Category: WordPress New

Curious about WordPress’s big-picture items for 2024? Phase 3, Data Liberation, new meetups, and more, get the spotlight in this episode. Join Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy for all this, plus a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks.

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• Real-Time Collaboration
• Make WordPress Core
• Data Liberation
• Make WordPress Plugins
• WordCamp Events
• Small List of Big Things
  • Overflow Questions from State of the Word 2023 in Madrid, Spain
  • Annual Meetup Survey – This is the final chance to share your feedback on WordPress meetups for 2024 and how we can improve the program in the future. 

Transcripts

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

[00:00:28] (Intro music) 

[00:00:40] Josepha: Hello, my dears, and welcome to 2024. I hope you’ve had a lovely break. At the top of the year, I like to look around and gather the projects that the community is interested in. We can’t always commit to everything, and sometimes even the things we plan to do can’t make it across the finish line. In the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing kind of the big picture goals for the year, but I wanted to share a little bit about what I’ve collected so far.

[00:01:05] Josepha: Firstly, we’ve got Phase 3. This has been called a few things over the years: collaborative editing, multiplayer, co-editing. But whatever it’s been called, the biggest changes to writing and design workflows are likely to happen in this phase. A redesigned workflow can be a bit of a shock. But fortunately, we already have a prototype out there.

I’ll include a link to some resources in the show notes, or of course, you can always stop by make.WordPress.org/core for some insights. But I would encourage you to, at the very least, get your hands on that prototype to see what it looks like is coming in Phase 3 so that you can be aware and provide your feedback.

The next thing on our list is Data Liberation. This is a new-to-us project that was introduced at State of the Word. Fortunately, though, it’s not a new concept overall. Data Liberation is actually one of the earliest ideas that sold me on WordPress. The idea that you could set up a site for a client, or yourself, and that hard work wasn’t lost if something went wrong, was really important to me. It’s been a long time since we put any effort into our importers and exporters, and I think this will be a good focus for the year.

[00:02:14] Josepha: The next thing that I’ve picked up, kind of a list of three things, but there are three mid-sized areas that I want us to pay attention to this year: plugins, old tickets, and new meetups. 

Plugins, because they really have turned a corner on where they ended 2023. A lot of work has been done to make sure that they’ve streamlined some efforts, gotten some better onboarding for folks as they’re going in, and we could really use a hand to keep that momentum going.

Old tickets, because it’s something that we hope for year after year when we’re talking to people about what they want in new releases. So often, part of what they say is some way to work through all of these old things that have been around forever, some with patches. And why not, after all?

And then new meetups, because I really still think that meetups are the best intro to WordPress. No matter whether you’re wanting to become a developer eventually or, like, the community-building aspect is the thing that hooks you forever. Meetups are the place to encourage those and discover those. 

[00:03:20] Josepha: The next thing on my list is also two things. It’s two things, but kind of a guess at the moment. There are two summit items that I want us to try to consider this year.

So the first one is contributor recognition. Acknowledgment and recognition, I think, are two different things, and there was an entire series of sessions at the summit where we talked about it. And so I think that it’s worth us digging in on that.

The other thing from the summit that I would really like us to all kind of dig in on is accessibility, how we do it, how we confirm it, what we think we should do versus what we actually do, and see what we can move on the needle there.

And the last thing is sort of a personal wish. I think it’s about time that we take a look at the way that we kind of manage ourselves as a project, the way that we do our meetings and report on our successes, things like that. And I realize that this is a big thing, and it might be a little bit scary. But, I mean, we’ve been doing this for a really long time, and it’s probably as good a time as any, frankly, to look at what we’re doing by habit or tradition and see if it still suits us.

So, that’s my back of the napkin set of notes so far. Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for the annual Big Picture post so you can get some context, notes, and discussion opportunities. And, of course, anything that has shown up that’s a bit bigger, a bit more final will be in there as well. 

But first, our small list of big things.

[00:04:52] (Music interlude) 

[00:05:00] Josepha: Firstly, State of the Word had nearly 200 questions submitted, and Matt has been answering the overflow on make.WordPress.org/project. So, I’ll include a link, but head on over there to that post if you would like to catch up on those.

