.</p>



  <p>One of the reasons I asked you to join us today is because we know that in many organizations, regardless of size, it matters that you have people trained to maintain accessibility over time. Accessibility is not a one-off, is it?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />That&#8217;s right. It&#8217;s not a one-off; it&#8217;s an ongoing process. It&#8217;s not something that is done and then over. It&#8217;s something you have to start and build up capacity or competence in your company and teams. To implement it is not only technical but also a mindset in the people. That is very important and a key pillar. It must be obvious and natural that thinking about accessibility is part of the company or structure.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Let me ask you a controversial question. Do you think companies should make CPAC certification an obligatory certification for everybody working on their digital representation? Would that be a good idea?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />I would say yes. From my personal view, even as a newcomer in this topic, I did the CPAC certification, and it gave me a basic understanding of what we&#8217;re talking about. It covers disability models, types of disabilities, barriers people face in the digital world, what can help them, and what&#8217;s important to know when building a website, app, or documents. It&#8217;s not a technical certification but a basic knowledge one. So, I would recommend it as a good foundation when building your team.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Yeah. I&#8217;ve been thinking about this topic long and hard, especially now that we&#8217;re talking about it with this podcast. I hear a lot of companies say, &#8220;Making things accessible is too expensive.&#8221; But what if you integrate this into the core of your business? If it becomes second nature, getting the CPAC certification teaches you a lot about the why. And if you understand the why, it comes more naturally to a person.</p>



  <p>This is why I was asking this question. It&#8217;s tough because, in an ideal world, you&#8217;d want everyone certified. For example, if you own a web shop with a lot of people coding and creating content, you can say, &#8220;It&#8217;s expensive to remediate or keep fixing things.&#8221; But if you have to keep fixing things, it means people are doing things the wrong way. I would love to hear from our audience if they agree with this or why they disagree. Let&#8217;s discuss this in the next couple of weeks as people respond.</p>



  <p>Another thing I wanted to ask you, the DACH chapter in Germany has about 350 members. While I&#8217;m happy there are so many members, I&#8217;m also worried because, with the upcoming legislation, it&#8217;s sad that the law has to push us to speed up a process we&#8217;ve been waiting for the past 20 years.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Yes, I agree. In the beginning of 2023, we had about a hundred members, and now we&#8217;ve really increased. But for three countries, or even the whole world, having just 6,500 members in IAAP is not much.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />But there is a great thing. It means there is opportunity for people working in web design, development, content creation, marketing, and communication to learn and expand their services. I&#8217;m sure many companies will want to do this and might outsource it. There are pros and cons to that, but let&#8217;s say our audience includes web shop owners, developers, designers, and other disciplines. If a web agency starts thinking about accessibility, learning about it, and expanding their services, what would you recommend from an IAAP point of view?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />If a company has no connection with accessibility yet, they can start by joining the community to network and learn. We offer several tools for our members to get in touch with each other, such as online breakfast meetings and networking events. These connections and exchanges are very valuable. Members can discuss their issues and concerns, and the group can help each other. This is very helpful.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />This is wonderful and very similar to the WordPress community, where we help each other succeed. It kept me coming back to WordPress in general. People exchange information and support each other. I hear complaints about Slack, and I’m one of them. Can you tell our listeners where they can go on your website to find out how to become a member and if they can talk to someone before becoming a member?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />It&#8217;s simple. They can email contact@iaap-dach.org, which is for the German-speaking region. This will come to me, and I can get in touch. I prefer personal calls to understand better. You don&#8217;t necessarily need to be a member to do certifications, but being a member has its benefits.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Is the same approach available for the international department if people go to accessibilityassociation.org, or is this specific to the German chapter?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />We have several chapters, including a Nordic chapter for Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland, a UK chapter, and a Mexican chapter. More chapters are in the process of starting. You are always welcome to contact the global colleagues from IAAP.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />That&#8217;s wonderful because we have listeners from all over the world. Investing in accessibility can be costly for some, but it&#8217;s essential. Let&#8217;s discuss the December DACH region discussion about certification. People sometimes look for shortcuts to show certification without the proper intentions. There are also people with 10-20 years of experience who might question the need for certification. For example, someone who wrote the book on accessibility guidelines might be offered a junior salary because they lack certification.</p>



  <p>This is an interesting dialogue because certification is important. If someone gets certified, it means they learned a lot about the topic. There are several certifications, such as CPAC and WAS. Could you explain the prerequisites for the WAS certification?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Yes, to start with the basic certification, CPAC, it gives you basic knowledge, but not expertise in digital accessibility. The WAS (Web Accessibility Specialist) certification requires a minimum of three years of documented roles and responsibilities in web accessibility. It’s not just enough to have knowledge of HTML or JavaScript; hands-on experience and knowledge of code elements and assistive technology are needed. This exam is for those with significant experience.</p>



  <p>The same applies to the ADS (Accessible Document Specialist) certification. These certifications are valid for three years and need to be renewed or maintained by collecting credential points through training or speaking at conferences. This ensures that knowledge stays current.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Accessibility is never a one-off, right?</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Exactly, it’s an ongoing process.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />This brings up the importance of accredited courses, like those offered by the Accessibility Collective</p>



  <p>. They provide credits for IAAP certification, which helps ensure the courses give you long-term benefits. Companies need to understand where to find the correct information and how to avoid conflicting advice. Referring to the WCAG guidelines and talking to the IAAP are crucial.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />I agree. The IAAP is not perfect, but we provide a platform, guidelines, and legislation. The discussion on certification is important, and there are many specialists with years of experience. They can use their references and tools to prove their expertise. The IAAP is one channel, but there are many pieces to the puzzle that help us on our way.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Yes, altogether we can take the fear out of doing accessibility right. Every time I speak to companies, I emphasize that accessibility is everyone’s task, not just one person&#8217;s. Support and teamwork are essential. If someone finds an issue, it’s about helping each other, not pointing fingers.</p>



  <p>If someone contacts you about an issue with your web shop, it’s a gift, even if it’s wrapped in anger. Engaging with them can turn them into ambassadors. Ignoring accessibility can mean losing potential customers, and it&#8217;s important to take these opportunities to improve.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Absolutely, everyone wants access to everything. For example, around 15% of people in Europe have some kind of disability and can&#8217;t use everything fully. This potential customer base is missed if your shop isn’t accessible.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Yes, there&#8217;s so much potential. Ignoring accessibility leaves about 13 trillion dollars on the table globally, which is larger than the Chinese economy. This includes all accessibility, not just digital. Restaurants not accessible to wheelchairs miss not just the person in the wheelchair, but also their friends and family.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Exactly, the whole group can&#8217;t go there.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />So, if someone contacts you about an accessibility issue, consider it a valuable opportunity. Improving accessibility benefits everyone. Thank you so much, Regine, for coming on the show today at such short notice. Your insights were invaluable.</p>



  <p>Regine:<br />Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure to be here, and I will make sure to provide all necessary links and information for your audience to learn more about us, our certifications, member benefits, and events.</p>



  <p>Anne:<br />Thank you. And thank you to Greyd in Munich for sponsoring this podcast. This has been a different show than usual, but flexibility is important. We&#8217;ll talk about WordCamp Europe next month. Thank you, Bob Dunn, and Do the Woo for giving us this platform to discuss digital accessibility, especially in e-commerce. If you have questions or comments, please reach out to us. Thank you and see you next month.</p>
  </div>




  <p>In this episode of <strong>All Things WordPress and WooCommerce via our series on accessibility</strong>, host <strong>Anne Bovelett </strong>is joined by <strong>Regine Gessner </strong>from the<strong> International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP)</strong>, as they explore the role of certifications in accessibility, the challenges companies face, and practical steps for integrating accessibility into digital projects.</p>



  <p>They also address common misconceptions and the need for ongoing education and community support to ensure web accessibility becomes second nature in digital development.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Highlights</h2>



  <p><strong>Introduction to Accessibility</strong>: Anne Bovelett emphasizes the importance of accessibility in e-commerce and its impact on revenue, stating that accessibility should be integral to digital projects.</p>



  <p>R<strong>ole of IAAP</strong>: Regine Gessner introduces the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) and its mission to network, exchange ideas, offer certifications, and provide advanced training in accessibility.</p>



  <p><strong>Certification Importance</strong>: The discussion focuses on the value of certifications like CPAC and WAS in establishing credibility and knowledge in accessibility. Regine explains the prerequisites and renewal process for these certifications.</p>



  <p><strong>Challenges in Accessibility</strong>: The common challenges companies face in implementing accessibility, such as understanding its importance, integrating it into core business practices, and overcoming the perception of high costs.</p>



  <p><strong>Community and Networking</strong>: IAAP offers various tools for members to connect and exchange knowledge, including online breakfast meetings and networking events, highlighting the importance of community support.</p>



  <p><strong>Legislation and Compliance</strong>: Upcoming legislation is mentioned as a driving force for companies to prioritize accessibility, despite it being a long-standing issue.</p>



  <p><strong>Practical Steps for Companies</strong>: Recommendations for web agencies and companies on starting their accessibility journey, including joining IAAP, networking, and leveraging available resources and tools.</p>



  <p><strong>Personal Stories</strong>: Regine shares a personal story to illustrate the real-world impact of accessibility issues, emphasizing the need for inclusive digital experiences.</p>



  <p><strong>Business Opportunities</strong>: Anne and Regine discuss the potential market and revenue opportunities that accessible web design can unlock, highlighting the significant percentage of the population with disabilities.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong><a href="https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/s/">The International Association of Accessibility Professionals</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://theadminbar.com/accessibility-weekly/">The Admin Bar, Accessibility Week</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2Y4t4wtnU">IAAP D·A·CH Online Seminar Zertifizierungen</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://iaap-dach.org/nachrichten.html">IAAP D·A·CH</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/regine-gessner/">Regine on LinkedIn</a></strong></li>
  </ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:51:12 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"Do The Woo Community: A Deep Dive into the Metorik Insights Report for WooCommerce with Bryce Adams";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=84462";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"https://dothewoo.io/a-deep-dive-into-the-metorik-insights-report-for-woocommerce-with-bryce-adams/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50211:"Episode Transcript
  <div class="wp-block-group has-global-padding is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
  <p>Marcus:<br />Hey everyone. Welcome to another BizChat here on Do the Woo. My name is Marcus Burnett and I&#8217;m a community marketer with GoDaddy. I am here today with my wonderful co-host from Barn2 plugins, Katie. Keith, how are you today, Katie?</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Hey, great, thanks. What about you, Marcus?</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah, not doing too bad. We&#8217;re spanning all parts of the globe today, so it&#8217;s morning for me, afternoon for you, and evening for our guest, but doing pretty good. As usual, we have an excellent guest, and like I said, today we&#8217;re spanning all different parts of the globe. Joining us today from the ecommerce Marketing suite of tools at Metorik is founder Bryce Adams. Welcome to the show, Bryce.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Thanks, Marcus. Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it&#8217;s really cool to be back on a Do the Woo show. I think the last time I did was maybe half a decade ago. I don&#8217;t know. I love being able to say half a decade.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Absolutely.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />But yeah, it&#8217;s cool to be here.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Happy to have you here. Bryce is here to talk about a report he recently published on the State of WooCommerce at Scale. But first, would you please share with folks a little bit about yourself and your company, Metorik?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Sure, yeah. So my name is Bryce and my background in Woo, I guess, started at WooCommerce itself back in 2014. I was there initially in a support role and eventually in a development role. Then Automattic acquired Woo in 2015. So I joined that and that happened pretty quickly, and then left in 2016 to do Metorik. So that&#8217;s like eight years ago now. I guess the majority of my career has been spent on it. Metorik is basically an analytics and email automation tool for WooCommerce and for Shopify and maybe more platforms in the future. But primarily we started with WooCommerce back in 2015 and only really added Shopify a few years ago. The majority of the customers we have around the world are WooCommerce stores.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />So let&#8217;s move on to the report then. You&#8217;ve recently published an insights report based on the sites which are using Metorik with WooCommerce. Can you tell us a bit about that?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah, for sure. It was something we wanted to do for a really long time. I think even a few years in, as it was starting to approach several thousand stores, I was starting to see trends and patterns. One of the most common feature requests we got was benchmarking and trying to understand how a store compared to other stores, especially in Woo, where it can sometimes feel like we&#8217;re all kind of isolated on our own server and our own websites, not necessarily all on one platform. There was a lot of demand for clarity into what was going on. So people were asking for it a while ago, but a project like this is challenging to do well and at the quality level that I wanted.</p>



  <p>We couldn&#8217;t do it with the few of us that were working together, but the team&#8217;s growing recently and we&#8217;ve got more resources. Luke, someone who just joined primarily for marketing and design-related stuff, said, &#8220;Oh, I reckon I could throw something together if you can get the data.&#8221; We were just sitting around the couch here in Melbourne, brainstorming ideas. It&#8217;d be cool to see that stat and then on Twitter, I think Katie, we talked about some stats even a couple of months ago, about bundles. I was also talking with Vova from Freemius about different subscription stats. We started to create this foundation to do this at scale, thinking about privacy at the forefront of that. So anonymized samples of all that data and just using averages to try to paint a picture of what was going on. Once we had that list to work from, it started to be pretty fun. We were just going through a list like, okay, let&#8217;s try and figure out that metric and that one, and then you&#8217;ve got to actually dig through it a lot more to find the interesting parts. But it was a big project.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I think it&#8217;s really useful for companies like yourself that have access to data of multiple sites to publish that because, as you said a minute ago, WooCommerce sites are all installed on people&#8217;s own servers unless you&#8217;re using Woo Express or something and people just don&#8217;t have those benchmarks. I&#8217;ve seen a bit of that going on in the industry. For example, WP Fusion&#8217;s year in review reports are really useful from a WordPress perspective because they publish data about the different sites running WP Fusion, which LMS plugins are the most popular and page builders and so on. So it was really nice to see a WooCommerce version of that.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I think the fun thing for me was this was, I mean, I love Woo. It&#8217;s where I first started working, my first job really was at Woo, and then it&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve really ever known. I love it as a platform. I love what it enables, the fact that people can run their own site, control everything, customize everything, but also own everything. That idea of data ownership is so important to me. Woo enables that. Part of doing the report was wanting to validate, even though all these sites are their little islands out there on the internet, the scale that Woo is operating at is massive. I don&#8217;t think people realize it. We hear numbers being thrown around, several million Woo stores and things like that, but they don&#8217;t really mean anything until you actually see the data behind it and the scale and that validation, the brands that are using it. I don&#8217;t think people know how many Woo stores out there are doing millions of dollars a year in revenue. There&#8217;s tens of thousands, but yeah, I&#8217;m not sure the exact number, but there are so many stores out there that are really pushing the limits of Woo and people don&#8217;t know about it. So it&#8217;s cool to share.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />You said that Luke came in and kind of threw something together, but this is actually really polished and really nice.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Luke is so talented.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Before we get into some of the different pieces of it, I do want to let people know that they can also follow along with us at metorik.com/woocommerce-insights. We&#8217;ll leave that link in the show notes, but if people want to look at it while we&#8217;re having a discussion here, that&#8217;s metorik.com/woocommerce-insights. I ended up writing just a ton of questions basically on every slide, so I don&#8217;t know if we&#8217;ll get to all of them.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />That&#8217;s awesome. No, whatever is interesting.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />I kind of want to jump in, maybe start from the top and work our way down. One of the first things that you shared in here is that the average age of WooCommerce stores is four years. That kind of lines up with the start of COVID in my head. How do you think COVID changed the landscape of ecommerce or specifically, WooCommerce?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />What we saw when COVID happened? Yeah, it&#8217;s an interesting perspective when you are coming at it as a SaaS because maybe as a plugin maker, Katie, you would&#8217;ve seen at the time an increase in sales as more people were setting up Woo stores. But for us, it wasn&#8217;t just an influx of more stores, but what was really interesting was what every store was doing across the line, the scale of the growth during that time. We have some reports we were looking at back then just in terms of being able to run the app and see the scale of order volume and Airbnb and things like that across everyone. It&#8217;s like a spike around COVID and just consistently through that whole period, we found that on average every store was doing better. There were definitely a lot of new stores starting, but I found it more interesting to see the existing stores all grow as a result of it.</p>



