Ben Ritner from KadenceWP weighs in on block, themes and the future of the WooCommerce product page.

The post A Focus on Blocks, Themes and WooCommerce appeared first on Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community.

Gutenberg 13.1 landed in the WordPress plugin directory earlier today. Not quite as heavy on the feature list as its predecessor, the update focuses more on improvements and bug fixes. The highlight of the release is the overhauled border design component.

One notable bug that theme authors should watch out for is missing styles in the site editor. When enqueueing stylesheets via wp_enqueue_block_style(), they are noticeably absent. This bug was introduced in Gutenberg 13.0 but has yet to be fixed. It is not an issue in the WordPress 6.0 beta releases and is only present in the plugin.

This release also included a couple of block-related changes that I do not dive into later. The Categories block now has a setting for hiding “empty” categories (those without posts). And the duotone button has a new triangle-shaped icon by default, which reverts to its circular shape when a filter has been applied.

New Border Controls

Gutenberg 13.0 introduced new BorderControl and BoxBorderControl components. These updates were an overhaul of the previous border design tools that users would see in the block inspector.

With 13.1, any block that opts into border support will use the new components. This allows end-users to define the top, right, bottom, and left borders. Theme authors can also register these individual borders via theme.json for specific blocks.

Alongside this update, the core Column block now has border support.

Block “Settings” Panel Renamed

One of my favorite changes will likely not get much attention, but it is worth mentioning. Over a dozen blocks had custom settings panels that read “Block Name settings” in the block inspector. These have all been reduced to “Settings.”

The update might seem minor, but the UI is more polished without the cruft. It is not the most exciting work contributors are putting into the project, but it is the necessary stuff that creates a better user experience in the long run.

Plugin authors who have followed the Gutenberg naming scheme for their own blocks’ settings panels should take note. It might be time to do the same.

Media & Text Font Size Change

The latest plugin release changes the template used to create the Media & Text block. In the past, a large font size was given to the default Paragraph block inserted into the “text” column. The update removes this issue.

This has long been one of those frustrating defaults set by the editor that users would need to adjust each time they added the block. It was also a problem for theme developers who either removed or did not support that specific font size.

Now, if we could only do the same for the Cover block…

Improved Comments Query Loop and Related Blocks

Two weeks ago, I reviewed the new comment-related blocks shipping with WordPress 6.0. While the concepts had potential, the experience was still buggier than I expected late into the release cycle. However, those issues are now fixed via a massive team effort. Most, if not all, should also be in WordPress 6.0 Beta 3, which landed yesterday.

The introduction of the Comments Query Loop block opened a ton of flexibility for theme authors and users alike. It acts as a wrapper for other comment-related blocks that can be rearranged for different designs.

The primary issues were on the front-end output. Comment classes were not output via the Comment Template block, but that feature was not a deal-breaker. However, the missing ID meant that comment permalinks and the comment-reply script were not working.

One of the other missing pieces was the “X responses to Post Title” heading. This was needed to bring feature parity with the Post Comments block, deprecated in Gutenberg 13.0. I shared a starting point that others, particularly Carlos Bravo, built upon, creating an even better version. Now, we have a dedicated Comments Title block in Gutenberg. I was happy to play even a small role in making it happen.

“Welcome to the Block Editor!” Once you have dismissed this notice, why does it keep coming back? For years users have complained about this and the fact that their settings in the editor do not seem to save across sessions. They have taken to the official support forums and Reddit to find out how to block this message from appearing. WordPress developer Johan Jonk Stenström even created a plugin called Welcome to the block editor B gone, which removes the welcome message altogether.

In the past, WordPress has stored users’ editor preferences in the browser. In 2019, web developer Andrew Duthie described the problem in a ticket on GitHub:

In the block editor, this is used in a few stores to persist preferences (e.g. toolbar placement, “new user experience” tips, etc).

Due to the transient nature of browser storage, this persistence is not as sticky as it is expected to be, including: switching browsers (unique storage between browsers), or using private browsing tabs (storage cleared between sessions), or the same user across a network of sites (storage unique by domain).

Duthie suggested that Gutenberg persist users’ editor preferences to the database rather than local storage.

Gutenberg 13.2 is set to introduce a new preferences persistence API and a new package that saves these preferences to the WordPress database, as part of the user’s meta. It also includes local (legacy) storage as a backup. This will solve many longstanding problems users have had with preferences not persisting across sessions.

One interesting sidenote is that Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella found that this PR improved the “block selection” (focus) performance by nearly 50%. It is a remarkable improvement but not intentional so he suggested they investigate further to see why it had that effect.

Gutenberg contributors tested this update by creating a few different users, switching between them, using different browsers, and setting different preference combinations. The preferences stayed with the user as expected. This update will address a lot of little annoying bugs that users have complained about for years and should make plugins like Welcome to the block editor B gone obsolete.

Each week we are highlighting the news from WordPress.org that you don't want to miss. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, we've got the news you need to know. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

News

• WordPress 6.0 Beta 3
• New Five for the Future section below

Five for the Future

What's happening specific to Five for the Future? Provide your feedback on these posts:

• Tracking contributions: meeting attendance
• Tracking Contributions: HelpScout
• Tracking Contributions: Contributors share their contributions periodically. 
• Manual “props” for team activity
• Minimal onboarding process for newly pledged contributors
• Outreach process for various types of incomplete and dormant pledges
• Prevent and remove spam/dormant pledges
• Require logging in for submitting the company pledge form
• Prevent company pledges becoming a public without pledges
• Include the number of pledges in the pledge listing
• Team Pledges: Link to Slack user for convenience

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On the podcast today we have Aki Hamano.

Aki is a freelance developer from Japan. He builds websites for clients and enjoys setting himself difficult problems to solve.

He came to my attention when Justin Tadlock wrote an article about a playful block that he’s created.

After a little further exploration, it turns out that Aki’s been busy in his spare time creating a range of blocks, all of them useful and all of them freely available in the WordPress plugin repository.

We start off by having a brief chat about what the WordPress scene is like in Japan. Is there a strong sense of community, and do in-person events take place?

We then move on to talk about how he became interested in creating blocks. Did he find it easy to understand the new skills required to get up and running and was there enough documentation to make speedy progress?

We spend the remainder of the podcast talking through the five blocks which Aki has put in the WordPress plugin repository. Often, they were created to scratch his own itch, to solve a problem that he faced in his work, but sometimes, as with his excellent Piano Block, it was just for fun and the challenge of trying something new.

The Piano Block aside, all of Aki’s blocks have an easy to understand purpose, and they take on a simple challenge, and solve it.

This is perhaps one of the main reasons that blocks are so interesting, they can be simple or complex, utilitarian or just fun.

It’s an interesting discussion, and you never know, perhaps you’ll find yourself using Aki’s blocks at some point yourself.

Useful links.

Block Editor Handbook

Create Block Package

Aki Hamano’s Github page

Flexible Spacer Block

Flexible Table Block

RichText Extension

Custom HTML Block Extension

Piano Block

Play the Piano and Other Instruments via the WordPress Block Editor

இக்கட்டுரை தமிழிலும் பதிவிடப்பட்டுள்ளது.

Over the years, I found myself making less ambitious choices with respect to my studies and career, because I feared that I may not be able to meet the demands of ambitious choices. Eventually, when I quit my Software Engineer position at Novell, it was for the same reason. I could not do justice to my work and my family. This might be a refrain that many women might identify with. 

After quitting the job, I explored a few different fields for a couple of years. Eventually, I registered for a PhD thinking that I’d fit into the academia. However, by the time I finished it, I was not willing to work at any University. With an Engineering College a few metres away from my home, many of my friends and neighbours suggested that I should try to get a position there, but I was adamant that I shall not go for it, as the rules and restrictions of a typical college environment in South India did not resonate with me.

At the Crossroads

Due to some nagging health issues and two young children – one a new-born, I was very keen on doing something on my own terms. But my options were minimal. It was at this time, that I felt like a beautifully crafted Veena which got eventually trashed. 

My favourite Tamil poet Bharathi wrote these lines asking the Supreme power why She chose to craft a beautiful Veena only to trash it. He was referring to the potential and intelligence in him that he was wasting away. He prayed to be empowered to live a useful life.

I would repeat his lines and wonder why I couldn’t make something useful out of my life, out of all the knowledge I had gathered, out of all the skills I had spent hundreds of hours to hone. I wondered if I was being stubborn by not choosing the path of least resistance – working for the nearby educational institution.

In my mid-thirties, armed with a PhD in Natural Language Processing(NLP), and scattered experiences in various areas of software, my other options were minimal. After intense introspection and googling, I realized that I could try a remote job as a last resort. The WordPress ecosystem seemed to be full of remote positions, but I did not have the skills for it. Till then, I had in-depth understanding and command over C, Perl, the Unix OS and the command line utilities. As far as web development was concerned, I had the experience of writing hardcoded html home pages(some of you might remember this era) a decade before.

Starting Fresh

At this juncture, I had a choice to look for some work with my then skillsets and qualifications, given my constraints, or to start from scratch on web development. I chose to do the latter.

The lines from Rudyard Kipling’s If were my mantra in those days.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

Of course, I was feeling quite bad about my loss, the loss of NLP from my day-to-day work. But it was important for me to do something with my skills than to be very selective about what I was doing, as I was not willing to compromise on the other conditions.

So, I set to work.

I started a couple of WordPress sites; One of them, a book review site PlusMinus’nMore, built on WordPress, became quite popular over a few years; I started a social startup named RAPO, to bring people together through books and wrote the application for it; I freelanced – wrote tutorials on WordPress and Linux, offered part-time support and documentation service for themes and plugins. My good friend, who was running her own venture using Zoho, outsourced any HTML/CSS sub-tasks to me; I contributed to WordPress Core and also offered Tamil Translations for plugins and themes. I wrote amateurish plugins and released them. I was willing to do anything to learn WordPress, as a user and as a developer. All of this happened at the comfort of my home, without having to compromise on the care I gave for my children.

However, freelancing soon became quite overwhelming because of the administrative overheads. Consequently, I started applying for remote positions. It was difficult to get a break because I was overqualified. It was a miracle that I got into ProsPress Inc. and suddenly, I found myself a remote developer working on WooCommerce Subscriptions. 

After a couple of years, Automattic happened and I moved over to the Woo Data team. I still don’t do NLP in my day-today job, and my knowledge on the trends in NLP or ML is quite outdated. However, I am keeping my hopes alive and learning a lot on a range of things that I work on everyday – Payments, the Hadoop ecosystem and Functional Programming in Scala to name a few.