And then the second item, and last item, is that you’ve got a few more days left to give us feedback on WordPress meetups in 2023, and give us an idea of what we can do to improve those. I believe those close on January 14th. I really love my local meetup, and I hope that we can get some of that same sort of feeling going in all of yours, too.

[00:05:33] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org.

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks again for tuning in for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

[00:06:02] (Music outro) 

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on the recent 2023 State of the Word, which took place in Madrid, Spain, and some of the highlights of the work across the WordPress open source project.

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

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• State of the Word Recap
• WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program: Pilot Program Proposal
• WordPress Developer Blog
• WordPress End of Year Celebrations!
• Small List of Big Things
  • Introducing Enhanced Content Safety Features on Openverse – Introducing new features for enhanced content safety on Openverse.
  • Alert: WordPress Security Team Impersonation Scams.
  • Join the Plugin Review Team! – The Plugin Review Team is looking for new members; the deadline to apply is on December 31, 2023.

Transcripts

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Intro music) 

[00:00:40] Josepha: We wrapped up State of the Word earlier this month, and while I was sitting there being the only person to clap for the love of cake, I realized just how much we have been able to accomplish this year. And on the one hand, I shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, progress is radical over time yet incremental in time. But all told, 2023 has been a big year for WordPress. There’s been some radical progress in a few places. There are the things you know because you’ve heard them all year. You heard them in State of the Word.

We turned 20, for instance. We shipped three on-time releases. We had three well-organized flagship events, and we prototyped essential parts of phase 3. But there’s a lot of work that happens outside of flagship events and software releases, and I’d like to highlight a few examples of operational excellence in our community and ecosystem.

[00:01:31] Josepha: First highlight goes to the contributors who are building community. Going back to 2021, we’ve been working to bring people back together in person.

And in that year, we had 19 events. In 2022, we had 24 events, so a modest increase of just over 30%. But then, in 2023, the WordPress community banded together on a campaign to reignite passion in our Meetup groups and encourage playfulness in our WordCamp planning. And not only did we see a 57% increase in active Meetup groups, But we also saw a 116% increase in WordCamps, 54 WordCamps in all. That’s about a third of the way to our all-time annual high of 142.

And to complement these in-person opportunities, Learn also shipped 104 pieces of new content and hosted 258 online workshops because location should never be a barrier to entry for joining WordPress. 

[00:02:32] Josepha: Second highlight goes to the contributors who are managing our directories. We do have a lot of directories. We have Plugins, Themes, Photos, Block plugins. We got a lot.

And I’m sure that everyone saw the consistent and borderline pleading calls to join the Plugin team this year. And for folks who’ve been around a bit, you probably recall a similar set of consistent and pleading calls to join the Theme team a few years back. Concurrent with the work to refill that contribution pipeline, folks over in Meta and across the project generally, were working on automating as many checks as possible, loosening guidelines where it was reasonable, and modernizing as many processes as we could.

I’m happy to share that the theme wait time is at a historic low, with their longest wait sometimes just at a week. And as anxious as I am about the plugin wait times, we’re actually seeing a lot of progress there as well. As we follow a process similar to the one that we did on themes, I imagine it’s only gonna get better. So, in 2023, we’ve onboarded six new team members. And since September, the number of plugins awaiting initial review has been cut in half.

And then coming up in Q1 of 2024, we’ll have a project focused entirely on automating as many checks as possible. So I still need you, but I also need you to know that your work there matters and is having an impact.

[00:03:55] Josepha: The third highlight goes to the contributors who are doing outreach. This year, we launched a mentorship program with an 89% completion rate because we’ve seen time and again that our most prolific contributors had someone at the start that they felt safe asking dumb questions with. We launched and nurtured the developer blog, which was a need identified by the community because there was no place for intermediate and advanced developers to get excited about their cool explorations. And there were 53 posts there this year with thirteen thousand views, which is a 251% increase for the record, which is a ridiculous increase, but it’s a lot. Thirteen thousand views is a lot.