  <p>Of course, that all dropped off, and you can actually, it&#8217;s pretty interesting when you look at the higher scale, a five-year period, you see that growth and that decline happen through the actual order volume that&#8217;s happening. But in terms of the age, a lot of it comes down to the fact that Woo itself is not that old. The oldest a store could possibly be is probably 10 years, I&#8217;m not sure the exact age. Over time, very few stores are going to go from 11 years and still be running after all that time or necessarily be on the same platform. I think four years is actually probably bigger than what I&#8217;d expect just because Woo is such a young platform.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />That makes sense. A slightly more practical question, I was interested to see that you said 32% of stores are tracking their costs and profit as well as their sales. I was interested because I didn&#8217;t know it was possible to do via a website analytics tool. Everybody knows you&#8217;d use it to get sales data and things like that, which is a lot better than the sales data you get from WooCommerce reports in core, which is very basic obviously. But how does that work, tracking costs and profit, because that data isn&#8217;t entered into the WooCommerce admin?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I think that&#8217;s actually something that I&#8217;d love to see WooCommerce core improve, having the ability to set up a product cost. It should just be built into Woo by default. Shopify has it by default, almost Square does, almost every other ecommerce or commerce platform does because it is something that if you look at like 80/20, 80% plus of stores probably do have a cost that they want to set on a product. It should be core. It&#8217;s not, but we decided to offer that as a feature. Before that though, we just integrated directly with the WooCommerce Cost of Goods plugin, which itself Skyverge made, and that&#8217;s probably explained why it was so good and it worked really well because for us, we were able to then basically build this whole profit</p>



  <p>reporting feature and have all historical costs come in and profit reports come in without stores having to do anything. It was really cool because they&#8217;d never even had that. They&#8217;d set up a product cost inside of WooCommerce Cost of Goods, and there were some basic reports, but all of a sudden we were able just to bring that data in and kind of cleared it.</p>



  <p>It got to a point where we were just telling everyone to go and buy the Cost of Goods plugin. People were like, well, I don&#8217;t want to install a new plugin just to have a field on my product page to set the cost. That&#8217;s very fair, especially when they don&#8217;t need the reports and the other functionality from it. So we decided to build it into the app. Of course, it morphed into something much bigger. We got shipping transaction, extra cost. You can say a lot of people want us to do their monthly salary costs and office expenses. They really want to have a bigger picture of things. We&#8217;re not really meant to be an accounting or profit tool in that way, but over time it&#8217;s kind of becoming that. People want more and more from there.</p>



  <p>One of the other cool things you can do as a SaaS when it comes to this kind of thing is we integrate with Google Ads, TikTok ads, Facebook ads, all these different providers to let people bring in their live advertising costs from those platforms. It starts to be a really cool experience as a user because you&#8217;re getting all this data from different places in one location and getting to actually report on it, aggregate it.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />What&#8217;s keeping the other 70-odd percent or so from doing the same? Is it a knowledge thing about whether they don&#8217;t know that that exists or is it an industry thing where it doesn&#8217;t make sense for some folks?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I think industry plays a big part. Privacy is another issue. We don&#8217;t have it in a way, again, it was just kind of bolted onto the app. It wasn&#8217;t what we initially set out to do. We don&#8217;t have a way for you to just say, this user can see all the reports, but they can&#8217;t see the cost and profit. That&#8217;s a common thing that a store owner might want to hide from their team. They want them in there using metrics for the reports. A lot of users have asked us to do that and we&#8217;ll probably do that soon. I think that would increase adoption a little bit. But also, we&#8217;re not trying to be an app for them to figure out their profit and pay taxes on. We don&#8217;t encourage it in that way. When people come to proper reporting, they&#8217;re probably looking for that level of detail. They need to incorporate all their costs across the whole thing, salary to everything.</p>



  <p>The interesting part on our end starts to be trying to figure out reports based on that. We added these reports to the app a few months ago for doing cohorts, customer cohorts based on when they join by the month they join, week they join, or maybe the first product or first coupon they use. It&#8217;s really cool to split your customers up into those cohorts automatically and then see the lifetime profit and profit margin over time, how that changes. Then you start to understand not just at what point a customer has spent enough that they&#8217;ve reached a target revenue per customer, but they&#8217;ve actually become profitable. You can measure that and be like, by month 14, we know on average that&#8217;s where we&#8217;ve got enough profit from each customer. I love that part of it more than being an accounting tool.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />It&#8217;s really helping WooCommerce store owners to run their company as a proper business. A lot are more hobbyist sites and it helps to bring them to the next level. Some of them will already be doing that, of course, but a lot of WooCommerce store owners don&#8217;t do that kind of thing. This is really making it much more accessible. I&#8217;m kind of wishing I use WooCommerce on my own website. I use Easy Digital Downloads and I can&#8217;t access any of this because quite sensibly you&#8217;ve built this for WooCommerce and Shopify, the two biggest players. I get that.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I have had some requests for EDD, but every single request has come from people I knew in the community who would want it. Then I start to think about how many stores that is and it&#8217;s maybe a couple of hundred that I know would pay for it as well. It starts to be a little harder.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Yeah, totally agree.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />But I&#8217;ve always wanted to build it for EDD because all my friends and all my colleagues are using EDD rather than Woo. At the start, it wasn&#8217;t like I could really contact too many of my friends running WordPress businesses and say, please use my product because they were using EDD.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />You mentioned earlier about maybe they should put something in core related to the cost of goods. I was thinking that when I saw your stat about subscriptions, 28% of all the WooCommerce stores that you track use subscriptions. The vast majority of them will be WooCommerce subscriptions to one specific plugin, of course. I know they will never put that in core because they must make so much money from that premium only add-on.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I don&#8217;t think they make enough from it to be honest.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Because it&#8217;s so valuable in recurring revenue.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Exactly. It&#8217;s one thing that we&#8217;d probably do next year and we want to improve in a report based on the feedback, but also just based on what I think would be interesting is actually saying, while maybe it&#8217;s 27% of stores that have subscriptions on, does that actually account for more like 40-50% of the revenue or are those stores by default on average double or triple stores that don&#8217;t have subscriptions? We didn&#8217;t go into that and I think we&#8217;d like to expand on that, but I think that would actually show that while maybe 27-30% are using subscriptions, those stores tend to be much more successful because it&#8217;s such a great business model if you can make it work.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah, absolutely. I want to shift gears a tiny little bit and talk about, you have a couple of slides in here about the top themes and plugins in WooCommerce stores. Looking at the top themes and plugins, I see Elementor ranking pretty high in both and Classic Editor at number five in the top plugins.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Not too surprised to see that.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah, native WordPress right now with full site editing isn&#8217;t quite ready to handle the majority of WooCommerce stores.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Well, I think that indicates that there&#8217;s still a heavy dependence on the Classic Editor for sure. A lot of that might come through other builders that are being used, but also maybe other WooCommerce plugins and stuff that aren&#8217;t quite there yet. I know even for us, we&#8217;ve been integrating with commerce blocks and stuff for the checkout recently for an update we&#8217;ve been working on. I think a lot of the filters that we needed were only added in a WooCommerce version that just came out or is about to come out. That&#8217;s certainly fine if things take time and it&#8217;s good to take time to get it right, but if we&#8217;re an app that&#8217;s trying to really stay ahead and move with Woo, we were really only able to integrate with some of those features in a version that&#8217;s just coming out now on June 24. It&#8217;s going to take time for that shift to happen, maybe longer than anyone&#8217;s expecting.</p>



  <p>Marcus, while you mentioned that, it makes me think about a part of the report that I found a little surprising and actually came out of a discussion I had recently about PHP versions. I noticed that 7.4 is still at 45% of WooCommerce stores that we&#8217;re tracking. I think that&#8217;s actually higher than the average across all of WordPress generally. There is that kind of fear when it comes to an ecommerce store. Upgrades come at a very big cost if it messes up. If your site goes down or if something&#8217;s incompatible and you have downtime, it&#8217;s not just downtime, it&#8217;s losing money time. That&#8217;s a very valid concern for an ecommerce store.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah, one of the other stats that just screamed off the page at me was that the average number of active plugins is 58 on a WooCommerce store. So compatibility-wise, you have to make sure that all 58 of those are ready to move beyond PHP 7.4 before you upgrade. But also, why so many and what do the annual costs look like? Not all of those plugins are going to be free. I know a lot of WooCommerce plugins cost an annual fee.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah. I think we are always, and I think that comes with a caveat with this report, we&#8217;re looking at stores that are willing to pay us, Metorik, as an app, at least $20 a month, and in most cases, $100 plus a month for an app for their WooCommerce store. They aren&#8217;t reflective of every WooCommerce store. I think with that means they&#8217;re willing to spend for sure at least two, $3,000 a year on their website if they&#8217;re willing to pay that much to us as an app for their website. It&#8217;s reasonable to think that most of them would have 10, 20 plus active subscriptions, but with that cost comes so much value because a lot of these stores are doing significant numbers and significant volume. If they wanted to have a similar setup, an equivalent setup on another platform like Shopify, they would be looking at a larger annual cost for sure.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I enjoyed the section about order milestones. I spent quite a while looking at that and trying to visualize the typical store and how long it takes them to get any significant momentum and so on. It is interesting to see that the majority, 76%, get to a thousand orders and it takes just over a year, whereas it&#8217;s a pretty small number that make a hundred thousand orders ever, which is 7.9%, and that takes multiple years. A million orders, which kind of makes sense, is only 1%. It&#8217;s interesting to see the</p>



  <p>dropoff. It made me wonder how WooCommerce compared with that regard to other platforms that might be more enterprise-tailored or something, whereas lots of WooCommerce stores are more small.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah, that&#8217;s a good point. Look, Shopify for sure, I think the number would be a bit quicker, but I don&#8217;t know necessarily how many are getting to that scale as well. I think it would be similar, but again, I do think it always comes back to if the store is investing a lot more in their online presence through paying more for the ecommerce platform, through spending more on hosting or developers or marketing costs, any of those things, they&#8217;re typically going to be a bigger store. I think WooCommerce by default is a cheaper option, so you do tend to get stores that invest less in marketing at the start. But then that&#8217;s what we saw that I found really interesting with this report. You kind of get to that a hundred K, and we didn&#8217;t have enough time to really show a good picture between that a hundred and a million, but you scale so much faster at that point because you&#8217;ve already got the momentum, you&#8217;ve already got the infrastructure set up, and probably more than anything, you&#8217;re at a point in the business where you want to invest in marketing and other ways to improve your store.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />It kind of fits with a theory I&#8217;ve been developing about the way that WordPress and WooCommerce are growing more widely. If you look at data on Built With, which I was looking at yesterday, I think I tweeted about it actually, if you look at WordPress and WooCommerce&#8217;s growth for the top hundred thousand sites, the top million sites, they&#8217;re actually going down a bit. They&#8217;re declining, but then if you tick the whole internet box on Built With, they&#8217;re going up quite rapidly. So that says to me that the growth is in the smaller websites, and I thought that might fit with your data that the majority have a smaller number of orders as well.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah. I think the tricky thing with all of those numbers that are out there with Built With in different companies that try to track the state of ecommerce across the whole internet is that we just don&#8217;t know how many of those sites are actually operating and have at least 20 sales a year. You&#8217;ve got to learn a hundred, and I think really the number of stores that is like sub a hundred orders a year is the majority probably. And that&#8217;s okay. There&#8217;s still so many stores out there that are doing larger numbers, but especially with sites that are just being set up and not running, you can do that basically for free on WooCommerce. We always have to take those numbers with a grain of salt.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah, I was looking at that chart as well. Less than 10% of stores make it to that a hundred thousand plus orders mark within an average time of four years or so to make it to this milestone. Why do you think stores don&#8217;t stick it out? The average time to a million plus is like six years. Is it just a patience issue? Do people just need to be in it for the long run? Do people give up too early?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Maybe. Maybe they&#8217;ve switched platforms as well. It&#8217;s hard to really paint that picture in a report like this, but it&#8217;s something that we see tends to happen. Stores get to a certain size and they end up then wanting to try a different platform, become Shopify or something custom. I&#8217;ve seen stores go to Magento, and so I think that sometimes can be a reason. But also it&#8217;s just really hard to get to that scale. You see people on Shopify, especially because they send out these trophies and things like that to commemorate when you get to certain milestones, they send a physical item. I think you order it through them to merchants and you see people posting on Twitter, but the reality is there aren&#8217;t that many stores that are getting a million plus orders. That&#8217;s a big volume. If you&#8217;re doing a hundred plus average AOV, that&#8217;s like a hundred million. So a more realistic average Woo store, I don&#8217;t think we published it in it. The number I was seeing was something like off the top of my head, 30, 40,000 orders, something around that bracket. But that&#8217;s still massive, especially if an average order is a hundred dollars.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />The ones that are switching platforms, what is making them want to do that? What is WooCommerce not doing well at a hundred thousand or a million orders?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />That&#8217;s probably an episode in itself just because it&#8217;s such a big thing to unpack. At that scale, stores are thinking about what matters to them. What I&#8217;ve found, it&#8217;s not even about reliability, but having someone to depend on. I think Shopify does that well. It&#8217;s like a safety net. A merchant running on that, even if their site does go down, it&#8217;s like it&#8217;s going down with every other Shopify site and that gives them some confidence. Shopify&#8217;s reliability recently has been really good. So a lot of it is peace of mind. Merchants don&#8217;t want to be technical. They don&#8217;t want to get in the weeds that much. They really just want to run their shop and not think about plugin updates or anything.</p>