Today, I have relocated to Dubai thanks to my remote job. I am glad that I chose the WordPress ecosystem because it has given me what I wanted and more.

Lessons To Take Away

What I learnt from these events and what I frequently remind myself of:

1. The past is gone. The present and future are in my hands. I can always start afresh and find meaning from the rest of my life.
2. It is important to keep choosing what I enjoy doing, without looking for rewards, even if it does not make sense always. I shall be able to connect the dots later.

So, my dear reader, where ever you are in the world, whatever your current situation might be, especially if you’re a mom who had a high-flying career which you had to let go off, I hope my story inspires you to remember that the present and the future are in your hands, if you’re not reluctant to start afresh. Do your duty towards your family, but do not compromise on what you want out of life. Keep walking the journey and the future will present options that you never dreamt of.

முன்னேறிடு முன்னேறிடு

என் வாழ்க்கையைத் திரும்பிப் பார்க்கும்போது, பள்ளி மற்றும் கல்லூரியில் படிக்கும்போதும் சரி, அல்லது வேலையில் இருக்கும்போதும் சரி, பல முறை என் ஆற்றலுக்கேற்றவற்றைத் தவிர்த்து, எளியவற்றைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்துள்ளேன். உள்ளூர, என்னால் மிக உன்னதமான குறிக்கோள்களை மேற்கொண்டு செவ்வனே செய்ய முடியுமா என்ற ஐயமும், குடும்பத்தைப் புறக்கணித்து விடுவேனோ என்ற பயமும் தான் காரணம். நோவெல் நிறுவனத்தில் மென்பொருள் பொறியாளர் வேலையை ராஜினாமா செய்ததும் இக்காரணத்தால்தான். இது பல பெண்களுக்கு எங்கேயோ கேட்ட பல்லவியாக இருக்கக்கூடும்.

வேலையை விட்டவுடன், சும்மா இருக்க விருப்பமில்லாமல் சில தொழில்-சார்ந்த படிப்புகளை ஆராய்ந்து, இறுதியாக முனைவர் பட்டத்துக்குப் பதிவு செய்தேன். ஆனால் அதை முடிக்கும்போது எனக்கு எந்தப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்திலும் வேலை பார்க்க விருப்பமில்லை. என் வீட்டிற்கு அருகிலேயே ஒரு தொழில்நுட்பக்கல்லூரி இருந்ததால், என் நண்பர்களும் அண்டை வீட்டாரும் அதில் விண்ணப்பிக்குமாறு பரிந்துரைத்தனார். ஆனால் எனக்கு தென்னிந்தியக் கல்லூரிகளின் விதிகளும் கட்டுப்பாடுகளும் தரும் ஒவ்வாமையால் அதைத் தவிர்த்துவிட்டேன்.

நல்லதோர் வீணை

சில நாள்பட்ட உடலூறுகள், மற்றும் இரு சிறு குழந்தைகளின் பராமரிப்பு என்ற இருவேறு காரணங்களால் நான் என் நிபந்தனைகளுக்குட்பட்ட ஏதாவது செய்யவேண்டும் என்பதில் குறியாக இருந்தேன். ஆனால் எனக்கு ஒரு வழியும் தென்படவில்லை.

என் அனுக்கக் கவி பாரதி, சிவசக்தியிடம் 

“நல்லதோர் வீணை செய்தே, அதை நலம்கெட புழுதியில் எறிவதுண்டோ?
சொல்லடீ சிவசக்தி, எனைச் சுடர்மிகுமறிவுடன் படைத்துவிட்டாய்!
வல்லமை தாராயோ இந்த மாநிலம் பயனுற வாழ்வதற்கே!”

என்று முறையிட்ட வரிகள் என்னுள் எப்பொழுதும் ரீங்காரமிட்டுக்கொண்டிருந்தன. அந்த வரிகளில் நான் என்னைக் கண்டேன். எத்தனையோ விஷயங்களைக் கற்றும், பல நூறு மணி நேரங்கள் பாடுபட்டு வளர்த்துக்கொண்ட திறன்கள் இருந்தும், அவை யாருக்கும் பயனற்றுப் போவதாகத் தோன்றியது. ஒருவேளை அது கல்லூரியில் வேலை பார்க்க மாட்டேன் என்ற என் பிடிவாதத்தால் தானோ என்று என்னை நானே கேட்டுக்கொண்டேன்.

முப்பத்தைந்து வயதில், முனைவர் பட்டம் மற்றும் மென்பொருள் அனுபவம் வைத்துக்கொண்டு வேறு என்ன செய்யமுடியும் என்று யோசித்தேன். மிகுந்த ஆராய்ச்சிக்குப் பின், வீட்டிலிருந்து செய்யக்கூடிய இணையவழி வேலைகள் பற்றி அறிந்து கொண்டேன். வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ்(WordPress) தொடர்பான வேலைகள் பலவும் இப்படிப்பட்டவையாக இருந்தன. ஆனால் எனக்கு இணைய மென்பொருள் உருவாக்கத்தில்(Web development) எந்தவொரு அனுபவமும் கிடையாது. எனக்குத் தெரிந்ததெல்லாம் சி(C), பேர்ல்(Perl), யூனிக்ஸ்(Unix) மட்டுமே.

புதிய பாதை

இந்தக் கட்டத்தில், ஒன்று, நான் என் படிப்பு மற்றும் தகுதிகளுக்கேற்ற வேலை செய்யலாம் அல்லது வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ்ஸைப் புதிதாகக் கற்றுக்கொண்டு வேலை தேடலாம். நான் வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ்ஸைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்தேன்.

ஆங்கில எழுத்தாளர் ருட்யார்ட் கிப்ளிங்கின் (Rudyard Kipling) ‘இஃப்’ (If) என்ற கவிதையின் சில வரிகள் என் நினைவுக்கு வந்தன. “ஒருவேளை, உன் வாழ்க்கையின் எல்லா வெற்றிகளையும் மூட்டைக்கட்டி சூதாடி, ஒரே சுண்டில் அவற்றையெல்லாம் இழந்துவிட்டு, மீண்டும் முதல் படியிலிருந்து தொடங்கி, உன் இழப்புகளைப் பற்றி யாரித்திடமும் புலம்பாமால் இருக்கமுடியுமானால் நீ உன் வாழ்க்கையில் வெற்றி பெறலாம்”, என்ற அந்த வரிகளே எனக்குத் தாரக மந்திரமானது.

வெகுவாக புலம்பவில்லை என்றாலும், உள்ளுக்குள் வலித்தது. ஆனால் நான் விட்டுக்கொடுக்க விரும்பாத சில நிபந்தனைகள் வைத்திருந்ததால், இது ஒன்றே முன்னேறும் வழி என்று முடிவெடுத்தேன்.

செயலில் இறங்கினேன்.

சில வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ் தளங்களை உருவாக்கினேன். PlusMinus’nMore என்னும் புத்தக விமர்சன தளமும் அதில் ஒன்று. மூன்று வருடங்களுக்கு அது சிறப்பாக செயல்பட்டது. நண்பர்கள் குழுவுடன் சேர்ந்து RAPO எனும் சமூக நிறுவனத்தை உருவாக்கி அதன் மூலம் மக்களை ஒருங்கிணைக்க முயன்றோம். வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ் மற்றும் லினக்ஸ் தொடர்ப்பான பயிற்சிக்கட்டுரைகள் எழுதி இணையத்தில் பதிவிட்டேன். பகுதிநேர வேலையாக, வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ் சார்ந்த இணைப்புச் செயலிகளுக்கு ஆவணமாக்கம் மற்றும் வாடிக்கையாளர் உதவி போன்ற வேலைகளை ஏற்றுக்கொண்டேன். என் தோழி, தன் நிறுவனத்தின் வேலைகளில் HTML/CSS பாகங்களை எனக்கு அளித்தார். வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ் உள்ளகத்திற்கு மென்பொருள் மற்றும் இணைப்புச் செயலிகளுக்கு தமிழ் மொழிமாற்றம் போன்றவற்றில் பங்களித்தேன். என் வீட்டின் வசதியான சூழலில் இருந்துகொண்டே, குழந்தைகள் நலத்தைப் பேணிக்கொண்டே, வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ்ஸைக் கற்றுக்கொள்ள முடிந்தது.

ஆனால் நாளடைவில் நிர்வாக மேல்வேலைகள் அதிகரித்ததால், இப்படிப் பலவற்றை செய்வது கடினமாயிற்று. எனவே நான் முழுநேர இணையவழி வேலைகளுக்கு விண்ணப்பிக்கத்தொடங்கினேன். என் முனைவர் பட்டம் இவ்வேலைகளுக்கு என்னை மிகையான தகுதியுடையவளாக்கின. கடைசியில் ப்ராஸ்ப்ரெஸ்(ProsPress Inc.) என்னும் நிறுவனத்தில் வேலை கிடைத்தது ஒரு அற்புதம்தான். நான் வூகாமர்ஸ் சபஸ்க்ரிப்ஷன்ஸ்(WooCommerce Subscriptions) என்னும் மின்வர்த்தக சந்தாக்கள் இணைப்புச் செயலியை உருவாக்கி நிர்வகிக்கும் வேலையை செய்யத்தொடங்கினேன்.

இரண்டு வருடங்களுக்குப் பின், ப்ராஸ்ப்ரெஸ் ஆட்டோமேட்டிக்(Automattic) நிறுவனத்துடன் இணைந்ததால், நான் வூடாட்டா(WooData) என்னும் வூகாமர்ஸ்(WooCommerce) சார்ந்த தரவுகளை ஆராயும் குழுவில் சேர்ந்தேன். இப்பொழுதும் என் ஆராய்ச்சித் தலைப்பு தொடர்பான வேலையில் நான் முழுமையாக ஈடுபடவில்லையென்றாலும், அவற்றைக் குறித்த என் அறிவு பத்து வருடங்கள் பின்தங்கியவையென்றாலும், நம்பிக்கை இழக்காமல் தினமும் என் வேலையில் கொடுப்பனவுகள், Hadoop, Scala மற்றும் Functional Programming போன்ற பல புதுப்புது விஷயங்களைக் கற்றுக்கொண்டிருக்கிறேன்.