We have focused on documentation as we suggested in Porto of 2022. And marketing, I know not always our favorite topic, but marketing, our ability to talk about ourselves to more than just ourselves, has increased dramatically this year. 

Not only have we started rolling out a modern design across our website, but we also are present and engaged on eight different platforms with 20-plus episodes of this very podcast and also video content that netted us seven and a half million views this year. That’s a lot of numbers, and there’s a post that goes with it.

[00:05:10] Josepha: Check out the show notes. But if you’re not gonna check out the show notes because you listen to this on Pocket Casts or Google or something, go to make.WordPress.org/project, and it’ll be over there. But the point is, it’s been a banner year for the software, and I am grateful for every tester, designer, and developer that showed up for it. But I also know that what makes WordPress truly irreplaceable is our ecosystem, and it’s contributions like this and the contributors who do them that make our ecosystem vibrant and responsive and thriving on into the future.

So, thank you all for the contributions you make to WordPress. Thank you for the shining example of how to do open source at scale, and thank you for another great year together. 

[00:06:04] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. It is indeed a small this time. First up, I would like to introduce our enhanced content safety features on Openverse. By default, search results now exclude openly licensed media containing sensitive textual content. But this new feature adds additional filtering based on titles, tags, and descriptions of the work as well.

[00:06:27] Josepha: The second thing on our small list of big things is that there is just a general alert. There’s a WordPress security team impersonation scam that’s going on out there. The team is aware of multiple ongoing phishing scams impersonating both the WordPress team and the WordPress security team in an attempt to convince administrators to install a plugin on their website which contains malware. I’ll include a link to that post just in case you have anyone that you think might need to be aware of that, but also all of our site administrators know. Like, WordPress is not gonna email you asking for passwords or anything ever. 

[00:07:02] Josepha: And item number three, I would like you to join the Plugin review team. I know I just said it in the body of the episode. But, the Plugin review team is looking for new members still who believe in our mission of guiding plugin authors in responsibly transforming their innovative ideas into reality and ensuring a great WordPress plugin experience for end users. There is a deadline to apply; it’s December 31st. And so you can get that done over the holidays, over a glass of eggnog if that’s how you choose to celebrate whatever it is that you do. 

And that’s it for your small list of big things. 

Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. See you again in a couple of weeks. 

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on the recent 2023 State of the Word, which took place in Madrid, Spain, and some of the highlights of the work across the WordPress open source project.

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

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• State of the Word Recap
• WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program: Pilot Program Proposal
• WordPress Developer Blog
• WordPress End of Year Celebrations!
• Small List of Big Things
  • Introducing Enhanced Content Safety Features on Openverse – Introducing new features for enhanced content safety on Openverse.
  • Alert: WordPress Security Team Impersonation Scams.
  • Join the Plugin Review Team! – The Plugin Review Team is looking for new members; the deadline to apply is on December 31, 2023.

Transcripts

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Intro music) 

[00:00:40] Josepha: We wrapped up State of the Word earlier this month, and while I was sitting there being the only person to clap for the love of cake, I realized just how much we have been able to accomplish this year. And on the one hand, I shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, progress is radical over time yet incremental in time. But all told, 2023 has been a big year for WordPress. There’s been some radical progress in a few places. There are the things you know because you’ve heard them all year. You heard them in State of the Word.

We turned 20, for instance. We shipped three on-time releases. We had three well-organized flagship events, and we prototyped essential parts of phase 3. But there’s a lot of work that happens outside of flagship events and software releases, and I’d like to highlight a few examples of operational excellence in our community and ecosystem.

[00:01:31] Josepha: First highlight goes to the contributors who are building community. Going back to 2021, we’ve been working to bring people back together in person.

And in that year, we had 19 events. In 2022, we had 24 events, so a modest increase of just over 30%. But then, in 2023, the WordPress community banded together on a campaign to reignite passion in our Meetup groups and encourage playfulness in our WordCamp planning. And not only did we see a 57% increase in active Meetup groups, But we also saw a 116% increase in WordCamps, 54 WordCamps in all. That’s about a third of the way to our all-time annual high of 142.