  <p>When I see a lot of WooCommerce agencies now pop up that are focusing on maintenance plans and things like that, that&#8217;s really good and a step in the right direction. But it needs to come as well with the reliability or the escape, the reassurance that someone&#8217;s got your back if the site goes down and you&#8217;re not going to lose your order data and things like that. The cost to a store if their site goes down and they have to restore to a backup and it&#8217;s eight hours before, and in that time they had orders, it&#8217;s such a big cost that it would almost pay for a subscription for Shopify or something else in a year. If it&#8217;s going to solve it by going to one of those platforms, they&#8217;re going to do it. There needs to be enough upside for them to stay with Woo.</p>



  <p>For a lot of stores, subscriptions are amazing and above, beyond what most subscription platforms that exist for Shopify allow. The cost of running on Woo is low. If you can do that at scale and you can really optimize your site and handle how you tackle downtime, but also have a good backup plan, have a good recovery plan, then you start to save several hundred thousand a year with Woo if you&#8217;re a big store and maybe even a million plus if you&#8217;re doing tens of millions a year in revenue. Woo has a lot of advantages. It&#8217;s just about finding the disadvantages and trying to solve them.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Marcus, did you have any questions about the average order stuff or the refunds?</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />I had one. You have a note on the refund section that physical goods are refunded at lower amounts than software because of the low overhead for software. In general, the outlier here seems to be clothing and footwear. I think I have an idea, but what makes that industry have the highest refund rate?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />It&#8217;s probably one of the most compelling things you can offer as a business in that industry is free returns and really to almost encourage them and say, order from us as much as you want, and then the few things you don&#8217;t want to send it back will include a free return bag because that&#8217;s really how those stores start to get higher AOV. I think it&#8217;s a symptom of that, but it&#8217;s probably by design and it probably does actually increase the AOV for that industry quite a lot more than what it would be without it.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I see that online learning has an 85% refund rate, which is kind of scary because it makes me think that people are abusing it potentially.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Oh no, that&#8217;s only 85% of the refund amount, not refund rate.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Oh, okay. Yeah,</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I&#8217;d be surprised if they were doing well enough to keep running their shop with that much of a refund rate.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Oh, the amounts 1.5%. Yeah, that&#8217;s better.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Exactly. The one that we want to highlight with the refund amount was just to show, when a refund does happen, is it a full refund? Is it a partial one? I found that interesting with some consumable ones like food and beverage, the refund amount on average is 56%. That would indicate that a lot of stores are doing partial refunds. Maybe one of the items they&#8217;re not happy with is not worth the cost of returning it, while software or online learning, it&#8217;s 80-85% because it&#8217;s a digital item. You can effectively refund the whole thing without incurring a major cost as a store.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Those are a little harder to partially refund too. Refund a handful of lessons from a course. You&#8217;re either refunding the course or you&#8217;re not refunding the course.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Exactly. You might as well, if you&#8217;re having a credit cost as a software business, just find a solution like that. I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve experienced the thing, both of you, over the years with WooCommerce and WordPress support. Sometimes just to solve it, let them move on, give them a refund rather than try to hold on to 70 or 80% of the money or even 20-30% of the money. Risk covering someone who really has it out for you after that and wouldn&#8217;t speak favorably about you.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I thought the devices section was interesting. We&#8217;ll all have heard many stats way before this report that the majority of online shoppers are using mobile devices. I&#8217;ve always kind of ignored that on my own website because we sell WordPress plugins. The vast majority are sitting at their desks on their desktops.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />What percent is, in your case?</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I can&#8217;t remember off the top of my head, but it&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t know, 70 or 80% or something on desktop, which makes sense. You don&#8217;t buy a plugin on your phone, do you? You&#8217;re at work.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I hadn&#8217;t realized that we had this in the report, I forgot,</p>



  <p>but it says it there. Software stores have the most desktop-driven customers with 79% of orders being placed on a desktop device.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Which makes sense.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />That checks out.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />For other industries, obviously mobile&#8217;s important for my business as well, but it&#8217;s more so for things like clothes where people are buying from their sofas and so on. It was interesting seeing that the average order value placed on desktop is significantly higher than people ordering on their mobiles. Even if you are in a mobile-first industry, you do really need to think about those desktop users because even if they&#8217;re buying clothes or something that suggests to me that they&#8217;re having a serious session of buying clothes, they&#8217;re sitting at their computer, got multiple tabs open, it&#8217;s a very different experience and they spend more.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />That&#8217;s a good point. Another common one is if you&#8217;re buying an appliance or an electronic product, a lot of those decisions are made at the computer where you can really take the time to research, look at five different tabs and then check out. That&#8217;s a kind of trend with a lot of these numbers. A lot of them aren&#8217;t as surprising, but the actual level that the number ended up at, in this case, 38 to 62, I didn&#8217;t know that until we pulled that. Actually, to be fair, I didn&#8217;t realize that the desktop AOV would be that much higher. If you just asked me off the top of my head, I would&#8217;ve guessed anecdotally 30-40%, not almost double. I think it just comes down to when you&#8217;re doing a high-value order, when you are spending several hundred dollars in a shop, you&#8217;re going to probably do it on a computer. Typically they&#8217;re going to move to a desktop for those transactions.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Yeah. I also was interested for the same reason in that section. It kind of made me think about my purchasing habits and maybe how important it is for stores to have carts that you can move between mobile and desktop via login or something. I spend a lot of time browsing on my mobile device and I&#8217;ll toss things in the cart, but then by the time I&#8217;m ready to make a purchase, I might hop over to the computer. I&#8217;ve got desktop extensions that help with coupon codes and all of that kind of thing that I can take advantage of that I don&#8217;t have on my mobile device. Really a lot of the purchasing, I would guess that I&#8217;m not in the minority, that there&#8217;s a lot of folks that are browsing on their mobile and then making an actual final purchase on their desktop, especially like you said, with high order value items and orders and stuff. Just being able to, Amazon obviously, right? I&#8217;ll toss a bunch of things in an Amazon cart and then, because I&#8217;m logged in, I can log back in on the computer and finish that order. The importance of having a system like that, maybe for even smaller stores to be able to jump between devices and keep your cart.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />It&#8217;s an interesting product idea, really. I think we kind of do that, and a lot of plugins do that in a small way through abandoned cart tracking and being able to send a link that just restores it in one click, which is close. But I&#8217;m just thinking about, it&#8217;d be quite cool, even just a simple plugin that was just like, send me a link right now just to access this cart on a computer. That would probably have some value rather than being this whole thing to track carts. It can tie into that, but I think just as a core feature, I want to move this cart to a desktop.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Speaking of recovered carts, I also saw in the report that the average order value of recovered carts is about 30% higher than even regular placed orders. The report states it&#8217;s because customers tend to add multiple items into their cart before making a decision. Then they get that abandoned cart link and they come back and place the order. What are some good abandoned cart strategies to recover these carts?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Offer an incentive, and I think the incentive should be specific to your store and the situation you&#8217;re in. There&#8217;s no one size fits all. We kind of lead into this in one of the other pages where we talk about later in the report to do with the AOV of free shipping versus paid shipping orders. Something interesting with that is figuring out where your AOV is. In that case, if we&#8217;re looking at the cart report, it&#8217;s around 120, which is where the average cart value was when they got placed. Maybe you&#8217;d be wanting to incentivize people to spend over 150 and get free shipping or over 150 and get 10% off because at least then you&#8217;re increasing your AOV by 40-50% at the cost of a 10-15% discount. I think that&#8217;s one way, but otherwise, it&#8217;s also about using the moment when you try to recover a cart as a marketing opportunity. It&#8217;s not just saying, recover your cart, but maybe you should also add this item based on what you already have in your cart. It ends up being an actual win for the customer because they might discover something that they didn&#8217;t know about, and they&#8217;re getting a better deal with maybe they&#8217;re getting free shipping as well.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />I didn&#8217;t see in the report numbers on the percentage of stores using abandoned cart recovery versus not using abandoned cart recovery practices. Do you have maybe anecdotal numbers on how many people are actually taking advantage of that?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />That&#8217;s a good question. Again, in our case, it&#8217;s all limited to the scope of Metorik because someone would have to turn on the cart tracking feature. We have then opted to pay extra for our email feature to send an abandoned cart email, which is why we didn&#8217;t go too deep into that because it&#8217;s just not big enough scale to be too insightful. Of the stores actually adding, anecdotally, it&#8217;s like 20-30% of our stores are trying to recover carts, not enough. It&#8217;s very common that I&#8217;ll meet really successful stores that are doing significant numbers but aren&#8217;t really focusing on abandoned cart recovery, but also failed order recovery and really simple actions like that alone will pay for the cost of Metorik or any other plugin or app to do it. You just need to recover several carts and you can recover the cost of the software to do it. It&#8217;s worth investing in for almost any business. Again, it depends on the industry and the business and the brand and all those factors. It&#8217;s never one size fits all.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />Katie, is that something that you guys think about for the plugins? I don&#8217;t know how that works with EDD or any of the setup that you guys have. I know that you have demos with InstaWP, and you&#8217;re tracking all that stuff too. Is abandoned cart recovery something that you guys talk about?</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Yeah. I miss Jilt. I know you used to work for that company. That was the best.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Jilt was such a great product.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Such a shame. We now use Recapture, which is nowhere near as good as Jilt was, but it kind of does the job. The data isn&#8217;t brilliant. It&#8217;s pretty basic, but we do recover a lot of carts that way, which as Bryce said, more than pays for Recapture. We also use it for post-purchase emails, like sending a discount code to people a few days after they make a purchase and stuff like that. We do get our money&#8217;s worth out of Recapture. There isn&#8217;t, for Easy Digital Downloads, a particularly professional abandoned cart solution. I think a lot of mailing list providers like MailChimp and so on integrate with WooCommerce as well as you having your own paid feature, Bryce, as well. Hopefully it&#8217;s better for WooCommerce than EDD.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />There&#8217;s definitely more options for Woo. I don&#8217;t think, again, Woo is typically a second-class citizen in a way on every platform. They&#8217;ll tend to just do it as an afterthought, so you don&#8217;t get maybe enough tracked or accuracy when it comes to carts. A lot of our cart tracking was inspired by Jilt. I think the whole team did such a good job on that product. We took a lot of inspiration from that. Klaviyo and all those apps that do integrate with Woo, MailChimp, they&#8217;re going to be thinking about Woo once every few months. It&#8217;s not like an active daily thought in how they develop and improve the product. It&#8217;s really fun for me to try to prioritize Woo and think, how can I make the best possible product for these merchants that typically aren&#8217;t getting anything made for them?</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />On the country and currency section, I thought it was strange that there&#8217;s a significantly higher average order value when the customer is not in the store&#8217;s default currency. So if it&#8217;s a store in the US and they offer in British pounds, then there&#8217;d be a higher average order value on average than the US dollars. I can&#8217;t think of any reason why. Can you?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah, no, definitely. I think it actually leads into two pages forward where we talk about, or several pages forward where we talk about delivery distances and how people typically spend more when they&#8217;re ordering from further away. A lot of it comes down to when you are ordering from a store in a remote area, it&#8217;s a bigger deal. You might have to pay more for shipping. It might be something you can do less frequently because of the cost. The average order tends to be higher because of that reason, where they&#8217;re trying to maximize that moment where they are making a purchase. It does lead into that idea where stores that offer free shipping end up having a higher AOV, and that can encourage higher spending. If you&#8217;re in an international country paying in a different currency, that free shipping could make a difference and make you spend a lot more.</p>



  <p>Personally, I do that all the time. Being in Australia, most of the things I&#8217;m buying online are from overseas, and I will always spend even double or triple to get free shipping, which isn&#8217;t logical in that way, but no one likes</p>



  <p>paying for shipping. I don&#8217;t want to pay 20 pounds to ship something from the UK. I would much rather just pay 300 pounds and get free shipping, but I get 300 pounds worth of items. It&#8217;s a weird thing, but I think a lot of people I spoke to about this report, especially Australian people, but really anyone American ordering from Europe or Europe ordering from America or Asia from anywhere in the world, you want to maximize those purchases to get free shipping, but also it might just not be something you do frequently because you have to wait several weeks for the delivery to come. So you want to spend a bit more instead of something local where you can order several times in a week and it&#8217;s not going to be that much of a delay.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />I&#8217;m an Amazon Prime member, like many folks, at least in the US, probably all over the world, so I&#8217;m used to the free shipping. I was going to say, it&#8217;s no surprise that free shipping increases the average order value, but also I&#8217;m wondering if we&#8217;ve all been kind of conditioned to expect free shipping as an option. It shows in the report that about two-thirds of stores are offering it. What advice would you have for the third of stores that are not yet offering free shipping? Is it just a barrier for them?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />I don&#8217;t remember if we actually had the number of stores that offer free shipping, but I know that 66% of orders did have free shipping, which as a sheer number of orders is significant. But I&#8217;m curious, for stores that don&#8217;t offer free shipping, is that just a no-brainer that you should offer free shipping? That&#8217;ll basically guarantee a higher average order value?</p>



  <p>Not necessarily on every order, especially if your shipping costs are high. It&#8217;s feasible, but you need to figure out what is your shipping cost. Not just what you&#8217;re charging customers, because a lot of stores tend to charge a bit more. What&#8217;s your actual cost? What would your cost be if you were able to have double the number of orders because you&#8217;re offering free shipping? The cost might come down with that volume. But I would say figure out your cost and then factor that in. If I know my average cost is $9 and my average order is $50, if I could make free shipping over 90 or 80, it&#8217;s like I&#8217;m getting 30, $40 more revenue at a cost of nine or $10. It typically comes down to that, figuring out where you&#8217;re at, but where you want to get to. Free shipping is just a lever to get there. Abandoned cart discounts are another way, multiple different paths, and it depends on the store.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />That fits quite nicely into the page about delivery distances and where you talk about how far away people are ordering. It looks like the majority of stores are doing proper shipping, and they&#8217;re not just delivering pizza places delivering within a few miles. There&#8217;s a lot of people delivering, even thousands of kilometers, aren&#8217;t there?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah, I think I&#8217;m just looking at that report as well. Sure, under a thousand kilometers looks like it&#8217;s around 50% of orders. But that&#8217;s a significant number of orders that are going a further distance, which is great. That&#8217;s what ecommerce is about. It&#8217;s about enabling people to buy the items that they normally couldn&#8217;t get locally. Being in a pretty remote place like Australia, you really appreciate it. So much stuff I love that I have to get from overseas. In my case, every order is traveling 10,000k or more. That probably brings it up a little bit.</p>