இணைய வழி வேலையின் உபயத்தால் நான் இப்போது துபாயில் வாழ்கிறேன். நான் வர்ட்ப்ரெஸ்ஸைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்தது குறித்து இன்று எனக்கு மிகவும் திருப்தியாக உள்ளது. ஏனெனில் அது என் விருப்பத்திற்கு மிகுதியாகவே எனக்கு அளித்துள்ளது.

கற்ற பாடங்கள்

இந்த நிகழ்வுகள் மூலம் நான் கற்றுக்கொண்டவையாவன:

1. கடந்த காலம் கடந்துவிட்டது. நிகழ்காலமும் எதிர்காலமும் என் கையில்.
   எப்பொழுது வேண்டுமானாலும் நான் என்னைப் புதுப்பித்துக்கொண்டு என் எஞ்சிய வாழ்க்கையை அர்த்தமானதாக்கலாம்

2. எனக்கு விருப்பமுள்ளவற்றை –– ஏனென்று புரியவில்லையென்றாலும்,
   எந்தவொரு எதிர்பார்ப்பும் இன்றித் தேர்ந்தெடுத்து அவற்றைச் செய்து கொண்டே இருப்பது மிகவும் முக்கியம்.
   பின்னால் அவற்றின் பொருள் புரியக்கூடும்.

எனவே, என் அன்பு வாசகர்களே! நீங்கள் இவ்வுலகின் எந்த மூலையிலிருந்தாலும், உங்கள் தற்போதைய நிலை எதுவாயினும், குறிப்பாக பிடித்தமான வேலையைத் தியாகம் செய்த தாயானால், என் கதை உங்களுக்கு ஊக்கமளிக்கும் என்று நம்புகிறேன். நிகழ்காலமும் எதிர்காலமும் உங்கள் கையில். எவ்விதத் தயக்கமும் இன்றி, புதிய முயற்சிகளை மேற்கொள்ளுங்கள். உங்கள் அன்றாட கடமைகளை நிறைவேற்றலாம்; ஆனால் உங்கள் வாழ்க்கைக்கு அணையிட வேண்டாம். அடி மேல் அடி வைத்து முன்னேறுங்கள். எதிர்காலம் நீங்கள் கனவிலும் காணாத வாய்ப்புகளை நிச்சயமாக வழங்கும்.

The post Keep walkin’ soldier Keep movin’ on – முன்னேறிடு முன்னேறிடு appeared first on HeroPress.

The WordPress subreddit lit up this week with reports of MemberPress locking users out of the plugin’s admin if they do not renew their subscriptions. MemberPress is a popular membership plugin for WordPress. It is a commercial-only plugin starting at $179/year for one site, and there is no free version.

Reddit user @hamsternose opened the discussion with a first-hand account of having gotten locked out:

So I just discovered that MemberPress has changed its subscription model and will now cease to work the second your license expires and you need to reticence to get it working again.

This is the first WordPress plugin I have come across that works this way and I can’t say I am a fan. I support keeping plugins updated but I don’t believe this should be forced as it pretty much locks users in to meeting whatever price demands a developer chooses.

Is this the way forwards for WordPress Plugin developers now?

MemberPress’ updated renewal policy is clearly outlined in the plugin’s docs about what happens when a user’s subscription ends. The most controversial action is that customers will no longer “have access to any of the MemberPress admin screens.” The policy states:

Essentially, you’ll be able to keep using MemberPress on the front end of your site indefinitely when your subscription ends. However, you won’t be able to access the plugin’s admin screens or functions. Unless you renew, we’ll also no longer be able to support any changes or additions to your site.

Cutting off access to the plugin’s admin screens leaves users without the ability to manage the membership functions of their sites if their subscriptions lapse. This prevents users from doing things like issuing customer refunds, adding new members, managing memberships and site activations, among other actions.

This unorthodox approach is surprising in contrast to most other commercial plugins’ renewal policies, which usually terminate support and updates for those who do not renew. Cutting off functionality in this fashion could be especially problematic for agencies managing websites for clients using MemberPress. It’s something critical to business operations and prospective customers should be aware that the policy is markedly different from most other commercial WordPress products.

“I can understand a ‘no more updates for you’ policy, but shutting down something you paid for (at least once) is not good,” web developer Mauro Bono said in response to Post Status proposing WordPress businesses create a trade association to govern practices like this and admin notification infringements.

“I think companies should be allowed to do it, but I think the community will speak with its feet and move to a product that doesn’t do this kind of thing,” Trew Knowledge Sr. Product Owner Malcolm Peralty said. “It’s all about balance and I think this swings too far away from what I feel is ‘fair.'”

The GPL permits companies to sell open source software. In this case users are also purchasing, perhaps unknowingly, the code that shuts the plugin’s admin functions off as soon as they don’t pay up to renew. Some may consider this a questionable business practice in the WordPress ecosystem but it doesn’t violate the license.

In 2017, David Marín Carreño from the Spanish WordPress community, contacted the Free Software Foundation (FSF) regarding similarly structured business models for plugins. He asked if it is permissible for a plugin author to distribute a plugin under the GPL but lock access to some of the features using a validation code, which checks against a remote server. The FSF responded:

The GPL doesn’t prohibit locks or schemes such as these, as long as the recipient of the software can modify or remove them as per the terms of the GPL. It isn’t the lock itself that is prohibited; it’s restricting others from studying, modifying, or removing that lock that the GPL prohibits. It would also be a violation of the GPL to add licensing terms which prohibit the recipient of the software from removing such feature-lock schemes.

Despite the FSF validating the business model, many find the practice to be unsavory, as evident from the comments on the Reddit post. In a post titled The WordPress Way, Jason Coleman, co-founder and CEO of the Paid Memberships Pro (PMP) plugin, one of MemberPress’ chief competitors, seemed to indirectly address MemberPress’ renewal policy, saying some companies “begrudgingly apply the GPL license to their code.” Coleman described what he perceives to be “the WordPress way:”

Doing things the WordPress way means making all of our software free and open source, just like the core WordPress software.

It means the plugins we write to integrate with other plugins and third parties are hosted in the WordPress.org repository because that will incentivize both parties to maintain the plugin.

It means our code will continue to work as expected if your paid license expires.

It means providing simple one-line code solutions to disable our upsells or extra gateway fees.

It means using the WordPress coding standards so our code is more readable to developers used to reading WordPress-based code.

MemberPress founder Blair Williams has not yet responded to our requests for comment. There may be a reason or chain of experiences that led him to this renewal policy but the plugin’s documentation doesn’t elaborate on it.

In light of the recent discussions on Reddit and Twitter, Coleman’s promises to customers illuminates MemberPress and PMP’s contrasting values and business principles. This may be compelling for MemberPress customers who are looking for a different plugin after learning of the updated renewal policy.

“If a decision comes down to something that will make the software better and something that will make us more money, we choose the option that makes the software better,” Coleman said.

“For us that means embracing open source and the WordPress way, making our software available for free to get the most users and contributors, and building a business on top of the software we are making by adding value instead of artificially limiting our software and selling the cure.”

I am a child of the late ’80s and ’90s. Before we all had cameras built into our mobile phones—well, before mobile phones took off, really—families would lug around Polaroid cameras to capture those special moments. Even though I hated posing for awkward photos with my siblings, I am still nostalgic about the magic of film from a bygone era.

Now, I have grown old enough to see the return of physical prints, sparked primarily by Fujifilm Instax. They are at least popular in the journaling groups that I lurk around. I have yet to shell out the money for one of Fujifilm’s mini cameras or smartphone printers, but I am admittedly tempted. Perhaps it is a fad, but I am still pulled toward reliving that part of my youth.

Regardless of whether I own the physical equipment, I can always recreate Polaroid-style photos on the web. The WordPress block system makes it simple.

This Building with Blocks post will cater primarily to theme authors. However, DIY users can also try their hand at it. The tutorial will walk through the steps of creating a Polaroid-style image frame as a custom block style.

For this tutorial, I used Twenty Twenty-Two and WordPress 6.0 Beta 2. It should also work with WordPress 5.9. For other themes, you may need to adjust the colors.

Building the Block Style

Much of the fun I have had with the block system has been creating custom styles. They typically only take a few lines of code to transform blocks into something entirely different. The Polaroid style is the same.

The first step is to use the register_block_style() function to register a custom style via your theme’s functions.php:

add_action( 'init', 'tavern_register_block_styles' );

function tavern_register_block_styles() {
    register_block_style( 'core/image', [
        'name'  => 'polaroid',
        'label' => __( 'Polaroid', 'tavern' )
    ] );
}

Once registered, it will appear as a selectable style for the Image block in the editor. However, it still needs a custom design. For that, you only need a bit of CSS.

Add the following to your theme’s stylesheet or, preferably, register it via wp_enqueue_block_style():

.wp-block-image[class*=is-style-polaroid] {
    box-sizing: border-box;
    padding: 1rem;
    background-color: #fff;
    box-shadow: 0 4px  10px 0 rgba( 0, 0, 0, 0.3 ),
                0 0 4rem rgba( 255, 255, 235, 0.5 ) inset;
}

.wp-block-image[class*=is-style-polaroid] figcaption {
    margin-top: 1rem;
    margin-bottom: 0;
}

That is literally it. Custom block styles are such easy wins that I do not understand why more theme authors are not including them. I had 70+ in my last theme project, and I was holding back—OK, so I may have gone a little overboard.

If you want to change the “age” of the photo, you can darken the inset shadow in the above CSS. It is a subtle effect by default, but feel free to tinker with it.

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed that I targeted [class*=is-style-polaroid] instead of .is-style-polaroid. There is a reason for that. It cuts back on the code for additional styles built on the same concept.

Bonus: Tilted Styles

A Polaroid-style frame is a fun effect, but we can take that one step more and add variations for tilting images left or right. Add the following to the existing tavern_register_block_styles() function created in the previous section:

register_block_style( 'core/image', [
    'name'  => 'polaroid-tilt-left',
    'label' => __( 'Polaroid: Tilt Left', 'tavern' )
] );

register_block_style( 'core/image', [
    'name'  => 'polaroid-tilt-right',
    'label' => __( 'Polaroid: Tilt Right', 'tavern' )
] );

For each of the “tilt” styles, you can use the transform CSS property along with the scale() and rotate() functions. I chose slight rotations of 2deg and -2deg, but you can push that as far as you want to get your preferred design.