And to complement these in-person opportunities, Learn also shipped 104 pieces of new content and hosted 258 online workshops because location should never be a barrier to entry for joining WordPress. 

[00:02:32] Josepha: Second highlight goes to the contributors who are managing our directories. We do have a lot of directories. We have Plugins, Themes, Photos, Block plugins. We got a lot.

And I’m sure that everyone saw the consistent and borderline pleading calls to join the Plugin team this year. And for folks who’ve been around a bit, you probably recall a similar set of consistent and pleading calls to join the Theme team a few years back. Concurrent with the work to refill that contribution pipeline, folks over in Meta and across the project generally, were working on automating as many checks as possible, loosening guidelines where it was reasonable, and modernizing as many processes as we could.

I’m happy to share that the theme wait time is at a historic low, with their longest wait sometimes just at a week. And as anxious as I am about the plugin wait times, we’re actually seeing a lot of progress there as well. As we follow a process similar to the one that we did on themes, I imagine it’s only gonna get better. So, in 2023, we’ve onboarded six new team members. And since September, the number of plugins awaiting initial review has been cut in half.

And then coming up in Q1 of 2024, we’ll have a project focused entirely on automating as many checks as possible. So I still need you, but I also need you to know that your work there matters and is having an impact.

[00:03:55] Josepha: The third highlight goes to the contributors who are doing outreach. This year, we launched a mentorship program with an 89% completion rate because we’ve seen time and again that our most prolific contributors had someone at the start that they felt safe asking dumb questions with. We launched and nurtured the developer blog, which was a need identified by the community because there was no place for intermediate and advanced developers to get excited about their cool explorations. And there were 53 posts there this year with thirteen thousand views, which is a 251% increase for the record, which is a ridiculous increase, but it’s a lot. Thirteen thousand views is a lot.

We have focused on documentation as we suggested in Porto of 2022. And marketing, I know not always our favorite topic, but marketing, our ability to talk about ourselves to more than just ourselves, has increased dramatically this year. 

Not only have we started rolling out a modern design across our website, but we also are present and engaged on eight different platforms with 20-plus episodes of this very podcast and also video content that netted us seven and a half million views this year. That’s a lot of numbers, and there’s a post that goes with it.

[00:05:10] Josepha: Check out the show notes. But if you’re not gonna check out the show notes because you listen to this on Pocket Casts or Google or something, go to make.WordPress.org/project, and it’ll be over there. But the point is, it’s been a banner year for the software, and I am grateful for every tester, designer, and developer that showed up for it. But I also know that what makes WordPress truly irreplaceable is our ecosystem, and it’s contributions like this and the contributors who do them that make our ecosystem vibrant and responsive and thriving on into the future.

So, thank you all for the contributions you make to WordPress. Thank you for the shining example of how to do open source at scale, and thank you for another great year together. 

[00:06:04] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. It is indeed a small this time. First up, I would like to introduce our enhanced content safety features on Openverse. By default, search results now exclude openly licensed media containing sensitive textual content. But this new feature adds additional filtering based on titles, tags, and descriptions of the work as well.

[00:06:27] Josepha: The second thing on our small list of big things is that there is just a general alert. There’s a WordPress security team impersonation scam that’s going on out there. The team is aware of multiple ongoing phishing scams impersonating both the WordPress team and the WordPress security team in an attempt to convince administrators to install a plugin on their website which contains malware. I’ll include a link to that post just in case you have anyone that you think might need to be aware of that, but also all of our site administrators know. Like, WordPress is not gonna email you asking for passwords or anything ever. 

[00:07:02] Josepha: And item number three, I would like you to join the Plugin review team. I know I just said it in the body of the episode. But, the Plugin review team is looking for new members still who believe in our mission of guiding plugin authors in responsibly transforming their innovative ideas into reality and ensuring a great WordPress plugin experience for end users. There is a deadline to apply; it’s December 31st. And so you can get that done over the holidays, over a glass of eggnog if that’s how you choose to celebrate whatever it is that you do. 

And that’s it for your small list of big things. 

Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. See you again in a couple of weeks. 

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy articulates the vision for a collaborative ecosystem where knowledge sharing and contributions to open source tools lead to a more interconnected and empowered web.