  <p>Marcus:<br />You alone are making up that 3% of orders that travel more than 10,000 kilometers.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />In some industries, maybe. I did buy a lot of stuff from the UK recently.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I never knew that about Australia.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Of course, we have so many amazing Australian brands and products and companies to buy from, but if you&#8217;re into a niche thing, I really love synthesizers. A lot of that&#8217;s not coming from Australia or records as well. They&#8217;re coming from America, Japan, places like that.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />I have a similar issue in Spain. Nearly everything is not available from Spain and I need to order it from elsewhere. So then there is that, depending on where you live.</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />It goes back to that if you are ordering from somewhere domestically in Spain, you don&#8217;t need to really maximize that order as much as you are ordering from the states and have to incur shipping. You&#8217;d probably want to add a couple more items because you&#8217;re not going to make that order from the US every week, but you might do that domestically.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Well, thank you so much, Bryce. That&#8217;s been really interesting, and I think it&#8217;s given us some good perspectives on WooCommerce that we never had access to before. So that&#8217;s really helpful. Thank you so much. Before we finish, can you tell us where we can find you online and also where we can read the report in full?</p>



  <p>Bryce:<br />Yeah, of course. For me, I&#8217;m on Twitter at BryceAdams. I don&#8217;t tweet much, but I&#8217;m trying to be better and taking a lot of inspiration from you, Katie, to try to engage more. The report is on Metorik at <a href="https://metorik.com/woocommerce-insights" rel="nofollow">https://metorik.com/woocommerce-insights</a>. I hope people love it and really let us know your feedback because if there are metrics that people want or would find useful for their business, we want to include those next year. A lot of this was just done on what we thought people would want, but we really do want to build it for not just our customers, but the WooCommerce community. It&#8217;d be great to hear more about what numbers would be of value to them.</p>



  <p>Katie:<br />Excellent. Well, thank you so much.</p>
  </div>




  <p>In this episode of <strong>Woo BizChat</strong>, hosts <strong>Marcus Burnette</strong> and <strong>Katie Keith</strong> chat with <strong>Bryce Adams, founder of Metorik</strong>, to discuss his recently published first <em><strong>Metorik Insights Report for WooCommerce</strong></em>.</p>



  <p>The deep dive conversation spans a variety of topics, including the average age of WooCommerce stores, the impact of COVID-19 on ecommerce, and the significance of tracking costs and profits. </p>



  <p>Bryce shares valuable insights on the challenges and opportunities faced by WooCommerce store owners, shedding light on the trends and patterns observed across thousands of stores using Metorik&#8217;s analytics and email automation tools.</p>



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-gray-background-color has-background"><strong><a href="https://metorik.com/woocommerce-insights">Download the Metorik Insights for WooCommerce</a></strong></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Highlights</h2>



  <p><strong>Bryce discusses the impact of COVID-19 on ecommerce</strong>, noting significant growth in existing stores during the pandemic.</p>



  <p><strong>The need for better integration of cost and profit tracking features</strong> in WooCommerce core is highlighted.</p>



  <p><strong>Prevalence of Elementor and Classic Editor</strong> among top themes and plugins in WooCommerce stores is discussed.</p>



  <p><strong>Continued reliance on PHP 7.4</strong> in many WooCommerce stores is noted.</p>



  <p><strong>Successful WooCommerce stores</strong> often have numerous active plugins and subscriptions, leading to higher costs.</p>



  <p><strong>Order milestones are explored</strong>, revealing why only a small percentage of stores reach a million orders.</p>



  <p><strong>Strategies for abandoned cart recovery</strong> are covered, including offering incentives and using recovery attempts as marketing opportunities.</p>



  <p><strong>Recovered carts typically have higher average order values</strong>, emphasizing the importance of effective recovery strategies.</p>



  <p><strong>The role of free shipping </strong>in boosting average order values is examined.</p>



  <p><strong>The impact of delivery distances</strong> on ecommerce purchasing behavior is discussed, with insights into how customers maximize their purchases.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Links</h3>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong><a href="https://metorik.com/">Metorik.com</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://metorik.com/woocommerce-insights">Download the Metorik Insights for WooCommerce</a></strong></li>



  <li><strong><a href="https://x.com/bryceadams">Bryce Adams on X</a></strong></li>
  </ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 01 Jul 2024 08:07:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:11:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"HeroPress: Voices Of WordCamp Europe: Josephine (Rahissa) Ngo Nonog and Herman Ngembu";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"https://heropress.com/?p=7182";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:209:"https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-josephine-rahissa-ngo-nonog-and-herman-ngembu/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=voices-of-wordcamp-europe-josephine-rahissa-ngo-nonog-and-herman-ngembu";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:836:"<img width="1024" height="590" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/jo_herman-1024x590.webp" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" /><p></p>



  <p>A big goal of mine was to meet people for the first time.  Rahissa and Herman fit the bill.  I saw them across the room and simply asked if I could interview them.</p>



  <p>They came to Italy from Cameroon as students and someone said they should try WordCamp.  I&#8217;ll let the interview tell the rest of their story.</p>



  Josephine (Rahissa) Ngo Nonog and Herman Ngembu Interview


  <p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/voices-of-wordcamp-europe-josephine-rahissa-ngo-nonog-and-herman-ngembu/">Voices Of WordCamp Europe: Josephine (Rahissa) Ngo Nonog and Herman Ngembu</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 01 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Do The Woo Community: Press Release: Do the Woo 4.0 Launches at WordCamp Europe";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=7063";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://dothewoo.io/press-release-do-the-woo-4-0-launches-at-wordcamp-europe/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5714:"<p><strong>For Immediate Release</strong></p>



  <p><strong>Do the Woo 4.0 Official Launch: Elevating Voices in the WordPress Community</strong></p>



  <p>WordCamp Europe, June 9, 2024 — We are thrilled to announce the official launch of Do the Woo 4.0, marking a significant milestone in our journey to build a vibrant community for WordPress and WooCommerce builders and businesses. This launch coincides with the first day of WordCamp Europe.</p>



  <p>Since 2018, Do the Woo has evolved through continuously, growing both in content and community engagement. The decision to move Do the Woo to its own site in late 2022 was the first major step for the future. As we entered 2023, our mission began to extend beyond WooCommerce to encompass the broader WordPress ecosystem. The idea was simple: elevate voices and create a podcast by the community, for the community.</p>



  <p>At the beginning of 2023, planning for the new started and in October, we solidified our efforts, with the goal of showcasing the diverse range of the Do the Woo podcast channel with our shows. With significant support from WordPress.com, this vision became a reality, culminating in a redesigned site that went live in March.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>This week, we start our prelaunch. The official launch will be on June 13, 2024, when we will proudly unveil the fully developed Do the Woo 4.0.</p>



  <p><strong>Key Features of Do the Woo 4.0</strong></p>



  <p><strong>Comprehensive Podcast Lineup:</strong>&nbsp;</p>



  <p>With the official launch, we now have a total of <a href="https://dothewoo.io/our-shows/">12 shows</a> and <a href="https://dothewoo.io/about-the-woocommerce-builder-community/">26 hosts</a>, including our latest addition focused on <a href="https://dothewoo.io/podcasts/scaling-enterprise-wordpress-and-open-source-software/">enterprise WordPress and open-source software (OSS)</a>. <a href="https://dothewoo.io/our-shows/">Each show has its own dedicated page</a>, allowing listeners to learn about the series, explore past episodes, and subscribe to their favorite content.</p>



  <p><strong>Enhanced User Experience:</strong>&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Our top priority was to provide an easy way for listeners to subscribe to the shows they want. They can subscribe to individual shows or opt for the full Do the Woo feed if they want to stay updated on all content.</p>



  <p><strong>Global Community Representation:&nbsp;</strong></p>



  <p>The <a href="https://dothewoo.io/about-the-woocommerce-builder-community/">About page</a> features a dynamic map showcasing our hosts, sponsors, and guests from around the world. This interactive feature highlights the global reach and diverse backgrounds of our contributors.</p>



  <p><strong>Support for Hosts</strong>:&nbsp;</p>



  <p>We’ve introduced a <a href="https://dothewoo.io/support/">new support option</a> on our site, allowing listeners to support specific shows and their volunteer hosts. This initiative aims to sustain the high-quality content produced by our dedicated team and support them in their travels and contributions to the community.</p>



  <p><strong>Special Acknowledgments</strong></p>



  <p><strong>Partners:</strong>&nbsp;</p>



  <p>We extend our heartfelt thanks to WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Jetpack for their unwavering belief in our community and the incredible support they have provided.</p>



  <p><strong>Sponsors:</strong>&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Do the Woo&#8217;s existence and growth are made possible by our sponsors. We express our deepest gratitude to our current sponsors: Airwallex, Avalara, Cloudways, GoDaddy, Hostinger, Omnisend, and Weglot. Their commitment to our community is invaluable.</p>



  <p><strong>Podcast episodes for the launch week scheduled to go out</strong></p>



  <p>June 10: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-4-0-this-week-at-wordcamp-europe/">Do the Woo 4.0, This Week at WordCamp Europe</a></strong></p>



  <p>June 11: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-new-show-scaling-enterprise-wordpress-and-oss/">A New Show, Scaling Enterprise, WordPress and OSS</a></strong></p>



  <p>June 12: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-pre-launch-chat-with-jay-walsh-at-woocommerce/"><strong>A Pre-Launch Chat with Jay Walsh at WooCommerce</strong></a></p>



  <p>June 13: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/thinking-about-our-launch-on-wceu-contributor-day/">Thinking About Our Launch on WCEU Contributor Day</a></strong></p>



  <p>June 14: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/do-the-woo-podcast-channel-4-0-official-launch/">Do the Woo Podcast Channel 4.0 Official Launch</a></strong></p>



  <p>June 15: <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/learn-about-all-the-shows-on-the-do-the-woo-podcast-channel/">Learn About All the Shows on the Do the Woo Podcast Channel</a></strong></p>



  <p><strong>Join Us</strong></p>



  <p>We invite you to explore the new Do the Woo 4.0 at <a href="http://DotheWoo.io">DotheWoo.io</a>. Whether you are a developer, a business owner, or simply a WordPress enthusiast, there is something for everyone. Take a moment to browse through the site, subscribe to your favorite shows, and consider supporting our hosts.</p>



  <p>For more information, to be featured on a podcast, or to discuss sponsorship opportunities, please contact BobWP directly. We have exciting plans ahead and look forward to sharing them with you.</p>



  <p><strong>Contact:</strong></p>



  <p>BobWP</p>



  <p>Email: info@dothewoo.io</p>



  <p>Website: <a href="https://dothewoo.io">https://dothewoo.io</a></p>



  <p>Thank you for being part of our community and for your continued support. We can&#8217;t wait to see where this journey takes us next.</p>



  <p>###</p>



  <p>End of Press Release</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 30 Jun 2024 09:30:41 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"bbPress: bbPress 2.6.11 is out!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"https://bbpress.org/?p=240802";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"https://bbpress.org/blog/2024/06/bbpress-2-6-11-is-out/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1322:"<p>bbPress 2.6.11 is a <strong>minor</strong> release that fixes <a href="https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&group=resolution&milestone=2.6.10">13 relatively small bugs</a> reported over the past few years.</p>



  <p>Most notably, it improves HTML output escaping in the topic &amp; reply forms (nothing serious, just some entities showing up where they should not), prevents a bunch of different debug notices from filling up error logs, and also updates some code to avoid deprecated notices from testing with the latest version(s) of WordPress itself.</p>



  <p>All of these fixes have already been merged up into the 2.7 development branch.</p>



  <p>If you&#8217;re paying really close attention, you may be wondering &#8220;hey John, what happened to 2.6.10?&#8221; </p>



  <p>Well&#8230; I botched it. It&#8217;s been a while, ok? <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.0.3/72x72/1f926-200d-2642-fe0f.png" alt="🤦‍♂️" class="wp-smiley" /> And 2.6.11 is good to go.</p>



  <p>Huge thanks to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eusebiuoprinoiu/">Eusebiu</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kcristiano/">Kevin</a>, and (as always) <a href="https://bbpress.org/forums/profile/robin-w/">Robin W</a> for being super fast with their feedback and just generally awesome!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 17:58:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"John James Jacoby";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:130:"Gutenberg Times: 796 Block themes, alternatives to custom block dev, game’s a changing for custom fields — Weekend Edition 297";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=29017";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:114:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/796-block-themes-games-a-changing-for-custom-fields-more-dev-notes-weekend-edition-297/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21458:"<p>Hi there, </p>



  <p>I love the excitement of a major WordPress release! All the new features and update coming to WordPress. The theme building becomes easier and easier to provide great design solutions for content creators and site builders. </p>



  <p>You&#8217;ll find lots of information in these editions and I also highlight a few upcoming events, two virtual one in-person. And recordings of previous events, so you can catch up on Developer Hours and Hallway Hangouts. </p>



  <p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>



  <p>In this week&#8217;s <a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2024/06/25/this-week-in-wordpress-299/">This Week in WordPress #299</a> &#8220;We have all the Birgit&#8217;s and Remkus&#8221;. It again was a fun show and great to catch up with Birgit Olzem, Remkus de Vries and Nathan Wrigley on WordCamp Europe, and the upcoming WordPress 6.6 release. </p>



  <a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2024/06/25/this-week-in-wordpress-299/"><img width="652" height="367" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/This-Week-in-WordPress-299.jpg?resize=652%2C367&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29081" /></a>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>If you want to learn more about my non-WordPress self, Bud Kraus and I chatted on the <a href="https://seriouslybud.com/birgit-pauli-haack/"><strong>Seriously, Bud? Podcast episode</strong></a> </p>



  <div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">
  <div class="wp-block-ideabox-toc ib-block-toc"><div class="ib-toc-container ib-toc-list-style-bullets ib-toc-hierarchical ib-toc-expanded"><div class="ib-toc-header"><div class="ib-toc-header-title">Table of Contents</div><div class="ib-toc-header-right"><span class="ib-toc-icon-collapse"><span class="dashicon dashicons dashicons-minus"></span></span><span class="ib-toc-icon-expand"><span class="dashicon dashicons dashicons-plus"></span></span></div></div><div class="ib-toc-separator"></div><div class="ib-toc-body"><ul class="ib-toc-anchors"></ul></div></div></div>
  </div></div>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="upcoming">Upcoming Events</h3>



  <p>July 9th, 2024, 15:00 UTC &#8211; <strong>Developer Hours</strong>: <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301834541/"><strong>Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6</strong></a>. </p>



  <p>In this Developer Hours session, Nick Diego and Ryan Welcherwill explore how these updates can streamline your development process and enhance extensibility like never before. You will learn how to:</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Extend the Post and Site Editor using slots and why you might want to do so</li>



