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The ship of Theseus ... was preserved by the Athenians ... for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places. This ship became an example among the philosophers for the question of things that grow: one side arguing the ship remained the same, and the other contending it was not the same.

— Plutarch


Howdy!

My buddy Adam Warner has put together EXPAND 2021, a free virtual event for web designers and developers April 27-28. Whether you are new to freelancing or a seasoned veteran, EXPAND 2021 has sessions to help you start and grow your business. They'll cover project management, eCommerce, core design principles, web vitals, security, and more. 

I've spoken to so many people who are ready to get face-to-face ... for me, it's been a nice hiatus as I got into a bad rut and started to despise biz travel even though I miss my friends across the world.

But I still love virtual events like the above. 

Are you a homebody like me, or just dying to hop back on a plane? 
 
—Cory 
 

🎙️ The Week in WordPress

Scope Creep and Full Site Editing — Post Status Excerpt #6

Post Status Excerpt Podcast

This week David and Cory talk about an upcoming Post Status webinar on scope creep with Natasha Golinsky from On Purpose Projects. (You can RSVP here!)

Also covered: David offers some takes on Full-Site Editing in WordPress.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash.

🎧 Listen Now

This week (April 14) there was a preannounced meeting with WordPress Project leaders Matt Mullenweg, Matias Ventura, Helen Hou-Sandi, and Josepha Haden Chomphosy. The purpose of the meeting was to host a "go/no go demo" to demonstrate and review the current state of Full Site Editing (FSE) in WordPress and to determine what, if anything, should be included in WordPress 5.8. (5.8 is scheduled for release in July 2021.) Some possible implementations of FSE were discussed in this meeting.

The decision was Go, but there were some suggestions to slow down and communicate more with people building sites, themes, and plugins in light of their needs. An update after the meeting says:

"The changes that Phase 2 bring to WordPress are substantial, so to avoid overwhelming users the Global Styles interface and Site Editor (managing all templates) will ship post-WordPress 5.8. This also gives more time for more theme authors, plugin developers, agencies, designers, site builders, and the like to explore and provide feedback."

What you can expect with reasonable confidence in WordPress 5.8:

  • Improvements from Gutenberg 9.9+.
  • Introduce new blocks. (Query, Site Logo, Navigation, etc.)
  • theme.json mechanism.
  • Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template.
  • Widgets Screen and Block widgets in the Customizer.
  • Design tools: Duotone, Layout controls, padding, etc.

The post-meeting update has particulars on these points. It also includes a video of the meeting followed by a transcript. Transparency and accessibility points for that! 👍

Last night I had the chance to hear a very well-prepared talk from Anne McCarthy that outlines more deeply the plan for FSE. I highly recommend Anne's talk for Post Status readers, as it includes the overall vision as well as some details about the new blocks and the implementation of FSE.

What I took away from Anne's presentation — and the continuous updates from Core in the past few weeks — is that they are taking the lessons from Gutenberg's Phase One launch to heart and applying them now. (Remember the Gutenberg launch happened the same week as WordCamp US.)

Being careful and avoiding a "shock and awe" approach, however, might give the impression to casual observers that this isn't a fundamental change for WordPress moving forward, even if the true impact isn't felt for years. With changes on this scale, it's important that enough people in the WordPress community are aware of what's coming, and they need to be involved in testing on some level.

To that end, check out the latest call for testing which is particularly focused on the Query block. I got to see the potential of this block last night — what you will be able to do with it is impressive. 💥

A live demo along with Anne McCarthy's talk was given at the WordPress Mega Meetup last night, and here is the full video of that event. About halfway through you can see Marcus Kazmierczak show off some nifty features and answer a variety of very good questions. 📺


Deborah Edwards-Onoro explains how to enable the Classic Editor at WordPress.com.

Why Deborah felt this needed to be published in the first place is an interesting question. There's an answer: she noticed a blind WordPress.com user couldn't use the site anymore when WordPress.com launched a refreshed interface.

Deborah was surprised this could happen:

"What I don’t understand: WordPress.com chose not to announce the change on their blog. The announcement was only published in the WordPress.com forums. Which doesn’t make sense to me, given it’s a major interface change."

I wanted to follow up on this, so I reached out to Dave Martin at Automattic. Dave is a member of the communication/PR team. He said, "The update was communicated to all customers within the app as well to everyone via our blog."

Dave further commented: "Through our interfaces and APIs we enable many ways to post and interact with your WP site, and we're always working to improve the accessibility of every interface. People can also install plugins to enable additional ways to post."

So there were announcements, but apparently, they were not seen by everyone. There's likely a lesson here — how major changes on any site can affect users, and how important the Classic Editor still is for significant groups of people.

I asked Dave how long WordPress.com will support the Classic Editor, but I didn't get a direct response. I take it that as long as the Classic Editor plugin exists and works with the latest WordPress version, then it's going to remain an option on WordPress.com. It will be officially supported until the end of this year.


WordPress's market share has hit an even 41% according to W3Techs.

That is a 1% gain over the past 45 days. Outside of some respectable growth from Shopify, other CMS platforms have seen relatively flat growth since the start of the year.

I agree with Andrew Woods' comment on Twitter:

"If these other platforms ever hope to catch up to WordPress and take back some market share, they need to think about what WordPress does right, and incorporate that into their products while improving upon WordPress’ weaknesses."