.wp-block-image.is-style-polaroid-tilt-right {
    transform: scale( 0.99, 0.99 ) rotate( 2deg );
}

.wp-block-image.is-style-polaroid-tilt-left {
    transform: scale( 0.99, 0.99 ) rotate( -2deg );
}

One fun effect is to remove the tilt transformation when a visitor hovers their mouse over the images. Use the following CSS for that:

.wp-block-image[class*=is-style-polaroid-tilt] {
    transition: all 0.5s ease-in-out;
}

.wp-block-image[class*=is-style-polaroid-tilt]:hover {
    transform: scale( 1, 1 ) rotate( 0 );
}

Let me know in the comments if you gave this block style a shot. If you really want to lean into the old-school Polaroid style, try it with a custom handwriting font for the caption. Also, please share any custom image-related designs if you have them.

WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 is now available for testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 3 on a test server and site. 

You can test WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).

Option 3: Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update --version=6.0-beta3.
Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive.

The current target for the final 6.0 release is May 24, 2022, which is in less than a month! 

Additional information on the full 6.0 release cycle is available here.

Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.0-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will detail all upcoming changes.

See What’s in Beta 3

Since Beta 2, various items have been addressed, including (but not limited to): 

• Twenty Twenty-Two: Implement alternate json files #55433
• Fix duotone rendering in site editor #37727 
• Create Comments Title block with simple styling #40419 
• Navigation block: After choosing an option from Select Menu, focus after block render #40390
• Add comment id to all comments inside comments query loop #40268
• Add post-comments-form block to comments template #40256
• Elements: Add styles to the footer before the block is rendered #37728
• Add default comment status to discussion settings  #55567
• Fix styles for nested elements (link color) #55567
• Move wp_enqueue_block_style() to wp-includes/script-loader.php, for better consistency #55182, #55148
• Move administration related hooks to admin-filters.php #54795

Update on the Webfonts API and Style Variations in Twenty Twenty-Two

A prior announcement for WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 included a reference to “Webfonts API: Manage local fonts with PHP or theme.json”, as a feature that would be included in the release. WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 will allow theme authors to use webfonts in theme.json, with a public API for plugins to register and enqueue webfonts available in a future version for WordPress. Beta 3 will also include three new style variations to the Twenty Twenty-Two default theme.

How to Help

Testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development. Testing is also a great way to contribute to WordPress. If you are new to testing, check out this detailed guide that will walk you through how to get started.

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. This is also where you can find a list of known bugs.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin  @webcommsat, @audrasjb

And now another WordPress haiku:

Release day is near
6.0 abounds with joy
New features soon here

Colm started his career early as a developer, starting with WooCommerce in 2012 and dipping into eCommerce long before that.

The post Early Days of eCommerce, WooCommerce and Building Themes appeared first on Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community.

Local, a popular WordPress development tool maintained by WP Engine, has launched a new add-on for quickly spinning up headless WordPress sites on its new Atlas platform.

The company has been working to capture the headless WordPress hosting market over the past few years, investing in a new team dedicated to building out its headless offerings aimed at developers. It is one of the first managed hosts to offer a packaged product that handles all the dependencies and configuration required to launch a headless site.

The new add-on is called Atlas: Headless WP. It makes it easy for users to create a site with a Node.js frontend that uses WP Engine’s Faust.js headless framework for WordPress. It can be found inside the latest version of Local under the Add-ons menu.

The Atlas add-on watches any changes made to frontend code and compiles them after a file is saved. The add-on’s help docs have a guide to the folder structure for the headless sites it creates:

• app – Contains the files of a typical WordPress site. Any changes made here will be reflected in the WordPress backend.
• app-node – The Javascript frontend which the Node.js process is watching and compiling.

The Atlas add-on gives users access to three blueprints that include starter code, plugins, content models, and page structure to jumpstart site development. One creates a barebones site with just the scaffolding necessary to get started. The second blueprint is for a portfolio site and includes a blog and pages to list projects. The third blueprint appears to be very similar but just includes a blog and menu with no portfolio.

It is important to note that Atlas can only be enabled on new sites in Local, as the app has no way to convert existing sites into a headless site.

Sites built using the add-on are supported in the import/export site workflows, but the company’s support team confirmed that Atlas sites can only be hosted at WP Engine. This is one of the chief drawbacks of the framework.

For this reason, the Atlas add-on essentially functions sort of like a sales funnel for WP Engine, since sites produced using it are not portable to be hosted anywhere else. It does offer an easy way to experiment with headless WordPress to see how it all works together. It’s also convenient for WP Engine customers who want to use it to create new headless sites with less work setting up and configuring them.

The Atlas add-on for Local is still in beta, so it has a few rough edges. Users can get help for their support questions by creating a topic in the Atlas: Headless WP category of the community forums.

Correction: WP Engine has confirmed its support team misspoke when saying Atlas sites can only be hosted at WP Engine, and Andy North, the company’s director of communications, offered the following statement:

Sites that are spun up as Atlas Blueprints can be hosted anywhere. The WordPress install doesn’t contain anything proprietary – the plugins are all open source and freely available on WordPress.org. Also, the front-end is built with Faust.js and is also open-source and free to use and extend.

Local produces both the WordPress instance and the front-end app on a developer’s local machine, with no lock-in. A developer can then choose any provider to host their headless WordPress site, and another provider to host the front-end, and another service to power content search. 

It is no secret that I have been excited about global style variations. The upcoming feature will allow theme designers to bundle multiple design presets. In turn, end-users can cycle through them, selecting their preferred look without changing their active theme.

I have been writing about the feature since November 2021, holding out some hope that it was going to land with WordPress 5.9. It did not ship with that release, but I have eagerly followed every related ticket since, knowing it would eventually come.

In January, the feature was merged into the Gutenberg plugin. That almost feels like an eternity in “tech time.” With everything else happening in the current WordPress 6.0 release cycle, it is easy to forget that it will be a flagship feature in just a few short weeks.

If I am being honest, I feel like I have been waiting for this my entire career in the WordPress space. I think I have always known I have wanted it without always being able to verbalize it. I was an early adopter of child themes and began using them when they were a feature only available via a third-party plugin. WordPress always seemed to be missing something between an entire theme and a child that made sense for developers and users.

Many theme authors have tackled this in one way or another. Some would package skins that users could pick from. Others presented preset color and font combinations. However, these methods were never standardized.

Global style variations are the answer I have been searching for. The system provides theme authors an easy way to bundle multiple variants without shipping them as separate child themes. Themers merely need to drop custom *.json files in their theme’s /styles folder. These appear in the Global Styles panel in the site editor for users.

Twenty Twenty-Two will officially be the first default theme to ship these style variants. The plan was to bundle six styles but was recently pared down to four (including the default). The following are screenshots of the three new variations expected to land in the next version of the theme:

These could change as we get closer to the WordPress 6.0 release, but they are the latest iteration. For others who want to test them, they are available via a pull request on the WordPress Develop GitHub repository. They have not been merged into the core code yet.

If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the Pink variation. It is not something I would typically select, but the IBM Plex Mono font works well with it.

I am a fan of shipping fewer variations for the initial set. As Kjell Reigstad said on the associated Trac ticket, it should “help folks differentiate them even more strongly.”

While Twenty Twenty-Two will be the first default theme to implement global style variations, other theme authors have already been offering some choices for users. Alara ships seven additional styles, and Frost has a Dark Mode variant. Users can already test these alongside the WordPress 6.0 beta or with WordPress 5.9 and the Gutenberg plugin installed.

Variations are primarily being used as a quick way for end-users to choose a preset design. This is a one-off choice, but I envision a broader scope for the feature in the coming months and years.

Using Frost’s Dark Mode as an example, I could eventually see that being tied to the site visitor’s settings, showing the variation their preferred scheme. If someone is not already working on a plugin for this, they should be.

Another possibility is that some site owners may want to have seasonal or event-based design tweaks that are easy to switch between. It would be fun to see WordPress release a Christmas-based Twenty Twenty-Two variation later this year.

Theme authors who want to start bundling their own style variations should read Carolina Nymark’s tutorial. It is one of the most up-to-date guides and covers everything needed to get started.

Version 4.2.3 of the Akismet plugin for WordPress is now available. This update contains the following improvements:

• Improved compatibility with Fluent Forms
• Fixed missing translation domains for better localization
• Improved accessibility of the config page.

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 the WordPress plugins directory.

It's always hard to know what is premature optimization and what isn't. I fall into that trap.

The post devlife_snippet: The Trap of Premature Optimization appeared first on Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community.

We’re very excited to announce our first “feature as a plugin” hosted on the official WordPress.org Plugin directory is now available for download. Today marks another important date into our project’s history: BuddyPress is progressively moving towards using the WordPress Rewrite API to create, manage, parse and customize every URL generated by the plugin.

The challenge

We are fully aware doing this move is a HUGE change. We’ve been thinking about it since April 25, 2013. For 9 years, we’ve been postponing the issue for many good reasons. The most important one is: many plugin authors are building features on top of the BuddyPress plugin & they got used to our Legacy URL parser: changing habits can be challenging.

That’s why we chose the “feature as a plugin” way to progress and achieve this important move for end users & us all. The BP Rewrites project started on August 13, 2021. It used to be only available on our GitHub place as a start and we quickly understood, due to the lack of contributions, we needed to make it easier for everyone interested in BuddyPress to get involved. It’s now directly available from the Plugins/Add new menu of your WordPress dashboard.

There are around 1,000 BuddyPress plugins hosted on the official WordPress.org Plugin directory and we really need your contribution (yes even you who’s reading these lines) to help us make sure most of them will enjoy this great change.

We believe the BuddyPress community (the BuddyPress team, the BuddyPress contributors, the BuddyPress end users, the BuddyPress plugin & theme developers) can meet this challenge if we all collaborate together:

• End users can download, test and warn plugin & theme developers if they find the corresponding plugin or theme is not behaving the same with & without BP Rewrites.
• Plugin & Theme developers can adapt their piece of art, thanks to the end users warnings. They can also suggest contributors to improve the existing backward compatibility already in place and of course contribute themselves to the BP Rewrites plugin.
• Contributors can advise Plugin & Theme developers about how to adapt or code the needed BP Rewrites adjustments if necessary. They can also start documenting how to write BuddyPress plugins and themes to fully enjoy BP Rewrites.
• The team, thanks to all above contributions, will be able to take the right decisions.

Our end goal is to merge this feature into BuddyPress core. It will require us energy and time so that it finally happens the best for everyone.

The benefits

Thanks to the BP Rewrites “feature as a plugin” you can already enjoy them .