  <li>Display content only when specific conditions are met, such as when editing a custom post type</li>



  <li>Update existing extensions to work in both the Post and Site Editor</li>



  <li>Ensure updated extensions are backward compatible with WordPress 6.5 and lower&#8221;</li>
  </ul>



  <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301834541/"><img width="600" height="338" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/600_521936273.webp?resize=600%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29070" /></a>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>WordCamp Canada</strong> will take place between <strong>July 11 and 13, 2024&nbsp;</strong>Ottawa, ON Canada and they published <a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/schedule/">their fabulous schedule.</a> If you can join them in person, here are a few block related talks to attend. They will also be recorded and will make their way to WordPressTV and YouTube. </p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/session/your-wordpress-your-way-curating-the-editor-experience/">Your WordPress, Your Way: Curating the Editor Experience</a> with Nick Diego</li>



  <li><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/session/working-across-timezones-as-a-productive-developer/">Working across timezones as a productive developer</a> with Aurooba Ahmed </li>



  <li><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/session/creating-blocks-faster-than-a-cat-video-goes-viral-the-magic-of-create-block/">Creating Blocks Faster Than a Cat Video Goes Viral: The Magic of create-block</a> with Ryan Welcher</li>



  <li><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/session/state-of-multilingualism-in-wordpress/">State of Multilingualism in WordPress</a><a href="https://canada.wordcamp.org/2024/schedule/"> </a>with Robert Windisch</li>



  <li></li>
  </ul>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>July 23, 2024</strong>, at 15:00 UTC <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><strong>Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives.</strong></a> <strong>Nick Diego</strong> and <strong>JuanMa Garrido</strong> will discuss the following scenarios</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>How to add new functionality to core blocks</li>



  <li>How to use content-only editing and the allowedBlocks attribute in patterns</li>



  <li>How to integrate block bindings and block variations</li>



  <li>How to effectively use block locking and naming</li>



  <li>How to create overrides in synced patterns</li>
  </ul>



  <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/301860423/"><img width="600" height="338" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/600_521958647.webp?resize=600%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29071" /></a>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.6</h2>



  <p>This week, the release squad unleashed <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-rc1/"><strong>WordPress 6.6 RC 1</strong></a>. It&#8217;s now high time to test your themes, plugins, and sites for compatibility. If you want to explore what is new in WordPress 6.6, one way is outlined in the post to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/06/03/help-test-wordpress-6-6/">Help test WordPress 6.6</a>.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Devnotes </strong>have been published together with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/wordpress-6-6-field-guide/">WordPress 6.6 Field Guide</a> </p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/editing-custom-fields-from-connected-blocks/">Editing custom fields from connected blocks</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/28/updates-to-the-interactivity-api-in-6-6/">Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6</a> </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/miscellaneous-editor-changes-in-wordpress-6-6/">Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/section-styles/">Section Styles</a> </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/21/wordpress-6-6-css-specificity/">WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity</a> </li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/roster-of-design-tools-per-block-wordpress-6-6-edition/">Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/20/site-wide-background-images-in-wordpress-6-6/">Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/19/theme-json-version-3/">Theme.json version 3</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/18/grid-layout-type/">Grid layout type</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/18/editor-unified-extensibility-apis-in-6-6/">Editor: Unified Extensibility APIs in 6.6</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/07/preparation-for-react-19-upgrade/">Preparation for React 19 Upgrade</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/06/jsx-in-wordpress-6-6/">JSX in WordPress 6.6</a></li>
  </ul>



  <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/06/wordpress-6-6-rc1/"><img width="652" height="371" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-28-at-11.35.47.png?resize=652%2C371&ssl=1" alt="Draft highlight grid by the design team. Changes might occur. " class="wp-image-29080" /></a>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> also posted the <a href="https://nomad.blog/2024/06/26/wordpress-6-6-source-of-truth/"><strong>Source of Truth on WordPress 6.6</strong></a> features. It again is a great source to learn about every feature that is coming to a WordPress instance near you on July 16, 2024, tag for theme authors, plugin authors, end users, and enterprise. </p>



  <p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-bd161c98d845ccce6904985904015b6a">🎙️ Latest episode: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-103-create-block-theme-wordpress-6-6-training-team/">Gutenberg Changelog #103 – Create Block Theme Plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, and Updates from the Training Team </a> with Nadia Maya Ardiani</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>In his <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/06/17/design-share-58-jun-3-jun-14/"><strong>Design Share #58 (Jun 3-Jun 14)</strong></a>, <strong>Joen Asmussen</strong> shared the work by the WordPress design team in the previous two weeks, among them</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>A light Playground site update</li>



  <li>Color &amp; Fill?</li>



  <li>Fix site editor frame artifacts</li>
  </ul>



  <p>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/06/28/design-share-59-jun-17-jun-28/"><strong>Design Share 59 (Jun 17-Jun&nbsp;28)</strong></a>, Asmussen highlighted: </p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Background/Image Tools</li>



  <li>Rename of Fill → Grow for the Flex layouts. </li>



  <li>Clean up of Dimension Tools</li>



  <li>Aligning Naming Modals</li>



  <li>Adding custom fields in data views</li>



  <li>Design tools exploration: Contextual color controls and new panels for Background, and Elements</li>



  <li>Lessons in Course page</li>



  <li>Open Graph images</li>



  <li>Theme preview</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Asmussen also lists helpful links to Figma Design Library, GitHub tracking issues and issues that need design work and feedback. Check in if you&#8217;d like to contribute with feedback and PRs.</p>



  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/06/28/design-share-59-jun-17-jun-28/"><img width="652" height="330" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-29-at-13.13.50.png?resize=652%2C330&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29103" /></a><em>Mockup of possible screen to add Custom Fields in a very early exploration</em>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2024&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">2020</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/">2021</a></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/">2022</a></strong></strong>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023">2023</a></strong></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



  <p>Did you know that there are now almost <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/"><strong>800 block themes </strong></a>available in the WordPress Theme Directory? 796 is today&#8217;s number. The most themes were built by the designers at <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/author/automattic/">Automattic: 183 themes</a>, of which the latest two are <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/sunderland/">Sunderland</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/otis/">Otis</a>. The designs from all theme designers become more and more interesting, for all kinds of use cases. If you haven&#8217;t done it recently, get our favorite beverage and start a browsing tour. You might be amazed what the Theme directory has to offer, especially after the refresh of the design and the new preview screens for patterns and style variations. </p>



  <img width="652" height="184" tabindex="0" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-29-at-13.06.03.png?resize=652%2C184&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-29102" />



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Bud Kraus</strong> explored the Block editor&#8217;s Command Palette and takes you along for the tour in his post <a href="https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-command-palette"><strong>Using the WordPress Command Palette to Work With Faster and Smarter</strong></a>. He <a href="https://x.com/joyofwp/status/1805563770384613555">commented on X</a>: &#8220;Even after writing this for Hostinger I still hardly use it. Maybe I am waiting for a more mature tool that we should see once the entire WP Admin gets overhauled.&#8221; What do you think? </p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> summarized the most important features in his video: <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4D1dHTZvQQ">WordPress 6.6 &#8211; Huge Changes Coming Soon!</a></strong></p>



  <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
  </div>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>WPBeginner</strong>&#8216;s editorial staff posted <a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/news/whats-coming-in-wordpress-6-6-features-and-screenshots/"><strong>What’s Coming in WordPress 6.6 (Features and Screenshots)</strong></a> as a quick overview what will make it into the new version. </p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



  <p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> and <strong>Nick Diego</strong> shared  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYdkXAx7qw"><strong>What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6</strong></a> in this week&#8217;s Developer Hours. The recording is available on YouTube and Presentation resources were shared in <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p9QzJ9MnFneoSun85f-6ZDRGJiIjlNNe2sqEcTGNDeM/edit#heading=h.uy7q2zyn0xy9"><em>this Google Doc</em></a>. &#8220;WordPress 6.6 will be released on July 16, 2024, bringing many exciting new features for theme developers. In this session, we explore how these updates can enhance your themes and streamline your development processes. Key highlights include: </p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li>Major upgrades to the block style variations system &#8211;</li>



  <li>New color and typography-only style presets &#8211;</li>



  <li>Enhanced grid layout options in the Group block</li>



  <li>Specificity changes for Core styles &#8220;</li>
  </ul>



  <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
  <div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
  </div>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>Last week I already shared the short video by Beatrix Fialho, now you can follow the whole discussion via the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/25/recap-hallway-hangout-theme-building-with-playground-create-block-theme-plugin-and-github/">Recap Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub</a></strong> with shared resources, step-by-step instructions, a recording of the full discussion and the transcript.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>, core contributor and keeper of fullsiteediting.com updated lessons on her site to include the most recent changes in WordPress.</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/global-styles/">Global Styles &amp; theme.json</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-color-options/">Theme.json color options</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-font-size/">Theme.json typography: Font size</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/theme-json-typography-font-styles/">Theme.json typography: Line height, font weight and more</a></li>



  <li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/how-to-add-box-shadows-with-theme-json/">How to add shadows with theme.json</a></li>
  </ul>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



  <p><strong>Bernie Reiter</strong> published a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/24/proposal-block-variation-aliases/"><strong>Proposal: Block Variation Aliases</strong></a> for WordPress 6.7 and request feedback on a new method to add Block variations specific class names in front end and database. It will have technical ramification regarding backwards compatibility. </p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> just released a video on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNtHywyxWdc"><strong>WordPress 6.6 is changing the game for Custom Fields</strong></a> in which he walks you through the power of block binding and locking down templates for editing. Later on, he also shows you how to Block Bindings with a block variation. Coords also provides example code. </p>



  <p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>



  <p>Now also available via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">Email me </a>with your experience</p>



  <p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



  <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



  <p>Featured Image:</p>



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  <p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>


  <form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone <br />except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>


  <hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 16:54:02 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:66:"Do The Woo Community: Tips for the Single WordPress Plugin Builder";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=7127";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://dothewoo.io/tips-for-the-single-wordpress-plugin-builder/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3646:"<p>In a <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/running-a-wordpress-plugin-business-single-handedly-with-mark-westguard/">recent episode on Do the Woo</a></strong>, Mark Westguard from WS Form talked about his journey and what it means to run a successful plugin shop single-handedly.</p>



  <p>Here are 12 tips taken from that episode.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-community-involvement">Community Involvement</h2>



  <p>Engage with the WordPress community by attending events like WordCamps, and consider sponsoring these events to build a network and gain support from other developers and users.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-documentation">Documentation</h2>



  <p>Develop a comprehensive knowledge base for your plugin. Write articles for frequently asked questions to reduce support requests and provide instant answers to users.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-customer-driven-development">Customer-Driven Development</h2>



  <p>Focus on customer feedback to guide the development of new features. Use a feature request page where users can submit and vote on new ideas.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-support-automation">Support Automation</h2>



  <p>Automate support as much as possible. Use tools to recommend knowledge base articles based on user queries and streamline the support process.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-efficient-time-management">Efficient Time Management</h2>



  <p>Prioritize tasks by balancing between reactive updates (e.g., API changes) and proactive development of new features based on customer demand and potential business impact.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-collaborate-with-third-parties">Collaborate with Third Parties</h2>



  <p>Work with third-party developers and services to extend the functionality of your plugin. This helps in managing integrations and keeping your plugin up-to-date.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-profitability-focus">Profitability Focus</h2>



  <p>Maintain a high level of profitability by being cautious about hiring. Consider hiring only when the workload becomes unmanageable and impacts personal life significantly.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-multi-function-roles">Multi-Function Roles</h2>



  <p>When hiring, look for individuals who can handle multiple roles, including support, development, and representation at events, to maximize efficiency and reduce costs.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-self-service-tools">Self-Service Tools</h2>



  <p>Develop tools that allow users to solve their problems without contacting support. This includes automated responses and a robust support form that guides users to the right resources.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-selective-feature-development">Selective Feature Development</h2>



  <p>Not all feature requests should be built. Focus on those that benefit a broader audience and align with your plugins primary use cases. Niche or highly specific requests can often be handled through custom code or third-party services.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-marketing-and-visibility">Marketing and Visibility</h2>



  <p>Actively market your plugin by demonstrating its capabilities and forming relationships within the WordPress community. Participate in podcasts, write articles, and engage on social media.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-balance-work-and-personal-life">Balance Work and Personal Life</h2>



  <p>Ensure your work does not negatively impact your personal life. Be mindful of your working hours and make adjustments when necessary to maintain a healthy work-life balance.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: 12 Public Relation Tips for WordPress and WooCommerce Businesses";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6707";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://dothewoo.io/12-public-relation-tips-for-wordpress-and-woocommerce-businesses/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3590:"<p>In a recent <a href="https://dothewoo.io/adding-public-relations-to-your-wordpress-or-woo-biz-stack/"><strong>Woo BizChat</strong></a>, hosts Emma and Adam talked about the benefits of PR for WordPress specific businesses. Adam is a PR specialist that is founder of <strong><a href="https://cirrusinfluence.com/">Cirrus Influence</a></strong>.</p>



  <ul class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong>Start with the why:</strong> Before starting a PR campaign or diving into networking events like WordCamps, clarify the purpose and objectives behind your efforts. Understanding the &#8220;why&#8221; will guide your actions and decisions.</li>



  <li><strong>Identify your tribe:</strong> Find the communities or groups where your target audience is active and engage with them. Building relationships within these communities can provide invaluable support and opportunities for collaboration.</li>



  <li><strong>Be bold and persistent:</strong> Don&#8217;t be afraid to reach out to potential partners or event organizers. Even if you receive a &#8220;no&#8221; initially, don&#8217;t be discouraged. Seek constructive feedback and consider alternative approaches for future endeavors.</li>



  <li><strong>Develop your expertise:</strong> Continuously work on improving and sharing your knowledge and expertise. Consider giving talks at local meetups or WordCamps to establish yourself as an industry expert.</li>



  <li><strong>Practice public speaking:</strong> Engage in activities like Toastmasters to improve your public speaking skills. Confidence in presenting your ideas is crucial for effective communication and networking.</li>



  <li><strong>Embrace confidence:</strong> Confidence doesn&#8217;t come from external validation. You have to believe in yourself and your capabilities. Take the initiative and recognize your own potential.</li>



  <li><strong>Avoid hard-selling tactics:</strong> When participating in events or engaging with potential customers, focus on building relationships rather than pushing sales. Provide value and focus on becoming a trusted resource for your audience.</li>



  <li><strong>Keep track of data and feedback:</strong> Gather data and feedback from your PR activities to assess what is working and what needs improvement. Data points, whether positive or negative, provide insights for refining your PR strategies.</li>



  <li><strong>Engage in the margin:</strong> Allocate resources and opportunities for creative marketing initiatives. Having some margin allows you to experiment with brand-building activities and sustain long-term growth.</li>