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

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• State of the Word 2022
• PHP Foundation
• Josepha’s Big Picture Goals 2022
• Small List of Big Things
  • Gutenberg 17.1 has been released and is available for download! The latest release includes new enhancements, bug fixes, and continued work on Phase 3 features.
  • Announcing the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey – The Community team proposed a survey for all meetup members and organizers. Please complete the Annual Meetup Survey  by January 14, 2024– even if you haven’t participated in a meetup recently!
  • Request for feedback: Lesson Handbook pages – As the Training team progresses towards the 2024 launch of Learning Pathways, they’re developing a set of content creation guidelines to streamline and scale the process. These guidelines will focus on efficient methods for developing, reviewing, and updating content. To gather input, a Google Doc has been created where you can share your ideas. Please provide your feedback and comments on this document by Tuesday, December 19, 2023.
  • WordPress Playground makes WordPress instantly accessible for users, learners, extenders, and contributors.
  • Embracing Matrix for Enhanced Communication

Transcripts

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Intro music) 

[00:00:40] Josepha: If you’re already familiar with the WordPress project, and if you’re listening to this podcast, I feel like it’s a safe assumption that you’re probably also familiar with the fact that we are what’s considered a free and open source software project. We adhere to the four freedoms of open source. We track bugs in the open, and we believe that knowledge sharing can only improve our products. 

But you might not be aware of the other open source projects that are foundational to ours and otherwise are integral to our commitment to the open web. At last year’s State of the Word, Matt mentioned that one of the coolest things about being a plugin or theme author in WordPress is that you get to run your open source project on the same infrastructure that WordPress runs on. So, no matter whether you have five installs or five thousand, you’re getting the benefits of our bug trackers, messaging, and network of project sites. But beyond those, which are, of course, near and dear to us, we also support projects like PHP and its foundation. Openverse and its founding organization Creative Commons, and of course, the two that we’re hearing a lot about this year and next, Playground and Matrix.

[00:01:52] Josepha: That’s a lot of projects and not even a comprehensive list. And honestly, it can seem, I don’t know, a little weird. Like, we’re a FOSS CMS, right? You probably know why we contribute back to PHP. It’s the same reason we ask people to contribute to WordPress. But why are we giving so much time to a media search engine, or a Web Assembly implementation, or even a messaging protocol?

At first glance, there are, of course, a lot of quick and easy answers. For instance, like, open source is open source. Any open source contribution is going to be a good contribution. All open source in the world increases good and freedom in the world. Like, open source is open source. Makes sense, right?

Another quick and easy answer is, you know, they’re part of us. And that’s true, definitely, for PHP, like, they’re part of us, and so we should be contributing back to them. Because we rely on them so much. And then a third quick and easy answer is that we, as the biggest open source CMS on the planet, basically, we can, spare a lending hand. We can offer a little bit of help to those around us. 

[00:03:03] Josepha: And those are all true. I don’t think that anyone would disagree with any of that. But the thing that ties it all together for me is something that’s a little harder to see. In the 2022 goals that I posted, I said that my second goal for our year was to support open source alternatives for all site-building necessities.

At the time, I was primarily talking about Openverse and the directory of photos that was being created as a CC-first source. But that also applies to all of our directories. It did then, just as it does now. And Trac, and our vast network of WordPress sites. All the tools we use in order to collaborate with, and lead for, and learn from each other.

I want us to be able to do everything it takes to build an online presence using open source tools and methods because WordPress is just a glorious little microcosm of the interconnected web. It reminds me of this art installation I had the privilege of experiencing. It’s called Meow Wolf. I went to the one in Denver, but there are a few different installations across the U.S. The one that I went to is this massive art installation, and it is designed to be interactive, but it wasn’t until you started sharing your experience sharing your knowledge with other people that you realized it was also collaborative, a set of buttons you pushed in one room would cause a light show in some other room.