1. From a end user’s point of view: BuddyPress can run with or without pretty URL and if they chose pretty URL, they can customize every URL generated by BuddyPress to make them even more meaningful for their community site members (eg: use words of their native language).
2. From a developer’s point of view: the BuddyPress way of creating, managing & parsing URL should be faster, more reliable, extensible, testable and fully compliant with WordPress best practices.

The risks

First, BP Rewrites is the way we chose to mitigate the risk of doing the BP Legacy URL Parser to the WP Rewrite API switch. The more we will be to test it, the more we’ll be able to eventually identify issues, fix them and improve the feature and the more reliable BuddyPress will be when the feature will be merged into its core.

But end users may also wonder if it’s risky to test BP Rewrites for their community site. There’s always a risk when we choose to activate a plugin on a WordPress site. It’s always important to take a few seconds to prevent data alteration by first backing up your site’s database & the /wp-content directory of your site. If things go wrong, you can simply use this backup to restore the previous state of your site. This precaution is not specific to the BP Rewrites plugin, you should always do so.

This being said, the BuddyPress team thinks the BP Rewrites is safe to test with BuddyPress 10.0 (or up). It’s easy to find back your community site the way it was by simply deactivating the plugin. The most serious damage that could happen is that you could lose the ability to edit the WordPress pages you defined as BuddyPress directory roots. In this case, you simply need to perform the page mapping once again from the “Pages” tab of the BuddyPress settings administration screen.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

Muhammad Ali

What BP Rewrites changes?

FYI, once activated, The BP Rewrites plugin is editing the post type of the existing BuddyPress pages in favor of the buddypress post type. That’s why you don’t see the BuddyPress pages anymore (as long as the BP Rewrites plugin is active) into the corresponding WordPress Administration edit screen. The BuddyPress Pages settings screen is replaced by a BuddyPress URLs settings screen.

The BuddyPress URLs settings screen

This last screen is where you define custom slugs for the URL generated by BuddyPress. These slugs are saved as a post meta of the corresponding BuddyPress post type/page item. Then the BP Rewrites plugin is taking benefit from the BuddyPress hooks/APIs to change BP Core’s behavior.

When you deactivate the plugin, buddypress post type’s items are switched back to regular pages and you get them back into the corresponding WordPress Administration edit screen. Post metas are still there in case you want to activate BP Rewrites back (this can happen when you’re testing another BuddyPress plugin). If you absolutely want to get rid of these post metas, you can delete the BuddyPress pages, create new ones and redo the page mapping from the BuddyPress Pages settings screen.

Many thanks to BP Rewrites first contributors

Adil Öztaşer (oztaser), Boone B Gorges (boonebgorges), Eric (eha1), Mathieu Viet (imath), r-a-y, shanebp.

Get BP Rewrites

Howdy,

Greetings from the US again. After some moody weather in Germany, I am glad to be back in warm and sunny Florida. ☀️ 🏝

In our latest Gutenberg Changelog episode, we had an extraordinary conversation with Dennis Snell about the early decision in Gutenberg development, about Typescript and Shortcode version 2.0. It’s now available with transcript and show notes.

WordPress Beta 2 was releases. In this Make blog post you’ll find instructions and features, that could use your help to test.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Yours, 💕
Birgit

Theme Building for block editor and Full-site editing

Ellen Bauer wrote The 5 most important WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) terms explained in which she describes what Block Themes are, how the term Editor has evolved to a site editing tool, what templates an template parts are, and how the Styles section can be used to configure the design and layout of your site.

Rich Tabor was a guest on Post Status Comments podcast. David Bisset talked to him about his plugins, the early Gutenberg developer experience and what Tabor sees as the future of Themes Post Status Excerpt (No. 55) —A New Era of WordPress Themes

Anne McCarthy posted about a similar topic on GT and picks up on the question: Who is FSE for? Reaching the Future of Full Site Editing. “As you’ve likely heard, full site editing (FSE) officially landed in the WordPress world with 5.9, with more planned for 6.0 and beyond. If you’ve tried it out, you’ll notice that it was released with a beta label on its menu to indicate it’s in an early stage and that it needs feedback from people like you to evolve it. As people have begun exploring, though, questions abound: Who is full site editing for? Why is it missing XYZ feature? Will it meet my needs? Why was it released now when it isn’t yet fully formed? This post seeks to clear up some of these questions and provide a wider context for this current stage of WordPress. ” she wrote.

Just landed in Core: Allow registration of blocks containing scripts / styles that need to get enqueued from within a Theme – After an interesting discussion during Developer Hours in March, Fabian Kägy and Grzegorz Ziółkowski collaborated to make it possible to register blocks in themes. It’s not the recommended way, as it leads to content lock in or content loss when themes are switched. Many agencies have advocated for the fix, so they can continue to provide all-in-one services, and reduce maintenance costs for themselves and their clients. It seems to be slated for WordPress 6.0. Milana Cap tweeted about it and the reactions were mixed. Found on Post Status newsletter 495.

Webfonts API

The Style Variations for Themes is a signature feature coming with WordPress 6.0. One of the supporting APIs is the Webfonts API. Contributors have been working on for quite some time, but the API was not merged for Beta 2. To get the Style Variations working in their intended from, the core team, is now working on a version to make the Webfonts API available as a private API, so it will only work in the context of theme.json.

Plugin developers will need to wait to use hooks and actions, until contributors feel comfortable to release it with the promise of stability and backwards compatibility.

Anne McCarthy, co-coordinator for WordPress 6.0 has all the salient details in her post: Status of Webfonts API for WordPress 6.0 Inclusion.

Justin Tadlock posted A Pared Back Web Fonts API May Land in WordPress 6.0 or Not at All

How to disable theme features and Lock Block Templates for Full-Site Editing in WordPress on Gutenberg Times

 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2022” 
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. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly. The index 2020 is here

Developing Custom Blocks

In Failure and Learning: My Experience Building 4 Block Plugins in a Week Justin Tadlock shares his experience on developing Custom Blocks for the Block editor. There are a few wins listed: “The components system has grown into a robust and flexible tool set for developers over these last few years. Plus, the component-level documentation is well-rounded at this point, especially when pairing it with usage in the core code.”

In his post “How to create block visibility extension for Gutenberg”, Munir Kamal walked his readers through how to control the visibility of Custom Blocks by screen size, metadata, user roles or based on a URL query.

In the latest episode of the Matt Report, Matt Mederios interviewed Plugin Developer and core contributor Aurooba Ahmed. They discussed the WordPress community and how to deal with the challenges of being a product developer, a WordPress open-source contributor and the work at a day job. Listen in on Wrangling clients, plugins, and content with Aurooba Ahmed

Creating a custom WordPress admin screen using Gutenberg packages

A few weeks ago, Ryan Welcher started a new series of Twitch Streams, and live coded in multiple parts: Creating a custom WordPress admin screen using Gutenberg packages. Part 1, Part 2 are available on YouTube. Part 3 and Part 4 can be watched on Twitch.

In Part 1: Welcher started the process of creating a custom WordPress settings screen for a Pre-Publish Checklist. He registered a new page in the WordPress admin, set up the build process using the @wordpress/scripts package, rendered the React application into the new page. Eventually, he registered a site option that can be accessed via the application using useEntityProp.

In Part 2: Welcher continues the work on the settings screen by removing the TabPanel, creating a custom data store using @wordpress/data, and creating a much better UI.

We’ll update the list when Part 3 and 4 make their way to the YouTube channel/

Gutenberg for #nocode site builders and content creators

Daniel Schutzsmith was special guest on the Jukebox podcast and discussed with host Nathan Wrigley, how he prepared his team to use the Block Editor

In this week’s WordPress Gutenberg Block News on Youtube, Jamie Marsland of PootlePress demos the new feature of using a cover block with a features image in the Single Post template. This is already possible with the Gutenberg plugin, and will arrive at a WordPress instance near you with the 6.0 version. Also in the news: WooCommerce’s plans for the Single Product Page and demo of the new Stack block in Gutenberg.

The WordPress Accessibility team worked together with the Gutenberg team to bring accessibility improvements to WordPress 6.0. Anne McCarthy collected over 50 PRs and categorized them into Media, List View, Block and General Interface improvements. It’s an impressive list.

A fairly new podcast appeared in the WordPress space back in February 2022. It’s called Kadence Beat and is hosted by Kathy Zant together with Hanna and Ben Ritner, founders of the Kadence Theme. “The Kadence Beat covers WordPress, blocks, and strategies for effective websites.” The 8th episode with the title Effectively Using Popups as a Part of the Customer Journey is now available.

New on WordPress TV

• Using Block Patterns – Explore how to use Block Patterns to create new or update existing content.
• Understanding the Page Editor vs. Site Editor – What is the Site Editor? How does it differ from the page and post editor you are used to? How can you use templates in the Site Editor to create your overall site structure? Get answers to your questions!
• Creating a Magazine Layout with the Block Editor – First you see a few examples of newspaper website and how they display lists of articles and images. In the second part you learn how to create various list of articles with the block editor and the Query Loop and its built in patterns.

This week in WPTavern

• Munir Kamal Updates and Overhauls the Block Slider Plugin by Justin Tadlock
• Phi Phan Launches a Separator Block With an Icon Option by Justin Tadlock
• WooCommerce Plans to Bring Full-Site Editing Support to Single Product Templates by Sarah Gooding
• Gutenberg Contributors Begin Early Exploration of a New Distraction Free Mode by Sarah Gooding
• How to Align a Nested, Partial-Width Group Block via the WordPress Editor by Justin Tadlock

Upcoming WordPress Events

Social Learning Meetups

April 25, 2022 noon EDT / 16:00 UTC
Hello Blocks! Coding a custom block with Ryan Welcher and Wes Theron

May 4, 2022 -11am EDT / 15:00 UTC
Creating a Restaurant Website with the Block Editor w/ Wes Theron

May 9, 2022 3am EDT/ 7am UTC
Showcasing Content with Query Loops w/ Wes Theron

May 19, 2022 5pm EDT / 21:00 UTC
Using the Navigation Block w/ Wes Theron

WordCamps and other events

More and more WordCamps are being scheduled! On WordCamp Central you can view the whole calendar.

May 16-20, 2022
WordSesh
A virtual conference. Call for Speaker is open

June 2 – 4th, 2022
WordCamp Europe
You can start planning, the schedule is now available

June 25, 2022
WordCamp Montclair, NJ
The call for speakers is open only until April 15th, 2022

June 20 – 24, 2022
Page Builder Summit will take place June 20th to June 24, 2022. The call for sponsors is still open. Sign-up for the VIP list to learn first when tickets are available and the schedule is published.

