“Me tomó cuatro años pintar como Rafael, pero me llevó toda una vida aprender a dibujar como un niño.” 🎨 “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
— Pablo PicassoHowdy —
Bob Dunn is heading cross-country for the State of the Word. From Washington to New York and back, it’s a 6,500 mile trip. Eight days by rail. Leave it to Bob to find a better idea after he found out he couldn’t fly. Post Status is sponsoring this trip, and it will be a social one.
Bob will be blogging and podcasting along the way with at least one special guest joining him. There might be a small meetup during a layover. A suitable hashtag is being determined on Twitter right now: #WPTrainCamp vs. #DotheRails vs. #WooTrainClan. Looks like the last one is winning. Keep an eye out for it!
In other news, Pods hit 75% of Post Status’s $1k matching goal this week. We’re going to keep it going through December, so if you haven’t donated yet, please do, and we will match your gift. Become a Friend of Pods today!
A conversation about the WordPress news space with some of the key voices in it.
In this episode of Post Status Comments, David and Dan host a conversation with several members of what the WordPress news community: Matt Medeiros (Matt Report Media), Joe Howard (WPMRR), Birgit Pauli-Haack (Gutenberg Times), and Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern). Find out how these WordPress journalists and news commentators understand their roles, how they view the WordPress community, and what they see for the future of the project.
WP Lookout tracks the plugins and themes you depend on. Get timely information about new WordPress plugin and theme versions, security updates, author changes, mentions in the news and more. Set customizable notifications by email, Slack, webhook and RSS.
Post Status is proud to present a live gathering after the State of the Word. Join us in Twitter Spaces with guests Rae Morey and Eric Karkovack on December 14 @ 12PM EST. Save the date! 📅 More details to follow.
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing, which includes the first default block theme Twenty Twenty-Two. The readjusted and current target for the final release is January 25, 2022.
There's a good overview of the full site editor from the core team as it will appear in the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release. A "sneak preview" video for every major release would be nice to have, although it might be difficult in light of the last minute decisions that can change what goes into the mix.
Version 12.0 of the Gutenberg plugin is out. This update moves the sidebar previews so they only appear when a style is hovered or has keyboard focus. There have also been some visual enhancements for the featured image block, and there's a new welcome guide "to help users get started with both the Editor and the Styles sidebar."
Cloudways is partnering up with Till Krüss — the creator and maintainer of PHP Redis — to integrate Object Cache Pro (OCP) "seamlessly" with the WordPress Object Cache API. The OCP integration is Batcache compatible, WooCommerce optimized, and also offers advanced integration with Query Monitor, WP-CLI, and Relay.
John Billion wrote a great gist on Github a few years ago that lists out what happens when a WordPress site loads. It's still mostly accurate. When John was asked last week if it's possible to continuously auto-generate the site load flow outline from source code, John said he doesn't think so:
"The intention isn't to cover every action that fires and every file that loads, just the ones that are of interest to plugin and theme developers and contributors. I think that's best done with manual curation."
Inner Blocks are Gutenberg blocks that allow you to insert additional blocks within another block. Igor Benicwalks you through these nested blocks and explains how the CoBlocks Accordion block utilizes them.
Take the guesswork out of building, maintaining, and securing WordPress websites. Professional plugins and training from iThemes help you create and manage your sites. Secure, back up, and manage them quickly and easily. Master leading-edge WordPress skills to grow your business and make more money. Learn and grow with the experts at iThemes.
Here's a nice infographic from Mark Walker-Ford about some really annoying web design mistakes — like making users wait for content to load or sacrificing usability for the sake of beauty. Everyone hates this, but it's not exactly uncommon.
Fränk Klein talks about his observations, struggles, and the lessons he's learned from building "hybrid themes." These themes mix the traditional theming approach with full-site editing features. Frank has a particular issue with the template editor; he considers it "half baked" and does not see a use for block widgets.
Brian Krebs describes the internet as being held together by spit and baling wire. Referring to an attack vector that recently emerged, he ass us to "[i]magine being able to disconnect or redirect Internet traffic destined for some of the world’s biggest companies — just by spoofing an email."
The internet can be resilient but also fragile. Who could forget the recent outage that took Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp offline for the better part of a day — simply because Facebook submitted an erroneous Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) update.
Nominate someone (maybe yourself!) from the Post Status community to be featured in our Member Spotlight. 🗳️
“We are trying to bring our community to the world.”
In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David chats with two organizers from the upcoming WordCamp Taiwan 2021 — Eric Chuang 莊桓亦 and Hend Chen 陳瀚宇. Learn what the WordPress community is like in Taiwan, and how they've dealt with restrictions on in-person events. Eric and Hend crafted a “hybrid” approach to their WordCamp and hope having English sessions will bring more talent and influence to Taiwan's WordPress community.
If you've been looking for a good summary on the changes over at StudioPress with full site editing on the way, Nancy Seegerhas a good one.
We love finding handy one-page apps on the web. After trying out cleanup.pictures it's clear why it's been so highly recommended. It removes objects, people, and text from most pictures quickly and for free. It's a great tool if you need this feature in a pinch.
"It took until this year to write my first eBook, and it now generates revenue while I sleep... A good place to start is with something you've already invested time in — a skill, a project, or an approach."
Alex shares his approach if you want to go down a similar path: Identify a topic, find your angle, find a friend — at least someone to proofread your content — and then ship it.
Lax Mariappanshares his new hire experience at WebDevStudios — from the interview to onboarding to being involved in Five for the Future. WebDevStudios has a great practice of personally introducing new employees to everyone on the team as a part of their orientation.
Scott Vandehey has a good take on the state of CSS today — and you too may "be surprised how much you can do with vanilla CSS nowadays." It's true, "CSS is much more powerful now than it was even just a few years ago" — to the point that pre- and post-processors may not be needed anymore, in many cases.
WP Career Summit — the first of its kind — will be held online April 8, 2022. While still in the early stages of planning, we can promise it will be an amazing event! 📆
Javier Casares keeps every WordPress event worldwide listed — 1190 WordPress communities in 111 countries — at wpcalendar.io. There are direct links to all the online events. 👏
WordCamp Taiwan 🇹🇼: WordCamp Taiwan will take place online this year from December 11-12, 2021 and welcomes all WordPress lovers. 🇹🇼 2021年12月11日到12日，台灣即將迎來一場全新的里程碑 WordCamp，一場更新、更好、更多花火的的國際級綜合研討會. The Call for Speakers is still open.
WP Y'All, It's WordCamp Birmingham on February 4-5, 2022. You can find more information and sign up here. Here's the Call for Sponsors.
Sponsorships and donations will help provide resources to aid the mental health and well-being of remote workers worldwide. All proceeds go to the Big Orange Heart charity! Everyone organizing this event is a volunteer. 🙏
The World Wide Web has changed us. Nearly two-thirds of the world is now “online” and we have more opportunities than ever to access, create, and connect. The Web didn’t happen by accident, though, and its future isn’t to be taken for granted.