[00:04:34] Josepha: So you were enhancing the experience of strangers in some completely disconnected room to yours, and they couldn’t distinguish it from an automation or something they did, or just plain old magic. And that’s what we’re doing by supporting these other open source tools. Yes, every new open source contribution results in more freedom in the world. Yes, we owe support to the components that got us where we are today. And yes, we absolutely can and should pay it forward. But more importantly than all that, we’re creating the opportunity for new interactions, new brilliance, and new defenders of the open web every time that we work on these open source products.

[00:05:20] Josepha: And it doesn’t matter if we will ever see any of those people. And it doesn’t matter if they will ever thank us. What matters is that we see that knowledge like this is worth preserving and worth sharing. Because knowledge shared, information shared is like light. The more you share it, the more there is.

And I want you to be able to take that sharing and use it to light the world. I want you to be able to go out and tell people how open source has changed your life, how WordPress has opened doors for you, or how much these tools have empowered your clients. I want you to remember why you came to WordPress in the first place, and I need you to hear me when I say that I need you here in WordPress today because every little ripple of good that we create makes the world a little more good.

[00:06:12] (Music interlude) 

[00:06:20] Josepha: (SLBT) And now, my friends, that brings us to our time for the small list of big things. I’ve got a kind of a big list because I always kind of have a big list anymore, but the first thing on my list is Gutenberg 17.1. That has been released and is available for download. It includes several new enhancements, loads of bug fixes, and continues that work on phase three features that we are starting to see come through. If you don’t have it already, go out and grab it, test it, break it, and tell us what you tested and how it broke things. 

[00:06:52] Josepha: The second thing on my small list of big things is that there is currently an annual meetup survey out. So, we’ve had an increase in our meetup events, and certainly an increase in the active number of meetup groups that we have, but the community team is proposing a unified survey for all meetup members and organizers, and if you haven’t participated in it yet go and fill it out. You don’t have to have actually gone to a meetup event recently in order to take it, but, you know, it might be helpful. Either way, you have until January 14, 2024, to fill that out.

[00:07:30] Josepha: The third thing on my small list of big things is a request for feedback. The training team is working toward launching Learning Pathways in 2024. They’re looking to create a new set of content creation guidelines that enables the learning pathways to scale with a straightforward process for developing, reviewing, and updating that content. There’s a Google doc for you where you can contribute your ideas, and that doc will be open for feedback through this week and into next week. I believe it closes on Tuesday, the 19th of December, 2023.

[00:08:04] Josepha: And then the final thing on my small list of big things is actually, it’s a dual call-in. I already said with my first one about the Gutenberg plugin: get in there and test it and break it, and then tell us how it broke and what you were doing when you were testing it and broke it. And I encourage you to do that also for Matrix and Playground.

So Playground has been a really big deal all year long. It was a big deal at the end of last year. It showed up for us in November 2022 and has been really just growing in surprising ways all the way through 2023. So if you have not yet seen it, you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, it’s a WordPress installation that is loaded entirely in the browser, totally server-free, and we’re looking at a couple of new implementations that make it easier for users who are trying to, like, kick the tires of WordPress before they decide, and developers who are wanting to test new pull requests and things like that.

So keep an eye out if it sounds interesting; it is interesting. And wander over and figure out how that’s working. And the other thing in that last call for collective testing is Matrix. So Matrix is an open source federated messaging protocol, and like so many technology projects out there at the moment, we are trying to make sure that we are preparing ourselves for the future arrival of Web 3 and all of the things that are coming along with current advancements in federated everything and AI and etc., etc.

And so, Matrix is an open source messaging protocol. There are a lot of different ways to get connected. I’ll share a link to one of the posts in the show notes over on WordPress.org/news. But if you’re interested in learning a bit about it and you don’t really want to like figure out what sort of client is comfortable for you to use. There’s also on-site chat implementations for, I want to say, like 10 or 12 of our largest or most regularly meeting groups that we have. You can go to parts of the website like make.WordPress.org/core/chat and check those out. If you have a WordPress.org account, then you can have access to that on-site chat, and that is it.

That’s the whole low barrier to entryway of figuring that out with us. Come and break stuff with us, everyone, and tell us how to make it better. 