June 25, 2022
WordCamp Montclair, NJ
The call for speakers is open only until April 15th, 2022

September 9 – 11, 2022
WordCamp US, San Diego, California
in-person conference in San Diego. Call for Speakers is open, deadline April 25th, 2022

February 17-19 2023 (tent)
WordCamp Asia, Bangkok, Thailand
Naoko Takano posted a call for organizers

On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events site, you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Events, around the world, including WordCamps, WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.

Featured Image: Rainbow Petrified Wood Closeup Of Texture by Jennifer Bourn, found in the WordPress Photo Directory

Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition?

A couple of weeks ago, Munir Kamal updated his Block Slider plugin for WordPress. While not as popular as some of the other projects he has spearheaded, such as Editor Plus, he wanted to breathe some fresh life into it.

The original plugin allowed users to insert a slider block and create the slides directly from the post or page editor. The new approach is similar. However, end-users can only edit it from a new “Block Slider” post type.

Existing users should note that the new version breaks compatibility with their old galleries. It would be wise to make a backup to revert to if necessary.

Kamal listed several benefits to the updated approach:

• A clean and wider slide editing/creation interface. Comparatively, the ‘block’ had less room to work with.
• The fact we have a separate interface/post type, I took the opportunity to modify it a bit to make the slide creation easier for users.
• This approach lets users create and manage sliders easily from one place (post type) compared to in-page block.
• Using the slider to multiple pages/posts is easier with this approach.
• The best part and the most important reason is that the slider can be used outside Gutenberg editor or anywhere with any page builder using the shortcode (or I could provide more ways to use it in the future).

Depending on the user, some of those can be advantages. However, for others, they are not. For example, not all websites would benefit from a dedicated slider management admin screen. Sometimes, a one-off slider is all that is wanted for something like the front page. The new approach creates more work and adds an unnecessary admin menu for those use cases. For users who add multiple sliders to their sites, it should simplify management.

Kamal touts using the block shortcode anywhere, but this feels like a step back from the earlier version of the plugin. It is now impossible to see what a slider looks like mixed with page content without previewing it on the front end. When laying out a full-page design via the editor, having the live preview can be vital to putting it all together.

“I am working on a block that lets you insert a slider (and maybe do a bit more),” Kamal said when I questioned him on the implementation. “It should be out in the next update soon.”

Overall, the user experience of creating and customizing sliders feels smooth. It is easy to attach new slides via the “Add Slide” button fixed to the bottom of the screen and navigate to others.

Other than a minor spacing issue where the right navigation arrow butted against the side of the screen, I had no trouble using it. It worked well in the editor and on the front end.

Block Slider has a commercial version that begins at $29 per year. It includes updates and support for one site. There are also five-site and unlimited tiers for $49 and $99, respectively.

However, most users will likely not need the upgrade. Other than a handful of options, including a carousel view and a few customizations, most features are in the free version. And the plugin does not lack out-of-the-box options.

If anything, the number of settings is almost dizzying. Users who want ultimate customizability should enjoy tinkering with the design tools. Those who prefer a scaled-back interface can always leave the defaults in place. Otherwise, diving into them can be overwhelming.

Kamal shared an intro video to the plugin that barely scratches the surface of what the plugin can do:

I like where Kamal seems to be going with the plugin. His target audience focuses on users who love plenty of options and an easy way to manage their sliders. For one-off use cases, it is best to look elsewhere. Some bits still feel a little rough, like using a shortcode when placing the slider on a page, but that can always be addressed later.

WordCamp US, scheduled for September 9-11 in San Diego, is trialing a new program that would connect speakers from underrepresented groups with companies that agree to sponsor their travel and lodging.

“To improve diverse representation at WordCamp US (WCUS), our Programming Team has looked into the barriers that hold different groups back, the largest of which is the cost of hotel and airfare/travel,” WCUS organizers wrote.

“While WCUS can’t cover these costs, we can set up a connecting point between these speakers and companies that would like to support them.”

The WordCamp is calling for interested companies to get in touch so they can be matched with speakers who need financial support. The companies will be responsible for setting the qualifications and managing the funds transfer.

Earlier this month, in a post titled Sponsor Inclusion in Tech, WordPress contributor Winstina Hughes called the community to action, specifically to break down financial barriers to attending community events:

Underrepresented/minority groups in society frequently face disparities in income that limit their participation in personally valued activities beyond work activities that earn income. This is mirrored in the WordPress community when contributors forgo participation in community events due to income limitations. Participation in events requires a community member to personally pay for travel and lodging expenses or personally network for sponsorships to cover these expenses.

Transparently integrating travel and lodging sponsorships after a Call for Speakers submission selection would breakdown a notable barrier to inclusion that exists for many underrepresented/minority groups around the world – financial costs.

MasterWP editor Rob Howard continued this conversation, referencing Hughes’ call to action, in a recent post that advocates for all speakers and organizers being paid.

“The largest and most obvious barrier to attending and speaking at WordCamp is money,” Howard said. “In order to offer a truly equal opportunity to everyone, the WordPress Foundation needs to set aside enough money to pay for the airfare and lodging of every speaker and organizer, period. Anything less than this privileges people who work for WordPress companies or people who have the disposable income for a random trip to San Diego.”

Howard contends that this approach should not be a separate initiative but “should simply become how WordCamp works.” Yesterday MasterWP announced its own sponsorship program. The team intends to sponsor at least six speakers and organizers to cover the costs of travel, meals, and lodging.

In the meantime, Winstina Hughes worked with the WCUS speaker programming team to make speaker sponsorships a real possibility. Organizers will facilitate the connection between interested companies and selected speakers who are seeking sponsorship.

WordCamp US has also extended its call for speakers. It appears organizers may not have received enough diverse applicants, as they said their purpose in extending the call is “to showcase our community’s variety and diversity.” The updated deadline is Monday, April 25.

Core News

WordPress 6.0 Beta 2 is available for testing. You are encouraged to help test it and give feedback.

In WordPress 6.0 we will be able to register blocks with block.json from a theme. Milana Cap wonders “how long will it be before theme authors find this out and try to use it.” Hint hint.

Anne McCarthy highlights some of the ways accessibility will be improved and further addressed in WordPress 6.0, including areas such as the Navigation Block, list view, login/registration screens, and media enhancements.

Daniele Scasciafratte shares some results of his data analysis of WordPress Core Trac Tickets. While the data is not complete, Daniele estimates tickets take an average of 2-3 years to be closed when a first patch becomes available.

Daniele also concludes core development has stalled since the arrival of Gutenberg, and it “is not possible with the actual numbers of advanced contributors [to] keep up with the amount of tickets and patch[es] made every day.”

The first stable version 1.0.0 of the Performance Lab plugin has been released. It covers WebP uploads and support, a Persistent Object Cache Health Check, experimental enqueued asset audit features, and experimental autoloaded options.

Mika Epstein notes a significant change for plugin owners at the WordPress.org repository: you will no longer be able to add or remove committers or change ownership on beta or featured plugins in the repo.

On Twitter this week, Taco Verdo started a great thread about the difficulty of getting a WordPress dev environment working for someone who wants to contribute to WordPress Core.

Taco ended up going with wordpress-develop. GitPod was brought up too — its what Drupal uses for DrupalPod. There are a few “spin up” dev solutions maturing, but a simple universal setup and onboarding tool for contributors (especially at WordCamps) has always been a challenge.

WordCamp News

WordCamp US is encouraging companies who want to help make WCUS a more inclusive conference to serve as a “connecting point” between WCUS and underrepresented speakers or attendees. This is being done in the spirit of Winstina Hughes‘ post earlier this month. As she mentioned in Post Status Slack yesterday:

My desire is to see this become a part of WCUS for us here, and that this expands beyond our borders. Underrepresented groups exist in every country… It's beyond ethnicity, color, gender identity, perceived divergent physical characteristics and abilities here in the US. But we have to start somewhere.

Following this announcement, MasterWP has announced its own sponsorship program, and I expect others to make similar announcements.

Updated COVID-9 guidelines have been released for WordPress events. Organizers and attendees are still highly encouraged to wear masks and follow local guidelines. Organizers will receive masks and be able to request supplies like stickers to indicate to others to please wear a mask. WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US will be requiring masks indoors and planning for outdoor lunches.

Learning Together

Mike Davey shows how Sam Kent used Advanced Custom Fields Pro to build a customized Gutenberg block.

If you want to learn and work with the terminal, Josh Comeau has a new blog post that covers the key fundamentals, tips, and tricks.

Shiny New Things

httpstat.us is a super simple service for generating different HTTP codes.

If you like using Lorem Ipsum text but get tired of explaining it to clients, Kyle Van Deusen has come up with Website Ipsum. Since it's in readable English, it's a more realistic mix of how common words will be distributed and flow through your layout.

This simple, lightweight icon separator block by Phi Phan is really outstanding.

Good Ideas

The Brave browser has announced they will “De-AMP” and bypass Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) so that users will be prevented from visiting AMP pages altogether.

Richard Rutter says there are five “levels of pace” in the changing requirements of any profession over time. Thinking about career development through pace layers “forms a framework to help people judge where they are in their career, and where they should or could get to.” It's a useful tool for HR folks and anyone assessing their own career path.

New Moves

Chris Lema is changing gears a bit. He is leaving Nexcess and WordPress in his day-to-day work. What's next for Chris? He'll be leading teams that are building mobile and SaaS apps for churches and religious ministries. Best of luck to Chris on his new path.

We also send our best wishes to Jonathan Bossenger, who is joining Automattic, and Remkus de Vries on stepping down at Servebot to focus on his agency.

A single tweet inspired this commentary from me about why we are not seeing many, if any real competitors to WooCommerce.

The post WooBits: Where Are All the WooCommerce Alternatives? appeared first on Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community.

WooCommerce 6.5 beta 1 is out, so it's time to start testing. In addition, WooCommerce Blocks 7.4.0, 7.4.1, and 7.4.2 (release notes) introduce the new Cart and Checkout Inner Blocks. Now you are able to insert Woo blocks in the available spaces inside other blocks. This works just as it does with regular WordPress blocks. You can also move, edit, and optimize using the Inner Blocks. These releases also include some bug fixes and enhancements.

Over on Do the Woo this week, we talked to four speakers from the upcoming Atarim Web Agency Summit. In part 1, Anne-Mieke Bovelett shares a tip for increasing the ROI of a Woo shop for clients.