  <li><strong>Utilize WordCamps as relationship building:</strong> Attend and sponsor WordCamps with the intention of building relationships rather than solely emphasizing direct sales. Use these events to connect with the WordPress community and establish your brand identity.</li>



  <li><strong>Don&#8217;t wait for confidence:</strong> Confidence is an internal decision. Don&#8217;t wait for external validation or a sudden surge of belief in your abilities. Take charge of your confidence and trust in your potential to make things happen.</li>



  <li><strong>Seek encouragement within:</strong> Ultimately, the motivation and encouragement you need comes from within. Don&#8217;t rely solely on external sources for validation. Embrace self-encouragement and belief in your journey.</li>
  </ul>



  <p>Listen to the full episode here: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/adding-public-relations-to-your-wordpress-or-woo-biz-stack/">Adding Public Relations to Your WordPress or Woo Biz Stack</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"Do The Woo Community: 10 Ways to Boost Your WordPress Affiliate Program";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6726";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://dothewoo.io/10-ways-to-boost-your-wordpress-affiliate-program/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3224:"<p>Creating and running an affiliate program for your WordPress products or services can be overwhelming and challenging. Alex Standiford is asking everyone to rethink affiliate programs. Here are 10 ideas that may spark something new in your affiliate program.</p>



  <ol class="wp-block-list">
  <li><strong>Consider Diverse Performance-Based Programs</strong>: Look beyond traditional affiliate models and consider partnerships that offer payouts based on specific performance metrics, such as driving traffic, customer satisfaction, or content engagement, in addition to sales.</li>



  <li><strong>Focus on Quality Over Quantity</strong>: Rather than targeting a large number of affiliates, aim to work closely with a smaller group of committed affiliates who are aligned with your brand and have the potential for significant conversions.</li>



  <li><strong>Develop Personalized Partnerships</strong>: Foster stronger relationships with affiliates by providing personalized support, workflow insights, and one-on-one consultations to maximize their success.</li>



  <li><strong>Explore Profit Margin-based Payouts</strong>: Determine payout percentages based on your profit margins, ensuring that the compensation aligns with the value brought in by affiliates.</li>



  <li><strong>Emphasize Collaboration Among Affiliates</strong>: Allow for multiple affiliates to earn credit for the same sale, encouraging collaboration and teamwork among the affiliates rather than fostering competition.</li>



  <li><strong>Evaluate the Long-term Commitment of Affiliates</strong>: Understand the level of commitment required for your products or services, especially for items with significant user loyalty, such as recurring payment services, and consider tailored affiliate approaches for each category.</li>



  <li><strong>Avoid Over-reliance on Volume-based Traffic</strong>: Challenge the effectiveness of purely volume-based traffic and explore more nuanced and sustainable strategies to create a more targeted and engaged audience.</li>



  <li><strong>Encourage Allyship and Teamwork Among Affiliates</strong>: Foster an environment where affiliates can work together as allies, leveraging each other&#8217;s strengths to attract and convert traffic, encouraging specialized roles and collaboration for improved performance.</li>



  <li><strong>Consider Tailored Affiliate Programs</strong>: Explore the possibility of customizing affiliate programs to match specific niches, addressing the limitations of generic affiliate approaches and contributing to improved partnership outcomes.</li>



  <li><strong>Prioritize In-depth Support and Education</strong>: Provide comprehensive resources, insights, and dedicated support to affiliates, setting up workflows to guide them through effective strategies and enable overall success.</li>
  </ol>



  <p>You can learn about Alex&#8217;s WordPress plugin <strong><a href="https://www.sirenaffiliates.com/">SirenAffilates.com</a></strong> and / or listen to the full episode on Do the Woo: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/reimagining-affiliate-programs-for-your-woo-biz-with-alex-standiford/"><strong>Reimagining Affiliate Programs for Your Woo Biz with Alex Standiford</strong></a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: 12 Email Marketing Tips for WooCommerce and WordPress Businesses";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6246";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://dothewoo.io/12-email-marketing-tips-for-woocommerce-and-wordpress-businesses/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6257:"<p>In a podcast episode of <em><strong>Woo BizChat </strong></em>we had email marketing expert Greg Zakowicz from Omnisend chatting with Emma and Adam. Although it&#8217;s recommended that you listen to the full episode, <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/email-marketing-tips-for-woo-and-wordpress-businesses/">Email Marketing for Woo and WordPress Builders and Businesses with Greg Zakowicz</a></strong> , here are 12 tips to help with your WordPress or WooCommerce business, whether you create products or provide services.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-embrace-automation">Embrace Automation</h2>



  <p>Greg emphasizes the effectiveness of automated emails, revealing that 41% of all email marketing orders sent by Omnisend customers came from automated messages. Automation allows you to send targeted and relevant messages based on the user&#8217;s behavior, making it a powerful tool for increasing engagement and conversions.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-focus-on-high-intent-automated-messages">Focus on High-Intent Automated Messages</h2>



  <p>Greg highlights specific automated messages that drive results, including welcome messages, browse abandonment, and cart abandonment emails. These messages are high-intent and directly tied to user behavior, making them more likely to lead to conversions.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-utilize-social-proof-in-subject-lines">Utilize Social Proof in Subject Lines</h2>



  <p>Greg suggests that subject lines featuring social proof, such as top-rated products or five-star reviews, can capture attention. Incorporating elements that highlight the quality and popularity of your products or services can make your emails more appealing to recipients.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-experiment-with-emojis-in-subject-lines">Experiment with Emojis in Subject Lines</h2>



  <p>Despite not being a new concept, Greg emphasizes the continued effectiveness of using emojis in subject lines. Emojis can help break up the visual monotony, especially on mobile devices, making your emails stand out in crowded inboxes.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-optimize-for-mobile-and-visual-appeal">Optimize for Mobile and Visual Appeal</h2>



  <p>Greg discusses the importance of visual elements, white space, and breaking up text to make emails visually appealing. Since many users access emails on their mobile devices, optimizing for mobile responsiveness and creating visually engaging content can enhance the overall user experience.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-clean-inactive-contacts-regularly">Clean Inactive Contacts Regularly</h2>



  <p>Greg emphasizes the importance of cleaning inactive contacts from your email list to maintain deliverability and engagement rates. Sending emails to inactive contacts can negatively impact your sender reputation and result in lower inbox placement. Regularly clean your list, preferably twice a year, to remove subscribers who haven&#8217;t engaged in a significant period.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-understand-and-monitor-email-deliverability-requirements">Understand and Monitor Email Deliverability Requirements</h2>



  <p>Stay informed about email deliverability requirements, such as authentication protocols like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF. Greg mentions that Google and Yahoo have implemented new deliverability requirements, and compliance with these standards is crucial for proving your legitimacy as a sender and avoiding potential deliverability issues.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-benchmark-against-yourself-not-just-industry-averages">Benchmark Against Yourself, Not Just Industry Averages</h2>



  <p>While industry benchmarks can provide useful insights, Greg advises marketers to primarily benchmark against their own performance. Focus on improving your open rates and click-through rates over time rather than comparing yourself solely to industry averages, as different list-cleaning practices can significantly impact these benchmarks.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-leverage-competitive-differentiators-in-email-templates">Leverage Competitive Differentiators in Email Templates</h2>



  <p>When creating email templates, highlight competitive differentiators such as free shipping, fast delivery, and customer service policies. Templatize this information to make it highly visible in your emails, catering to the specific intent of users who are looking for such value propositions when deciding whether to engage with your email content.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-templatize-social-proof-and-value-propositions">Templatize Social Proof and Value Propositions</h2>



  <p>Incorporate social proof, customer testimonials, and value propositions into your email templates. Whether it&#8217;s showcasing five-star reviews, testimonials about great customer service, or emphasizing hassle-free returns, templatizing this content can build confidence and address potential obstacles to conversion, ultimately increasing click-through rates.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-implement-automated-retargeting-sequences">Implement Automated Retargeting Sequences</h2>



  <p>Greg emphasizes the importance of setting up automated retargeting sequences based on user behavior. Whether it&#8217;s a browse abandonment or cart abandonment, these automated sequences can significantly improve the chances of reengaging with users who have shown interest in your products. By strategically utilizing automation, you can &#8220;feed the wolf&#8221; over time, increasing the likelihood of recapturing customers at a lower cost compared to other retargeting methods.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-use-ai-tools-for-subject-line-generation">Use AI Tools for Subject Line Generation</h2>



  <p>Greg recommends using AI tools, such as the subject line generator provided by Omnisend, to overcome creative blocks when crafting email subject lines. AI-powered tools can offer a fresh perspective and propose creative subject lines that may not have been considered. This can be particularly useful in ensuring that your subject lines stand out and capture the attention of your audience, contributing to higher email open rates</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50:"Do The Woo Community: Marketing WordPress Products";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6241";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-product-marketing/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2248:"<p>In a recent Emerging Tech episode David Lockie had the chance to talk about a lot of WordPress with Noel Tock plus catch up on what he is doing. This is the final thought coming from Noel, and I would recommend checking out the entire conversation: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/learn-wordpress-product-marketing-deeply/"><strong>Learn WordPress Product Marketing Deeply with Noel Tock</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-on-noel-s-mind">On Noel&#8217;s Mind</h2>



  <p>I&#8217;d say what I talked about now is probably the thing that bugs me the most or lives rent free in my mind is that amazing effort and energy that everyone puts into WordPress, but then is trying to fit through a pipe that&#8217;s way too small in terms of product marketing is never really displayed in its full glory to the rest of the market in a very specialized way.</p>



  <p>And it&#8217;s a struggle to you start thinking, are you delusional because you&#8217;re talking to an enterprise client when they say WordPress doesn&#8217;t do this, doesn&#8217;t do that. And you&#8217;re sitting there thinking, am I just like a WordPress advocate or do I actually know what I&#8217;m talking about?</p>



  <p>So I think in many ways, when Matt, years ago, 2015, what was it 2015 when he said learn JavaScript deeply, I think now it&#8217;s learn marketing deeply. That&#8217;s what I think should be WordPress&#8217;s mission for the next two years because we are in a time when we&#8217;ve gone boom bust and we have an opportunity to seize right now as companies are looking at down rounds and they&#8217;re laying off staff.</p>



  <p>One of the first places they cut is R&amp;D and innovation, and we have an opportunity to catch up on that ground. Not that we have to necessarily build a lot of stuff at all. I don&#8217;t even think we have to build that stuff, but I think we have to just do a much better job of product marketing at <strong>three, four or five levels of niches</strong>. And to me, it doesn&#8217;t mean that those couple niches define what WordPress is. There are just merely abstractions and narratives that sit on top of the WordPress we know today. It&#8217;s not trying to change what WordPress is.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"Do The Woo Community: A WordPress Project Funding Solution and Where it Starts";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6181";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"https://dothewoo.io/a-wordpress-project-funding-solution-and-where-it-starts/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2682:"<p>In a deep discussion around supporting essential projects in the WordPress space <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/article/edit/7162363489506861056/">Tom Willmot</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/article/edit/7162363489506861056/">Joost de Valk</a> explored the issues around the topic. Specifically how does this get solved?</p>



  <p>As they described a particular project that you can learn more about in the <a href="https://dothewoo.io/funding-wordpress-projects-with-tom-willmot-and-joost-de-valk/"><strong>full episode</strong></a>, it led into many paths that led to the need for change. For contributors keeping up all of these essential projects and in reality, are like saying &#8220;Hey, y&#8217;all pay up for what I&#8217;m doing for you here for free.&#8221;</p>



  <p>Joost opened it up with this thought it it went further into who should really be stepping up.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-in-a-perfect-world">In a perfect world&#8230;.</h2>



  <p>Joost: But it also opens up a wider discussion about how do we support the tools that we use that are not like the tools that end users may be using, but the tools that we use to build those. It&#8217;s this whole ecosystem. And are we even aware of the fact that we&#8217;re using this code? Well, I think it&#8217;s a problematic thing, and I have my opinions on how we should solve this in an ideal world. Unfortunately, I&#8217;m not the one who gets to decide that.</p>



  <p>So in my ideal world, we would have a WordPress app store where WordPress plugins, the plugin repository would not just be for free plugins, but would also be for commercial plugins. And we take a percentage of sales there and put that money to work on stuff like this and lots of other things. I think that would make WordPress better for everyone. We could how we want plugins to sell their things, and we couldn&#8217;t enforce all the proper legalities there that are needed, and we could fund the companies and the projects that we need that we all need to, well, to sustain our work.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-and-there-is-so-much-more">And there is so much more&#8230;</h3>



  <p>Well, that was the perfect world for Joost. But Tom and Joost went on to talk about other ways of funding these projects and who should be stepping up. Of course, it&#8217;s not even that simple.</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/funding-wordpress-projects-with-tom-willmot-and-joost-de-valk/"><strong>Listen to the full episode Funding WordPress Projects with Tom Willmot and Joost de Valk here.&nbsp;</strong></a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"Do The Woo Community: Starter WooCommerce Performance Tips for Developers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6174";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"https://dothewoo.io/starter-woocommerce-performance-tips-for-developers/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10033:"<p>In a <a href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-performance-optimization/">Woo DevChat</a>, I asked <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinazeidan?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAACbwBtEBQRgcNmwLLij0zaBN7znv_qYfCuM">Sabrina Zeidan</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wputasic?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAACQSmi8BUWyj0LAr-g2JbUQcu799ehldCdA">Uros Tasic</a> to give their insights into WooCommerce performance. One suggestion that Sabrina made was that they come up a a few step for a developer who is not performance expert but they notice or they feel like you feel like the website is acting slow.</p>



  <p>They don&#8217;t know whether it&#8217;s fronted or backend. It was fine a month ago and now it&#8217;s acting weirdly.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-using-a-query-monitor">Using a Query Monitor</h2>



  <p>The first thing I would recommend is so easy. So this is not a developer tool, but it&#8217;s easy if you can add a plugin that is a query monitor. It can show you if there is some error on the site or if there are some slow queries to the database. So again, I know that there are developers going to say you can see slow queries, MySQL queries on the server. So that is advanced thing, the simplest thing, add a plugin and track, not the best thing, but you can see there if there are some issues.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-checking-the-logs">Checking the Logs</h2>



  <p>If a query monitor doesn&#8217;t reveal anything or important, then I would suggest now depending on your hosting and server provider, you can check logs.</p>



  <p>Let&#8217;s say for the people that are not experienced, there are two types of logs. One is the error log and another one is access log. So if you don&#8217;t know when something is happening or what kind of are pages causing it in access log, you can see that. For example, in the last hour you got 1000 views of specific page on the website that has a newsletter and some feed or something and then you can assume that something on that page is creating a problem and continue from there. In that case you can create test page with only one block or with only feed to see if that is going to behave slowly and then you can eliminate one by one. This is if the page is making a problem. Then you can see also if there is some current jobs or W-P-C-L-I commands and then you can address those.</p>