[00:10:33] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:11:00] (Music outro) 

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy articulates the vision for a collaborative ecosystem where knowledge sharing and contributions to open source tools lead to a more interconnected and empowered web.

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

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• State of the Word 2022
• PHP Foundation
• Josepha’s Big Picture Goals 2022
• Small List of Big Things
  • Gutenberg 17.1 has been released and is available for download! The latest release includes new enhancements, bug fixes, and continued work on Phase 3 features.
  • Announcing the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey – The Community team proposed a survey for all meetup members and organizers. Please complete the Annual Meetup Survey  by January 14, 2024– even if you haven’t participated in a meetup recently!
  • Request for feedback: Lesson Handbook pages – As the Training team progresses towards the 2024 launch of Learning Pathways, they’re developing a set of content creation guidelines to streamline and scale the process. These guidelines will focus on efficient methods for developing, reviewing, and updating content. To gather input, a Google Doc has been created where you can share your ideas. Please provide your feedback and comments on this document by Tuesday, December 19, 2023.
  • WordPress Playground makes WordPress instantly accessible for users, learners, extenders, and contributors.
  • Embracing Matrix for Enhanced Communication

Transcripts

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Intro music) 

[00:00:40] Josepha: If you’re already familiar with the WordPress project, and if you’re listening to this podcast, I feel like it’s a safe assumption that you’re probably also familiar with the fact that we are what’s considered a free and open source software project. We adhere to the four freedoms of open source. We track bugs in the open, and we believe that knowledge sharing can only improve our products. 

But you might not be aware of the other open source projects that are foundational to ours and otherwise are integral to our commitment to the open web. At last year’s State of the Word, Matt mentioned that one of the coolest things about being a plugin or theme author in WordPress is that you get to run your open source project on the same infrastructure that WordPress runs on. So, no matter whether you have five installs or five thousand, you’re getting the benefits of our bug trackers, messaging, and network of project sites. But beyond those, which are, of course, near and dear to us, we also support projects like PHP and its foundation. Openverse and its founding organization Creative Commons, and of course, the two that we’re hearing a lot about this year and next, Playground and Matrix.

[00:01:52] Josepha: That’s a lot of projects and not even a comprehensive list. And honestly, it can seem, I don’t know, a little weird. Like, we’re a FOSS CMS, right? You probably know why we contribute back to PHP. It’s the same reason we ask people to contribute to WordPress. But why are we giving so much time to a media search engine, or a Web Assembly implementation, or even a messaging protocol?

At first glance, there are, of course, a lot of quick and easy answers. For instance, like, open source is open source. Any open source contribution is going to be a good contribution. All open source in the world increases good and freedom in the world. Like, open source is open source. Makes sense, right?

Another quick and easy answer is, you know, they’re part of us. And that’s true, definitely, for PHP, like, they’re part of us, and so we should be contributing back to them. Because we rely on them so much. And then a third quick and easy answer is that we, as the biggest open source CMS on the planet, basically, we can, spare a lending hand. We can offer a little bit of help to those around us. 

[00:03:03] Josepha: And those are all true. I don’t think that anyone would disagree with any of that. But the thing that ties it all together for me is something that’s a little harder to see. In the 2022 goals that I posted, I said that my second goal for our year was to support open source alternatives for all site-building necessities.

At the time, I was primarily talking about Openverse and the directory of photos that was being created as a CC-first source. But that also applies to all of our directories. It did then, just as it does now. And Trac, and our vast network of WordPress sites. All the tools we use in order to collaborate with, and lead for, and learn from each other.

I want us to be able to do everything it takes to build an online presence using open source tools and methods because WordPress is just a glorious little microcosm of the interconnected web. It reminds me of this art installation I had the privilege of experiencing. It’s called Meow Wolf. I went to the one in Denver, but there are a few different installations across the U.S. The one that I went to is this massive art installation, and it is designed to be interactive, but it wasn’t until you started sharing your experience sharing your knowledge with other people that you realized it was also collaborative, a set of buttons you pushed in one room would cause a light show in some other room.