In part 2, Maciek Palmowski, David Mainayar, and Nev Harris gave us some solid tips for “Simplifying the Complex.” Keeping it simple is key in the Woo shops you build and the agencies you run.

The week ended with Courtney Robertson and Marcus Burnette sharing their experiences presenting at events and podcasting. Making appearances like these can help developers extend their network and find new career paths or enhance their existing role. Plus, public speaking gives agency owners a great way to find talent in the space.

I built four block plugins last week. It was not something I had set out to do. I did not wake up one day and declare, “I think I will build a suite of custom block types over the next few days.” It just happened.

The first plugin I built was to address an old ticket for Gutenberg that had not seen any traction. Perhaps others were not interested in the idea, or it never crossed their path in the sea of 1,000s of other tickets. Why not just build it myself? So, I did. It took a couple of hours, but much of that time was re-configuring the @wordpress/scripts build script to my liking and reading docs.

With that plugin out of the way, I started seeking new problems to solve. One that was already on my radar was the missing Comments Title block necessary to bring the upcoming Comments Query Loop block to feature parity before WordPress 6.0 lands. So, I built a rough plugin for it.

Fortunately, others took that initial idea and ran with it, building something far more flexible than my first attempt. Now, there is a new block in Gutenberg.

I had a couple of other itches I wanted to scratch, and there was little to do on a rain-filled Sunday. Namely, WordPress does not include equivalent blocks for the wp_list_users() and wp_list_authors() template tags. That seemed like an oversight, so I tackled early versions of those.

I will put these up for free on the official WordPress plugin directory soon for folks interested in them. I can only hope they will help someone else in the future.

This post is about sharing my experience, the journey, rather than what became of it all.

Recently, someone asked whether I could operate in this JavaScript-heavy world of blocks as a developer. It has been over two years since I took on a writing position here at WP Tavern and developed real-world solutions for users. I was only starting to use JavaScript with the block editor back then.

Since then, I have dabbled with block themes, even releasing one on WordPress.org. I have built a few PHP-based projects for fun in my spare time. I even created my first custom block plugin last summer and shared my experience with readers. Shortly after, I built a second.

That burning flame I had nearly a year ago quickly died down. That had more to do with the state of block theme development, which was still in its infancy, than anything. I was excited about its potential, but consistent breakage was more than I had time to deal with, considering all of it was a fun side project.

At heart, I am still a programmer, a problem solver. So, I began anew.

The first stop was the JavaScript Build Setup documentation for building blocks. I was going to learn the “WordPress way” this time around. For the most part, I followed through with that.

The only hiccup I had was the setup script snake-casing my namespace, x3p0, into x_3_p_0 in function names. That was a mess to clean up. However, I did not need to go through that process in other block plugins. I just wanted the beginner experience on the first go.

For building blocks, @wordpress/scripts is all that is necessary. I tinkered with it, added a couple of custom commands, and modified the input/output folders. However, it has everything needed to get up and running fast.

I skipped past the Hola, mundo! (Hello, world!) portion of the setup tutorial. Whenever I set out to build anything, I plan to dive headfirst into something a bit more complex. However, it never hurts to get the basics down to see how things work.

My style of programming is one built upon failure. I venture out with an idea, fail miserably, and continue learning from my mistakes. A short while later, I had a custom block type that showed a link back to a nested comment’s parent:

While that was a success, I have learned that some other built-in editor components might make it even better.

That first block gave me a taste of modern development on WordPress. It was a relatively simple plugin to build, but it was easy to see how one could expand it out to more complex features.

The components system has grown into a robust and flexible toolset for developers over these last few years. Plus, the component-level documentation is well-rounded at this point, especially when pairing it with usage in the core code.

As I continued building new blocks, I started taking on more complex concepts. One of the things I needed to learn was how to interact with the core data layer. As I stepped into my third and fourth block types, I needed to query users and list them:

While there is a “basics” tutorial on working with core data, the reference guide was spotty in places. Some pieces even seemed to be missing altogether. Where were the advanced guides? I could not find any, and “doing stuff” with data is the meat of plugin development when you get beyond a few simple form fields.

I spent some time with the tried and true console.log() to figure out things and perused the core code. Eventually, I pushed through and built a couple of working projects.

Did my experience improve this time around compared to a year ago? Without a doubt, it did.

More than anything, I want to thank all the contributors to the Gutenberg project. The build tools and range of pre-built components are welcome for this developer who has spent most of his time in the PHP world. I always enjoy being able to pick up a toolset and start building with it right away. I am sure I have only glimpsed some of what is possible at this point, but I look forward to trying new things. As I grow more comfortable, maybe I will write some of those advanced tutorials that I believe are missing.

My Podcast Picks

• Matt Report: Aurooba Ahmed talks about building plugins, appearing on podcasts, and balancing a day job.
• Women in WP: A discussion with Karmen Kendrick, a product marketing manager at LearnDash.
• Syntax.fm: Tips and tricks for being consistent if you're trying to create.
• WP Tavern Jukebox: Cate DeRosia talks about rethinking in-person events.
• Underrepresented In Tech: Dan Maby talks about how it's ok to talk about mental health and Big Orange Heart.
• The WP Minute: Spencer Forman on why WordPress must have a standardized framework before moving forward with blocks.
• Freelancing After 50: A new podcast from Paul Chaney with guest Jay Thompson — a Realtor, Freelancer, and Fisherman — in the latest episode.

My Video Pick

• Docs Or It Didn't Happen: Milana Cap at the Open Source 101 conference talks about writing and managing documentation for WordPress.

If you're a WooCommerce developer, variable products are always difficult to deal with. Manipulating them with code snippets or custom plugins is even tougher.

Today's core function (get_variation_prices) will definitely help you save time while working with prices, custom notices, conditional logic and such.

As usual, we'll study the function code, take a look at its usage, and finally analyze a case study that will come in useful sooner or later. Enjoy!

Function Code

You can find get_variation_prices under \woocommerce\includes\class-wc-product-variable.php:

/**
 * Get an array of all sale and regular prices from all variations. This is used for example when displaying the price range at variable product level or seeing if the variable product is on sale.
 *
 * @param  bool $for_display If true, prices will be adapted for display based on the `woocommerce_tax_display_shop` setting (including or excluding taxes).
 * @return array Array of RAW prices, regular prices, and sale prices with keys set to variation ID.
 */
 
public function get_variation_prices( $for_display = false ) {
	$prices = $this->data_store->read_price_data( $this, $for_display );

	foreach ( $prices as $price_key => $variation_prices ) {
		$prices[ $price_key ] = $this->sort_variation_prices( $variation_prices );
	}

	return $prices;
}

By reading the comments, we can see this function returns an array of prices for each variation for a product. This is handy — you don't need to loop over variations yourself!

It also mentions a parameter, $for_display, which if set to ‘true' can return prices according to the store's tax settings — including or excluding tax, based on whatever option you picked.

In the function code, we see two statements:

1. read_price_data clearly gets prices [regular, sale and display] from all variation IDs.
2. sort_variation_prices is not so clear — but it sorts the returned array from lowest to greatest price. This is helpful when you need to get the min or the max value, for example, as you can just read the first or the last array values!

Function Usage

As long as you have access to the $product global (in a product loop, on the single product page, in the admin, etc.), you can call get_variation_prices.

Of course, the product must be a variable one, otherwise the function will return an empty array. (Or maybe an error, who knows? Post a comment if you want to send me some feedback about this.)

To be sure we're on the single product page and I'm looking at a variable product, we can use the woocommerce_before_variations_form hook — evidently this triggers only there and then:

add_action( 'woocommerce_before_variations_form', 'bbloomer_get_variation_prices' );

function bbloomer_get_variation_prices() {
	global $product;
	echo '<pre>';
	print_r( $product->get_variation_prices() );
	echo '</pre>';
}

Result:

In the grey box (preformatted text thanks to the <pre> HTML tag), we find the get_variation_prices output: a multidimensional array with 3 keys (price, regular price, sale price) and array values (variation ID => price amount) sorted by price amount.

Super handy!

Lazy tip alert! You could even use get_variation_prices to simply get the variation IDs:

$output = $product->get_variation_prices();
$variation_ids = array_keys( $output['price'] );

Printed output for $variation_ids:

Case Study

Let's wrap up with a practical example.

Before customers choose the variation from the attribute dropdown/s, it would be awesome to show a notice to display the most convenient offer.

We could look, for example, at the variation that has the biggest discount, and entice users to add it to cart today.

We have access to regular prices and sale prices. Each of them are related to a variation ID. Here's the suggested implementation:

/**
 * @snippet       Most convenient variation | WooCommerce Single Product
 * @how-to        Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli
 * @testedwith    WooCommerce 6
 * @donate $9     https://businessbloomer.com/bloomer-armada/
 */

add_action( 'woocommerce_before_variations_form', 'bbloomer_most_convenient_variation' );

function bbloomer_most_convenient_variation() {
	global $product;
	$discount = array();
	$output = $product->get_variation_prices();
	foreach ( $output['sale_price'] as $variation_id => $sale_price ) {
		$regular_price = $output['regular_price'][$variation_id];
		$discount[$variation_id] = ( $regular_price - $sale_price ) / $regular_price;
	}
	$most_conv_variation = array_search( max( $discount), $discount );
	$variation = wc_get_product( $most_conv_variation );
	echo '<div class="woocommerce-message">Save an amazing ' . max( $discount) . ' when you purchase ' . $variation->get_name() . '!</div>';
}

And here you go with the screenshot.

Of course, at least one variation must be on sale for the snippet to work. You could check if $product->is_on_sale() to make sure.

Let me know what you learn working with get_variation_prices in your own project!

In-person WordPress events are ramping up again, with in-person meetups happening all over the world and WordCamps back on the schedule. A sampling of the upcoming major events include the following:

• WordCamp Vienna, Austria (April 23, 2022)
• WordCamp Irun (May 21–22, 2022)
• WordCamp Europe (June 2–4, 2022)
• WordCamp Warsaw, Poland (June 11–12, 2022)
• WordCamp Montclair, (June 25, 2022)
• WordCamp Netherlands (September 15–16, 2022)

WordPress’ Community Team published an updated set of COVID-19 guidelines today ahead of a the five WordCamps that will be happening over the next few months. There are a few notable changes from the previous guidelines, which mandated that organizers select a venue with staff that can check temperatures and vaccination status and remind attendees to wear masks. This removed the enforcement burden from volunteers.