  <p>For example, in multiple cases if you have a big database doing a backup, it can slow down the site because the database will be locked and then the site cannot do anything. So again, you can move backups, but you can see those details in the access login error log of the website. Again you cannot see everything there.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-using-more-advanced-tools">Using More Advanced Tools</h2>



  <p>If you want to go more advanced and I want to be actively doing on performance, there are tools that I would recommend that you can use New Relic, you can use Xdebug or you can use Blackfire. All those three tools are testing your code performance. You can record the whole page and then it&#8217;ll tell you exactly how many queries, what function is called, how many times the function is called, which file is, and how it&#8217;s behaving in the background for you.</p>



  <p>From there you can then pick saying, okay, this plugin is taking five seconds to load on this specific page to I really need this plugin or can this be changed? Can I introduce some caching plugin, can I? But those are a little bit more advanced tools but I would spend some time to get familiar with those similar tools.</p>



  <p>So just once more, this is Blackfire, New Relic and Xdebug. Some of them are free, some of them have a paid plan. So again, you don&#8217;t need all three but you can start with at least one. And then again, if you want to test the front end and just the Google Page speed, you can use Lighthouse or Google speed may have some suggestion.</p>



  <p>To sum it up, first one is query monitor, easy, and there are good things about it. It&#8217;s pretty user friendly. You can just see what&#8217;s happening and if something is red, you know that strong. So it&#8217;s easy to find the bottlenecks.</p>



  <p>The second one would be check the logs on the server, both access and error logs and then PHP errors or something like that.And the third one is use one of the tools like Blackfire, New Relic or Xdebug and again you&#8217;ll find issues with plugins but then this is awareness I&#8217;m talking about. But yes, what would your steps be?</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-sabrina-s-perspective-as-a-performance-engineer">Sabrina&#8217;s perspective as a performance engineer</h2>



  <p>I will share the steps when I&#8217;m hired to work on a websites, but steps that someone who is not performance expert but just a developer can take to identify what&#8217;s happening and if something is happening because this is the beginning of the process. So let&#8217;s say you just notice something is off. I would recommend to start with narrowing down the problem if it might be overwhelming for the person who is not used to a lot of performance information.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-google-search-console">Google search console</h3>



  <p>I would recommend to first identify if the problem exists and if so where it does exist. I would recommend to go first thing to Google search console and check your core web vitals data and see if there are any issues there. Google Search console is place where in page size there is a small thing where you have core web vitals assessment. This is real field data from your website, but it comes from the bigger source of information and the more detailed report can be found in Google search console.</p>



  <p>There is a tab there called core vitals. You can go there and check if your website is passing core vitals assessment. If the website is passing core web vitals assessment, especially on LCP and first input delay, which will soon be replaced with INP interactive to the next paint. So if it passing on this two, it means that real users don&#8217;t have problems with speed on your website on front end, but if at the same time you have the feeling that something is off, something is loading slowly, I would try to differentiate probably if it&#8217;s happening only when you locked in, if it&#8217;s happening for locked in users and it&#8217;s not happening for locked out users and then you will have the answer.</p>



  <p>If it&#8217;s not happening for locked out users, there are no issues with core web vitals, then this issue most likely will be connected with something on backend that is cached or mitigated by something on front end for locked off users. Okay, this is already a lot of information for us. We already know that we should be looking in the backend because it&#8217;s happening in the backend and from this point I would recommend install query, monitor and looking there. But again, when you install query monitor, there is a huge amount of information there. If you don&#8217;t know where you are looking at, it&#8217;s easy to get lost. And some websites have a lot of issues. This happens to my clients a lot. They see that the website have a lot of issues, there are errors, there are slow queries, there are a lot of sales and scripts loading.</p>



  <p>There are so many issues I would recommend to pinpoint what is the most easy thing to fix and the most easy things to fix are usually basic ones, First it&#8217;s PHP version. It would be so easy to, it&#8217;s really, really easy to fix. You just upgrade server to a higher PHP version test there. If all plugins play well with it, you keep it going.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-memory-limits">Memory limits</h3>



  <p>Now the thing that is often overlooked, there is a theme that we have in WordPress that is called Ability memory limit and by default it&#8217;s set to 40 megabytes and I see a lot of cases when this default number hasn&#8217;t been changed. For years the site was surviving somehow, but now it&#8217;s not because 40 megabytes, it&#8217;s very, very low number.</p>



  <p>But it happens often. I see that they are upgrading their hosting, they&#8217;re paying for say two gigabytes of RAM on their hosting, but there is a limit set in their WordPress to 40 gigabytes. So they never use what they&#8217;re paying for. By the way query monitor is showing that thing. So if memory limit is set to the default to 40 megabytes, you&#8217;ll see that in query monitor. That would be another very easiest thing to fix. This is something that you should be able to fix yourself and if after that the problem doesn&#8217;t disappear, that that is a sign there is a problem that this is a sign you should seek for help.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-misleading-object-caching">Misleading object caching</h3>



  <p>Object caching can be a very good idea and query monitor might be showing that as well. What it shows you sometimes can be misleading. In query monitor it says object caching plugin is not in use and it&#8217;s a little bit misleading because you should check numbers next to this line seeing so many hits and so many cached and if you have from 100%, you have 95% cashed, that&#8217;s fine. It means query caching is working. It&#8217;s just you&#8217;re not using the plugin to manage it, but it is working. There is nothing to worry about. So my recommendation would be try to figure out if it&#8217;s frontend or backend by going to core web vitals. Then going as locked in user and trying to figure out if it&#8217;s backend or frontend. If it&#8217;s backend, it&#8217;s still query monitor, look at query basic things like WP memory limits.</p>



  <p>You can listen to the entire episode <a href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-performance-optimization/">WooCommerce Performance Optimization with Sabrina Zeidan and Uros Tasic</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"Do The Woo Community: Navigating High-Traffic Events with WooCommerce as an Agency";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6082";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://dothewoo.io/navigating-high-traffic-events-with-woocommerce-as-an-agency/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4090:"<p>Operating a large-scale e-commerce business is no small feat, but when Black Friday through Cyber Monday hits, the challenges intensify, making it a crucial period for businesses like Maksimer. From a <strong>conversation on Do the Woo&#8217;s DevChat</strong>, Nenad Conić talks with hosts Zach and Carl about the strategies and experiences shared by the team at Maksimer as they tackle the unique demands of Black Friday and maintain seamless operations during this high-stakes weekend.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-preparing-for-a-high-traffic-event">Preparing for a high-traffic event</h2>



  <p>Nenad highlights the importance of a two-month preparation period leading up to leading up to an event like Black Friday. Proactive communication with clients becomes paramount during this time, aiming to collaboratively plan and optimize sales campaigns. Emphasis is placed on creating effective landing pages that showcase sale products, allowing targeted optimization without overhauling the entire site. The goal is to enhance the customer experience on specific pages crucial for sales.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-challenges-and-solutions">Challenges and Solutions</h2>



  <p>Despite great planning, there are always last-minute changes from some clients, creating unforeseen challenges. Nenad acknowledges that while it&#8217;s challenging to prevent such changes entirely, early communication and preparation remain critical. To address unexpected surges in server resource usage they implement monitoring systems. These systems trigger alerts when server resources approach their limits, enabling quick intervention to prevent site crashes.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-navigating-the-unknown">Navigating the Unknown</h2>



  <p>In the conversation it turns  to the unpredictable nature of server warnings, comparing them to a tsunami warning with a narrow window for response. Despite the challenges, having different departments within the company, such as the growth department and eco managers, provides additional support. Eco managers work closely with clients, offering insights and suggestions for handling their websites during high-traffic events.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-entrepreneurial-mindset">The Entrepreneurial Mindset</h2>



  <p>They talk about the unique mindset of e-commerce store owners, describing them as self-motivated individuals eager to explore new tools and strategies. The challenge lies in balancing their entrepreneurial spirit with practical considerations. The team at Maksimer often receives requests to implement new features, such as affiliate programs, based on success stories from other store owners. Adapting these requests to the specific e-commerce platform and ensuring compatibility becomes an integral part of the collaboration.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-building-partnerships">Building Partnerships</h2>



  <p>An important piece is the partnership dynamic between an agency and store owners in the e-commerce space. Unlike traditional marketing site builds, e-commerce clients actively engage throughout the entire process, understanding that their website directly influences their income stream. The agency&#8217;s role extends beyond building websites; they effectively control the client&#8217;s income funnel, requiring a collaborative and responsive approach to maintain client satisfaction, especially in crisis situations.</p>



  <p>High-traffic events in e-commerce demands a combination of meticulous planning, effective communication, and adaptability. The insights shared by the team at Maksimer shed light on the complexities of e-commerce operations and the vital role played by agencies in ensuring a seamless and successful online retail experience, even in the face of unforeseen challenges.</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/database-optimization-monitoring-tools-and-client-communication">You can listen to the full podcast episode, Database Optimization, Monitoring Tools, and Client Communication with Nenad Conić here.</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"Do The Woo Community: A Deep Dive into the WordPress and WooCommerce Ecosystem’s Growth Strategies";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6115";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"https://dothewoo.io/a-deep-dive-into-the-wordpress-and-woocommerce-ecosystems-growth-strategies/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9052:"<p>In the online business world, WordPress and WooCommerce stand tall as two popular platforms that help businesses flourish. But to truly scale and excel, businesses need more than just the knowledge of these platforms—they need a well-thought-out plan.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>This post dives deep into the growth strategies that can be implemented within the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystems.&nbsp;</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-understanding-the-wordpress-and-woocommerce-ecosystem"><strong>Understanding the WordPress and WooCommerce Ecosystem</strong></h2>



  <p>The WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem is vibrant, involving a wide array of stakeholders that contribute to its rich diversity.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>At its core, this ecosystem includes theme and plugin providers, developers, and hosting providers. These entities work hand in hand, each playing a vital role in creating an enabling environment for businesses to thrive.</p>



  <p>Theme and plugin providers, for instance, offer essential tools that enhance the functionality and aesthetic appeal of WordPress sites, ensuring users enjoy a seamless experience.&nbsp;</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-dev-chat/">Developers, on the other hand, bring in technical expertise</a>, customizing websites to meet specific business needs, while hosting providers offer the requisite infrastructure, ensuring websites are accessible, reliable, and fast.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-and-its-market-dominance"><strong>WordPress and Its Market Dominance</strong></h3>



  <p>An understanding of the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem wouldn&#8217;t be complete without appreciating WordPress&#8217;s market dominance. WordPress holds sway over a significant portion of the CMS market, powering <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress">over 40% of all websites</a> currently available on the internet.</p>



  <p>The factors driving its widespread adoption are its flexibility, ease of use, and extensive customization possibilities. <strong>WordPress&#8217;s open-source nature</strong>, combined with its vast community of developers and theme and plugin providers, provides businesses with virtually unlimited potential for customizability.</p>



  <p>It&#8217;s this scalability and versatility that have contributed significantly to WordPress&#8217;s sustained market dominance.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-woocommerce-and-its-place-in-ecommerce"><strong>WooCommerce and Its Place in eCommerce</strong></h3>



  <p>WooCommerce is a dynamic player in the global eCommerce market. It rides on WordPress&#8217;s success by providing an intuitive, flexible, and powerful ecommerce platform that businesses of all sizes can leverage to set up online stores.</p>



  <p>The benefits of WooCommerce are immense. From its seamless integration with WordPress, ease of use, flexibility, and the availability of numerous themes and plugins, WooCommerce offers businesses a customizable platform for setting up online stores.</p>



  <p>When stacked against other platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, WooCommerce shines for its affordability and adaptability. Shopify and BigCommerce are monthly subscription-based platforms, while Magento can be complex and may require expert developer knowledge.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>On the contrary, WooCommerce is free, open-source, and user-friendly, making it a viable contender in the eCommerce space.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-identifying-opportunities-for-growth"><strong>Identifying Opportunities for Growth</strong></h2>



  <p>In the dynamic WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem, businesses must continuously identify and seize growth opportunities. A successful scaling strategy involves playing to the platform&#8217;s strengths and seeing beyond immediate needs to include future prospects.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Below are growth opportunities that businesses can use:</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-expanding-product-offerings"><strong>1. Expanding Product Offerings</strong></h3>



  <p>In any business venture, innovation is key. To truly tap into the potential of WooCommerce and WordPress, consider expanding your product offerings. This could be done by developing new plugins or incorporating additional services that complement your current product.</p>



  <p>Examples could include tools that enhance website functionality, services geared towards improving the user-experience, or partnerships aimed at promoting your product.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-building-strong-partnerships"><strong>2. Building Strong Partnerships</strong></h3>



  <p>Behind every successful business, there&#8217;s a <a href="https://dothewoo.io/the-enigma-of-wordpress-and-woocommerce-partnerships/">network of strong partnership</a>s. In the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem, fruitful connections can be forged with plugin and theme providers, WordPress agencies, and hosting providers.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Collaborating with these entities on various initiatives can lead to reciprocal benefits and expanded growth opportunities.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-focusing-on-customer-success-and-support"><strong>3. Focusing on Customer Success and Support</strong></h3>



  <p>The backbone of every successful business is its loyal customers. By building a robust customer support system, you&#8217;ll foster trust, loyalty, and eventual advocacy.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Prioritize customer success management, which involves understanding your customers&#8217; journey and providing the support they need at every step.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-4-investing-in-content-marketing-and-seo"><strong>4. Investing in Content Marketing and SEO</strong></h3>



  <p>The secret sauce for <a href="https://www.thedotstore.com/influencer-marketing/">gaining visibility and attracting customers</a> lies in content marketing and SEO.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Creating valuable, engaging, and <a href="https://dothewoo.io/future-seo-content-ai/">SEO-friendly content</a> ensures your business&#8217; visibility to potential customers and argues for your credibility within your industry.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-5-adapting-to-industry-trends"><strong>5. Adapting to Industry Trends</strong></h3>



  <p>In today&#8217;s rapidly changing digital world, staying informed about industry trends and adapting your strategies accordingly, can be a game-changer for your business.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Regular monitoring of industry best practices, competitor activity, and <a href="https://dothewoo.io/tag/emerging-technologies/">emerging technology</a> trends can keep you on your toes and ready to adapt.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-measuring-the-success-of-growth-strategies"><strong>Measuring the Success of Growth Strategies</strong></h2>



  <p>Implementing growth strategies without a system to measure their success won&#8217;t yield the desired effect. Analytics play a vital role in gauging the effectiveness of strategies and indicate where improvements are needed.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-metrics-to-nbsp-track"><strong>Metrics to&nbsp; Track</strong></h3>