[00:04:34] Josepha: So you were enhancing the experience of strangers in some completely disconnected room to yours, and they couldn’t distinguish it from an automation or something they did, or just plain old magic. And that’s what we’re doing by supporting these other open source tools. Yes, every new open source contribution results in more freedom in the world. Yes, we owe support to the components that got us where we are today. And yes, we absolutely can and should pay it forward. But more importantly than all that, we’re creating the opportunity for new interactions, new brilliance, and new defenders of the open web every time that we work on these open source products.

[00:05:20] Josepha: And it doesn’t matter if we will ever see any of those people. And it doesn’t matter if they will ever thank us. What matters is that we see that knowledge like this is worth preserving and worth sharing. Because knowledge shared, information shared is like light. The more you share it, the more there is.

And I want you to be able to take that sharing and use it to light the world. I want you to be able to go out and tell people how open source has changed your life, how WordPress has opened doors for you, or how much these tools have empowered your clients. I want you to remember why you came to WordPress in the first place, and I need you to hear me when I say that I need you here in WordPress today because every little ripple of good that we create makes the world a little more good.

[00:06:12] (Music interlude) 

[00:06:20] Josepha: (SLBT) And now, my friends, that brings us to our time for the small list of big things. I’ve got a kind of a big list because I always kind of have a big list anymore, but the first thing on my list is Gutenberg 17.1. That has been released and is available for download. It includes several new enhancements, loads of bug fixes, and continues that work on phase three features that we are starting to see come through. If you don’t have it already, go out and grab it, test it, break it, and tell us what you tested and how it broke things. 

[00:06:52] Josepha: The second thing on my small list of big things is that there is currently an annual meetup survey out. So, we’ve had an increase in our meetup events, and certainly an increase in the active number of meetup groups that we have, but the community team is proposing a unified survey for all meetup members and organizers, and if you haven’t participated in it yet go and fill it out. You don’t have to have actually gone to a meetup event recently in order to take it, but, you know, it might be helpful. Either way, you have until January 14, 2024, to fill that out.

[00:07:30] Josepha: The third thing on my small list of big things is a request for feedback. The training team is working toward launching Learning Pathways in 2024. They’re looking to create a new set of content creation guidelines that enables the learning pathways to scale with a straightforward process for developing, reviewing, and updating that content. There’s a Google doc for you where you can contribute your ideas, and that doc will be open for feedback through this week and into next week. I believe it closes on Tuesday, the 19th of December, 2023.

[00:08:04] Josepha: And then the final thing on my small list of big things is actually, it’s a dual call-in. I already said with my first one about the Gutenberg plugin: get in there and test it and break it, and then tell us how it broke and what you were doing when you were testing it and broke it. And I encourage you to do that also for Matrix and Playground.

So Playground has been a really big deal all year long. It was a big deal at the end of last year. It showed up for us in November 2022 and has been really just growing in surprising ways all the way through 2023. So if you have not yet seen it, you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, it’s a WordPress installation that is loaded entirely in the browser, totally server-free, and we’re looking at a couple of new implementations that make it easier for users who are trying to, like, kick the tires of WordPress before they decide, and developers who are wanting to test new pull requests and things like that.

So keep an eye out if it sounds interesting; it is interesting. And wander over and figure out how that’s working. And the other thing in that last call for collective testing is Matrix. So Matrix is an open source federated messaging protocol, and like so many technology projects out there at the moment, we are trying to make sure that we are preparing ourselves for the future arrival of Web 3 and all of the things that are coming along with current advancements in federated everything and AI and etc., etc.

And so, Matrix is an open source messaging protocol. There are a lot of different ways to get connected. I’ll share a link to one of the posts in the show notes over on WordPress.org/news. But if you’re interested in learning a bit about it and you don’t really want to like figure out what sort of client is comfortable for you to use. There’s also on-site chat implementations for, I want to say, like 10 or 12 of our largest or most regularly meeting groups that we have. You can go to parts of the website like make.WordPress.org/core/chat and check those out. If you have a WordPress.org account, then you can have access to that on-site chat, and that is it.

That’s the whole low barrier to entryway of figuring that out with us. Come and break stuff with us, everyone, and tell us how to make it better. 

[00:10:33] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:11:00] (Music outro)