The updated guidelines require organizers follow local guidelines, provide masks and hand sanitizer, and provide a sticker to attendees that indicates if they prefer others to wear a mask when conversing in close proximity.

The Community Team strongly recommended the following for attendees:

• We still recommend that you wear a mask while at in-person WordPress events.
• If you see that someone is wearing a sticker requesting people wear a mask near them, please wear a mask while within 6 feet (2 meters) of them or keep your distance.
• A request that you only attend in-person if you are vaccinated or have recently tested negative.
• Please stay at home if you are sick or have recently come in contact with someone who is ill.

Ten days prior to publishing the updated guidelines, the Community Team requested feedback in a post that asked the question, “What is keeping you from either organizing or attending an in-person event?“

WordCamp Birmingham organizer Ryan Marks responded, saying his team was restricted from organizing in-person events (under the previous guidelines).

“My location doesn’t allow for the checking of vaccination status,” Marks said. “So we must answer yes to all of the In-person safety checklist items. It hasn’t been possible to answer yes to the first two questions yet.” The checklist required the area’s average positive case rate to average under 4% for 28 days, and to have under 50 new cases reported per 100,000 people for 14 days, among other requirements. 

Marks and his team were forced to postpone WordCamp Birmingham in January after Omicron hit Alabama and local infections began rising. The camp had previously been criticized for its initial masking policy, which stated “Masks are required for entry and preferred throughout the event.” This set off heated discussions on social media, where concerned community members condemned the gathering as “irresponsible.” The camp revised its masking guidelines to require masks indoors but ultimately had to postpone due to local conditions.

The updated guidelines from WordPress’ Community Team bear a striking similarity to WordCamp Birmingham’s original masking policy – if the local authorities do not have requirements in place, masks are optional but recommended. It has been well-documented that indoor masking can significantly reduce transmission, so the Community Team must have witnessed a major change in pandemic conditions to amend the guidelines to make them optional. With the exception of a handful of flagship events, WordPress has ultimately decided to leave the requirements to local authorities.

“As flagship events are larger and draw an international crowd, both WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US organizers were asked to view these as minimum requirements and are expected to have a more comprehensive plan in place,” WordPress community organizer Angela Jin said in today’s announcement.

WordCamp Europe will require masks indoors and social distancing at the speakers dinner. They are creating self-service registration booths and trying to put more activities, like WP Cafe, outdoors.

WordCamp US will be following San Diego’s local guidelines in September.

“We will require all attendees to be vaccinated or have recently tested negative,” Jin said. “Additionally, due to the size and nature of this event, masks will be required to be worn over both the mouth and nose while indoors. Hand sanitizer and masks will also be available and some activities, such as lunch, will be outdoors.”

Whether you are looking to grow or change your WordPress or WooCommerce development career, here are some tips from Marcus and Courtney.

The post Build Your Developer Network, Career and Business appeared first on Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community.

Anyone who has been watching or participating in the development of the web fonts API can attest that it has been an emotional rollercoaster. At one point, it seemed to be a shoo-in for WordPress 5.9. Then, it was punted to the next release. Sure that it was landing once again, we find ourselves looking down the track, wondering just where the next dip or twist will take us.

Over the weekend, I had a sense of dread. The WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 release last week felt premature. I am just as excited about the next major update as I have been about any before. There are tons of noteworthy features. It is OK for some of them to not be polished for a beta release, but the problem was the list of incomplete and missing pieces.

The decision to postpone the Post Author Name block left me scratching my head. It is an obvious pairing for the new Post Author Biography block and almost feels necessary for Author Template support.

The new Comments Query Loop block, a replacement for Post Comments, was missing vital features. Fortunately, most of those seemed squared away now.

Then, there was the web fonts API. I had not paid it much attention since its inclusion in Gutenberg 12.8 over a month ago. I was happy to see it merged and have used it ever since. However, there has been some trouble brewing that might spoil its inclusion in the 6.0 release. It was notably missing from the first beta, and there was no final decision on its status as Beta 2 rolled out yesterday. There are still several open, high-priority tickets for the API.

Each of the problematic features was tied to other highlights of the upcoming 6.0 release, and the web fonts API is intrinsically linked to what is, arguably, the crème de la crème of the bunch: global style variations.

First touted before the release of WordPress 5.9 and its accompanying default theme, global style variations would allow end-users to switch between pre-built “skins.” Twenty Twenty-Two would showcase the feature in all its wonder:

However, the feature did not make the cut. That was OK because the web fonts API did not squeeze in either. These variations would allow theme authors to mix and match different colors, block styles, and fonts. Like a PB&J without the J, the global style variations feature is a fine meal in its own right, but fonts offer a variety of flavors that users deserve to taste. If we wait for some future release toward the end of the year, Twenty Twenty-Two might feel like old news by then.

After WordPress 6.0 Beta 2’s release, it has become crunch time for this long-awaited feature that standardizes how fonts are loaded in WordPress. One truth is almost set in stone: the complete API will be deferred to a future release. However, there is a sliver of hope for theme authors that a theme.json-only version will be available.

Tonya Mork has opened a ticket for paring down the feature to disallow programmatically registering and enqueueing fonts. Along with work by Ari Stathopoulos, the associated pull request on GitHub would still allow theme authors to define custom font-faces via theme.json and custom /styles/*.json files.

It is a compromise on a robust API that many have been waiting for, but it is necessary. Yet, there are still no guarantees, and the patch needs testing from theme authors sooner rather than later.

As much as I want the web fonts API to land in 6.0, I would be remiss to not point out that April 12, the release date of Beta 1, was the “effective feature freeze.” Essentially, this is the deadline for new features for the release cycle.

Having these deadlines in place is not arbitrary. They give time for users to test and report bugs. They allow theme and plugin developers to make sure their extensions are working. When new features start landing in Beta 3 and Release Candidates, it can sometimes be a mad scramble to catch up in an already fast-paced cycle.

At a certain point, WordPress must abide by its own rules. Otherwise, it feels like some pet features get a pass where others might not.

The web fonts API is one of those things I would not mind breaking the rules for. My only argument is that it is such an integral piece of global style variations that I cannot imagine having one and not the other. Derailing this now will set a lot of possible theme advancements back for months as developers wait for the 6.1 release.

Yesterday both DuckDuckGo and the Brave browser announced they will be bypassing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in favor of serving publishers’ content on the original URL.

Brave is calling the new feature “De-AMP.” In cases where it’s not possible to rewrite the URLS, the browser will watch as pages are fetched and redirect users, while preventing AMP code from being loaded and executed.

“AMP harms users’ privacy, security and internet experience, and just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the Web,” Brave Privacy engineer Shivan Sahib said.

Brave is also working on a “debouncing” feature to protect its users against bounce tracking. It detects when a user is about to be passed through to a known tracking domain and skips the tracking site, delivering the user directly to the intended destination. This is currently available in the nightly version of Brave.

De-AMP is available in the Nightly and Beta versions of the browser and will be turned on by default in the next official release for desktop and Android, with a debut on iOS following after.

Shortly after Brave published its announcement, DuckDuckGo tweeted that its apps and extensions now also support bypassing AMP pages in favor of the publisher’s original URL.

“AMP technology is bad for privacy because it enables Google to track users even more (which is already a ton),” DuckDuckGo tweeted. “And, Google uses AMP to further entrench its monopoly, forcing the technology on publishers by prioritizing AMP links in search and favoring Google ads on AMP pages.”

Firefox has not announced plans to begin rerouting AMP pages, but Firefox users interested in having this feature can use the Redirect AMP to HTML add-on. Daniel Aleksandersen, the add-on’s creator, developed it to “keep the web decentralized” and deny information to “search engines that want to take control over the web.” It is used by more than 5,800 Firefox users.

Large publishers have been moving away from AMP after Google stopped requiring the framework for placement in its Top Stories carousel. The Wall Street Journal reports that Vox Media LLC (Verge, Vox and New York Magazine), Buzzfeed’s Complex Networks (Complex and Sole Collector), and BDG (parent company of Bustle, Gawker, Nylon and W.), have all begun testing or considering leaving AMP in favor of their own mobile-optimized pages. The Washington Post abandoned AMP in 2021. The publications’ executives anticipate that leaving AMP will give them more control over their mobile pages, ad formats, better prices for their ad space, and a better chance for paywalled sites to grow their subscriber bases.

Media executives now have a clearer picture of how Google intends to benefit from AMP after the DOJ’s unredacted complaint revealed that AMP pages brought 40% less revenue to publishers. The December 2020 lawsuit referenced internal documents obtained from Google showing that AMP’s speed benefits “were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling. Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a ‘nice comparative boost.‘”

In the wake of these revelations, and AMP no longer being required for the Top Stories carousel, publishers who adopted AMP, often at an enormous cost to themselves, are venturing out to see if they can better monetize their sites.

If you are one of the 500,000+ publishers who have invested in using the official AMP plugin for WordPress, it’s important to know that not all visitors will see AMP pages. The plugin’s Standard mode has only one theme that serves requests to a single AMP version of the website. As anti-AMP sentiment grows, and more apps, browsers, search engines, and users adopt ways to block or bypass AMP pages, it will become increasingly more important to maintain the non-AMP version of a website alongside the AMP version.

“A style is the design language for a theme.”

— Rich Tabor

In this episode, David Bisset talks with someone who has moved the WordPress theme needle a long way: Rich Tabor. Rich believes the arrival of the Full Site Editing experience in WordPress 5.9 is the biggest innovation since themes emerged. Speaking from the experience of creating blocks and block themes, Rich explains how Full Site Editing will change WordPress's identity.

Why This Matters: WordPress professionals need to be familiar with more than just just “blocks.” There are block themes, styles, and more features that have already arrived in the WordPress editor. This episode helps put these new enhancements in context for builders, agencies, and creatives.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you important news and insights from guests working in the WordPress space.

You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS.

Mentioned in the show:

• A new era of WordPress themes is finally here
• All my blocks are now available on Github
• Meet Wabi, a WordPress block theme for writers and publishers
• Building a Generative Art Gallery with P5.js
• Richard Tabor (Twitter)
• David Bisset (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)

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Each week we are highlighting the news from WordPress.org that you don't want to miss. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, we've got the news you need to know. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.

News

• WordPress 6.0 Beta 2
• Announcement: Updated COVID-19 guidelines for official WordPress events
• WordPress 6.0 Accessibility Improvements
• WP Briefing: Episode 29: How to Make a WordPress Blog

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