  <p>To quantify your strategy&#8217;s success, consider tracking metrics like customer acquisition costs, churn rate, and average revenue per user.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>These metrics provide insight into how effectively your strategies are working, where improvements could be made, and whether you&#8217;re reaching your desired goals.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-adjusting-strategies-based-on-data"><strong>Adjusting Strategies Based on Data</strong></h3>



  <p>Data is your best ally when it comes to steering the direction of your growth strategies. It adds objectivity to the process, helps you steer clear of bias-based decisions and allows for strategic pivots based on insights drawn from real-life performance.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Continuous analysis and refinement of your strategies based on <a href="https://dothewoo.io/woocommerce-custom-order-tables-databases-and-performance/">performance data</a> will help ensure that your growth strategies remain effective and relevant in the long run.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-final-words"><strong>Final Words</strong></h2>



  <p>The WordPress and WooCommerce platforms are excellent tools for online business growth. However, simply knowing how to use these tools isn&#8217;t enough.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>To truly succeed, businesses must have a solid plan. This should involve identifying new opportunities, building partnerships, focusing on customer service, staying updated with industry trends, and making data-driven decisions.&nbsp;</p>



  <p>Combining these strategies ensure success not only today but also prepares businesses for the future.</p>



  <p class="has-theme-palette-5-background-color has-background has-medium-font-size"><strong>This is a guest post from our sponsor and the team at <a href="https://www.thedotstore.com/">Dotstore</a></strong></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Do The Woo Community: Documentation is a Gift to the WordPress Community";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6007";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://dothewoo.io/documentation-is-a-gift-to-the-wordpress-community/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1370:"<p>While we we were recording an episode of <strong><em>The WordPress Way</em></strong> at Do the Woo about <a href="https://dothewoo.io/importance-of-product-testing-in-wordpress/"><strong>The Importance of Product Testing in WordPress</strong></a>, guest Brian Alexander did a quick note in the chat tool we use during a recording, simply saying, &#8220;Documentation is a gift to the community.&#8221; Host Abha Thakor asked him to elaborate on that.</p>



  <p><strong>Brian</strong>: Yeah, consider someone who is not as familiar with WordPress or is having a problem with their website or is a developer who&#8217;s just getting started. All of those different roles benefit from having strong updated documentation. Think of how many forum posts might not have been logged because it was clearly stated how to use a particular feature in the documentation or perhaps uncovering bugs as you said, because that&#8217;s all part of it. Validating your documentation in a way you&#8217;re testing what your assumptions are and if those assumptions are incorrect, then you&#8217;re assuming the wrong thing or there&#8217;s a bug in the system.</p>



  <p>So that definitely becomes a gift to the entire community as a resource that doesn&#8217;t require one-on-one time or tying up one person. It&#8217;s very inefficient for one person to answer all the questions.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"Do The Woo Community: How the Pace has Changed with SEO at Google";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=5991";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://dothewoo.io/how-the-pace-has-changed-with-seo-at-google/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1697:"<p>In a podcast episode of Emerging Tech at Do the Woo, host David Lockie asked Alex Moss this question.</p>



  <p>With how much is SEO changing &#8217;cause it&#8217;s a pretty mature practice now, and obviously like the cries of SEO is there have been ringing for, you know, almost as long as SEO&#8217;s been around, what sort of changes is Google making? You talked about schema. What&#8217;s that pace of change like now compared to how it has been over the last say, 20 years?</p>



  <p><strong><em>Alex replied.</em></strong></p>



  <p>I would say it seems that since September, Google have woken up to updating a lot more stuff. from what I heard, Google was busy with other things internally that that was prioritized over supporting schema within search console and different elements of it. But I saw when things like the FAQ and the event snippets were removed from the SERPs, there&#8217;s been a lot of testing over time of what different elements should be output in the search results.</p>



  <p>And at the same time, you&#8217;ve got their own AI integrations with their own SERP. So there&#8217;s been a lot of changes, not only, I would say more clarification and expansion into what they&#8217;ve already been telling us the entire 20 years. So 20 years ago they had the webmaster guidelines, it was quite basic, right? But now it&#8217;s a whole documentation area of the site. everything&#8217;s been done. Even things like EEAT with their ethos on experience authority, trust, and expertise.</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/future-seo-content-ai/">You can listen to more of his answer and the entire conversation around the future of AI, Content and SEO here.</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"Do The Woo Community: Managing Response Times for Support with Your WooCommerce and WordPress Plugins";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=6061";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://dothewoo.io/managing-response-times-for-support-with-your-woocommerce-and-wordpress-plugins/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4822:"<p>In a Woo BizChat show <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/the-path-for-creating-a-premium-plugin-extension/">about the path to creating Woo or WP plugins as extension of other plugins</a></strong>, host Marcus asked Maarten and Katie about support response times.</p>



  <p><strong>Maarten</strong>: Well, if you want low response times, you have to do a lot yourself. So I did support for a long time before I hired somebody to help me with it, and now we&#8217;re kind of splitting the workload and I still go in there from time to time just to see what are the really technical tickets or if I know a customer, I will reply to them just to maintain that relationship or if I feel like I can get some more information out of the issue that the customer has or what they might want next for the plugin. </p>



  <p>I&#8217;ll also jump in and reply. So I keep doing a lot of support and since I develop my own plugins, it&#8217;s always going to be the fastest. I can do probably 20 tickets in an hour and they will be finished too. There will be a reply.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-using-support-to-perfect-documentation">Using support to perfect documentation</h2>



  <p>So that&#8217;s really the best thing to do for me. But yeah, it takes a lot of time, so you want to have to put in that time. But other than that, what I also did is I keep perfecting documentation, so I keep going back to the same documentation. If a customer has a question that is in the documentation and they didn&#8217;t find a reply, I will rewrite it. I will find a different way to say the same thing. And now I&#8217;m also experimenting with AI just to see if it can help with lowering that burden on support and also just give a quicker answer to my customers.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-average-ticket-when-you-delegate-support-might-take-half-an-hour-to-do">The average ticket when you delegate support might take half an hour to do</h3>



  <p><strong>Katie</strong>: It&#8217;s interesting what you say about being able to do 20 tickets an hour because that highlights the most difficult thing that I have found in outsourcing your support and getting help with it because I too, as the founder, very, very fast at responding to tickets at what I think is very high quality. I know the product so well, I know our documentation, I wrote it after all. And so I can provide good responses very quickly, but then as soon as you start hiring out people to do it, whether they&#8217;re in-house or not, you find that that&#8217;s not what you receive. </p>



  <p>Typically, and I&#8217;ve talked to many other WordPress product companies, the average ticket when you delegate support might take half an hour to do. They&#8217;re not doing 20 tickets an hour or anything like that. And as a founder, that&#8217;s really frustrating because you don&#8217;t understand why they&#8217;re not as fast as you, but you kind of have to just learn to accept that it&#8217;s one of the inevitable consequences of growing.</p>



  <p>For example, at Barn2, we handle 22,000 support tickets last year. So clearly I can&#8217;t do all the support myself, and I would love to, I really enjoy support, particularly pre-sales because it&#8217;s an excellent touchpoint with your customers where you can really learn their motivation, how they see your products, and constantly when I do step into support and talk to customers, I&#8217;m finding opportunities to improve the documentation, improve the products, improve our sales pages. I learned so much from doing the support, but it&#8217;s not realistic. And so you have to get help and as part of that, you just have to accept that nobody is as fast as you.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-i-still-go-in-there-and-i-do-a-lot-of-support">I still go in there and I do a lot of support</h3>



  <p><strong>Maarten</strong>: Yeah, and I was going to add that I fully agree with you there. It&#8217;s very frustrating in the beginning to find a support agent because you are used to your own speed of doing things, and it&#8217;s like you said, you have to come to terms with it. And for me, it took like six months where I was very frustrated with how things were going, and then I realized that it&#8217;s just all in my head and my expectations need to be different, and now everything&#8217;s going well. </p>



  <p>I&#8217;m very happy with the support guide and it&#8217;s all known off my shoulders, so it&#8217;s perfect really. But I still go in there and I do a lot of support, but it&#8217;s on my agenda to lower my burden on support for this year because I&#8217;m doing too much and I&#8217;m spread a little bit too thin, especially if I&#8217;m developing new plugins. So I&#8217;m going to have to let it go this year and do less support</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"Do The Woo Community: Why Malware Scanner Plugins Do Not Work on WordPress Sites";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25:"https://bobwp.com/?p=5258";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://dothewoo.io/why-malware-scanner-plugins-do-not-work-on-wordpress-sites/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7383:"<p><strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/security-from-the-basics-to-enterprise-with-calvin-alkan/">In a episode on Do the Woo, we had Calvin Alkin chatting with hosts Carl and Kathy.</a></strong></p>



  <p>Kathy asked Calvin this question.</p>



  <p>Calvin, I want to get back to why the plugin is, why that whole model doesn&#8217;t really work. Because of how PHP works. There might be some non-technical people who might not understand exactly how that model doesn&#8217;t work, and they might not be able to find time to read your research. But can you just give an overview of why that doesn&#8217;t,</p>



  <p>What happens, I mean, I&#8217;ve seen the malware that&#8217;s done this, that&#8217;s like, oh, well, you can find everybody else&#8217;s malware, but you&#8217;re not going to find mine. And that hacker can modify those files. Can you explain why they can, why they get a site has an intrusion from, let&#8217;s say a SQL vulnerability, that SQL injection that does not have anything to do with anything happening in PHP, but they can still then get access to PHP files and modify them.</p>



  <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-scanner-plugins-won-t-work">Why scanner plugins won&#8217;t work</h2>



  <p>So let&#8217;s start by at the point of through some means your site has been infected, so it doesn&#8217;t matter that infinite attack vectors, how that could have happened, but now your site has malware on it, and you also have a plugin that does malware scanning, maybe like using the WP chron periodically, or you can start it from the UI, whatever. But ultimately this scan, the malware scan runs in the same process, the PHP process and with the same privilege level as the malware. So the most simplest and the most blunt hit with the hammer approach, the malware could just simply disable or delete your security plugin from the file system. This will be like the easiest to understand the first time the malware runs, it just deletes your security plugin. That&#8217;s the easiest after there aren&#8217;t any scans, but obviously you as a site administrator would realize that at some point, yeah, maybe not immediately, but maybe you&#8217;ll realize eventually that your security plugin is gone.</p>



  <p><br />So what they do is then because they can read the source code of the plugin, they can see how it works, and since they&#8217;re operating at the same privilege level, they&#8217;re both running inside of WordPress in the PHP process that powers WordPress, they can then alter the malware scanner in a way that maybe imagine this. They&#8217;re very complex operations going on to determine if a file is malware or not, and then the actual malware modifies that final result. It is displayed to you in the UI and just says, yeah, you&#8217;re all clean. Pretty much that&#8217;s how it works. They make the malware scanner lie to you. They make the malware scanner tell you there&#8217;s no malware, but there actually is. And the way to do that depends on malware based on the malware scanner that you have. And obviously we didn&#8217;t disclose what we did there. We don&#8217;t want to make it easier for folks, but it&#8217;s pretty easy, to be honest, like 10 lines of quote maybe to do that. It&#8217;s not hard. So yeah, that&#8217;s the fundamental issue. The system that is potentially infected wants to monitor itself, and that doesn&#8217;t work. It has to be from somewhere higher up or someplace that is more privileged at the server level.</p>



  <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plugins-that-have-firewalls-associated-built-into-the-plugin">Plugins that have firewalls associated built into the plugin</h3>



  <p>So the firewall would be protection, not scanning. I mean, if you have hardware on your side, the firewall can be disabled in the very same manner. That&#8217;s also the, but at that point, you&#8217;re already infected. The firewall usually is there to prevent you from getting infected in the first place. There isn&#8217;t anything wrong in particular with plugin based firewalls. It&#8217;s more so that everything that you can do in a plugin with a firewall, you can do, for example, the Edge at CloudFlare or in the Nix firewall.</p>



  <p><br />Yeah, just it&#8217;s heavy from a CIS admin perspective, especially in enterprise, right? We&#8217;re talking enterprise. So larger WooCommerce stores, larger sites, they need more PHP workers. They want their code to be more efficient so that the response time is faster and all those things. If every request has to be processed as a firewall request, it&#8217;s a lot of processing time dedicated to that. It&#8217;s not. Trivial in itself is a one serious reason to just not use super heavy security plugins like that is if they just do a lot and they put a lot of weight on your WordPress installation, which is a problem again for enterprise because they&#8217;re trying to be more performant, they&#8217;re trying to handle more sales, more everything, and you&#8217;re basically, it&#8217;s like having an ankle weight. You&#8217;re kind of dragging. Every request has this huge ankle weight that you&#8217;re dragging, and that serves not no purpose, but as we&#8217;re discussing the malware scanning doesn&#8217;t work. It&#8217;s more like security theater, right?</p>



  <p><br />The malware scanning and some other things. Fundamentally, it&#8217;s impossible to perform that at the plugin level. And there are other things that are the same, but for example, the firewall, it is absolutely possible to write a secure firewall in a WebPress plugin. There&#8217;s nothing that makes it conceptually impossible, unlike the malware example. You can do that, whether the existing ones are secure, it&#8217;s a different topic, but it is theoretically possible. The thing is, it will not be performed because as Carl mentioned, at that point where the plugin based firewall runs, you already incur the majority of the cost of that request. You already went through the edge layer. Engine X ran, WordPress was booted, and then your firewall is hit. So it&#8217;s not performant. It&#8217;s possible to do it securely,</p>



  <p><br />Or let&#8217;s go one step further to you&#8217;re trying to mitigate a DDoS. If your firewall&#8217;s, the actual PHP application, you ain&#8217;t mitigating anything, right? Your site&#8217;s blowing up either way. It&#8217;s all cool. You have a firewall, but you&#8217;re still getting hammered by hundreds of thousands of requests, your server&#8217;s not going to be able to handle it, and it&#8217;s not really designed for that either. You can do it on the same machine. I&#8217;ve done work with people that nonprofits where they can&#8217;t use American companies for security reasons, and so they can&#8217;t use CloudFlare or things like that. So you have to do a lot of the protection yourself at the machine level, but it&#8217;s not, you want those requests to be blocked. You can even overwhelm a Linux machine if you&#8217;re not careful, even with a DDoS. So that&#8217;s why it&#8217;s not efficient either, right? Part of the goal of a firewall is to prevent those DDoS attacks, and you basically are not doing that with a PV based firewall.</p>



  <p><a href="https://dothewoo.io/security-from-the-basics-to-enterprise-with-calvin-alkan/">You can listen to the full episode here</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 29 Jun 2024 10:45:42 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:9:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:36:14 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Tue, 16 Jul 2024 06:15:42 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:4:"gzip";s:7:"alt-svc";s:19:"h3=":443"; ma=86400";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20240716063421";}