Gutenberg 10.4 was released this week with features like block widgets in the Customizer, enhancements to the Site Editor, improvements to rich text placeholders, and bug fixes. 🐛

Exploit acquisition company Zerodium announced last week that it’s temporarily offering $300,000 for high-impact WordPress exploits. 💰

"The exploit must work with latest WordPress default install, no third-party plugins, no auth, no user interaction!"

This is an interesting development. Payouts are typically only $100k. Are exploits in core becoming rarer, is demand for them increasing, or both? 🤔


Felix Arntz recently published the Share Target WordPress plugin. It allows you to share content to your WordPress site directly from a device that's able to use the Web Share Target API. 🎯


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📺 Upcoming Post Status Webinar

Getting Paid for Discovery with Natasha Golinsky

Getting Paid for Discovery with Natasha Golinsky

What if you could obliterate scope creep in every project — before it even starts?

Join Cory Miller on Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 2:00 PM CST as he talks with Natasha Golinsky. Natasha is Principal and Lead Project Manager of Vancouver-based On Purpose Projects (@purposeprojects). Find out how Natasha gets paid for discovery and prevents scope creep from emerging in web design projects.

Learn the business essentials for WordPress freelancers and agencies:

  1. How to get your client on board with a paid discovery phase. 🚢
  2. Why detailed discovery is directly linked to your profitability. 💸
  3. How to create clear project scope expectations and get buy-in from all stakeholders. 🤝
🗓️ RSVP for Free

WP Media — the makers of WP Rocket, Imagify, and RocketCDNannounced this week they are joining group.ONE. That's the parent company for several brands, including one.com, which is one of the largest web hosts in Scandinavia. A Q&A for users has been published.

The CEO of WP Media, Jean-Baptiste Marchand-Arvier, says many things will stay the same for users of their products:

"We are maintaining our own identity and organization and our entire team including co-founders will stay the same."

There will also be continued development of Imagify, WP Rocket, and RocketCDN.


Mészáros Róbert shows how to do headless form submission with the WordPress REST API.

The article shows off two WordPress form plugins' submission endpoints and offers a way to recreate the typical form-related behaviors we have taken for granted.


Chris Lema has an informative post if you’re looking for a WordPress form plugin. He tested conditional logic and form submission outcomes using the same form for each of the following plugins:
  • Fluent Forms Pro
  • Formidable Forms Pro
  • Gravity Forms
  • Happyforms
  • Ninja Forms w/ the conditional logic Premium Extension
  • WPForms
  • WS Form Pro

Chris shares his top four plugins but admits the imitations of his survey:

"the comparison highlights some nuances, but I'm not sure this will sway someone from choosing an alternative to their already favorite form plugin."


If you have ever wondered how you can let clients edit the titles of WordPress archive pages, then Mark Wilkinson has some answers (and even a plugin) for you in his recent post. 🔌


Stephanie Eckles shows off some modern CSS upgrades that improve accessibility. She covers a range of topics, including Focus Visibility, Desktop Zoom and Reflow, and Sizing Interactive Targets. She also shares some accessibility learning resources.


Picked this up on Twitter: Steve Henty notes a 70% renewal rate for GravityFlow. Steve offers a look into their support process, the challenges they've faced, and some lessons learned. 📈


📆 Upcoming Events


WordPress Jobs: The Post Status Job Board

💼 There are currently 21 Active Job Listings on the Board. We don't have space for them all here, so be sure to check online too!

☀️ Employers: Get your job opening in front of many of the best and brightest members of the WordPress community. List your job opening with Post Status today. »


AutomatticAutomattic needs a full-time, remote Developer Advocate to help build positive and sustainable relationships with WordPress developers and reduce barriers to Gutenberg adoption.


SiteCareSiteCare wants to hire a full-time, remote WordPress Support Technician who enjoys a unique blend of technical troubleshooting and development.


GoDaddyGoDaddy needs a full-time, remote Web Designer and Developer Advocate to be their in-house creator, showing the world what’s possible within the GoDaddy Pro experience.


aThemesaThemes is looking for a Full-Stack WordPress Developer to fill a full-time, fully remote role for someone who can be active during at least four hours of the workday in Central European Time (CET).


smarTourssmarTours wants junior and senior WordPress Engineers for their in-house team building a custom application for selling travel. This is a full-time, remote role for someone located in the United States.


CodeableCodeable wants a part-time, remote Freelance WordPress Developer who builds with heart.


WebDev StudiosWebDev Studios is looking for a Business Development Associate who is a confident communicator with a passion for business development. This is a full-time, remote role.


Delicious BrainsDelicious Brains needs a talented Senior WordPress Plugin Developer with lots of experience building WordPress plugins to join the team working on their own sites.


ValetValet is looking for a Professional Support Rep — an outstanding communicator who loves working with clients and has a wide range of experience with WordPress. This is a part-time (potentially full-time) and remote role.

 

View All Jobs

If you want to get into Next.js, Greg Rickaby from WebDevStudios has started a "Hello World" tutorial that's worth a look.


I recently stumbled upon Formality, a simple WordPress form plugin.

The Formality website gives some people a headache. (At least it doesn't look like many other plugin product websites.) I'm always on the lookout for new plugins to try, especially in mature markets like forms, so this was an interesting find. 🔌


Also new to me: this plugin that automatically embeds streamed video into WordPress — or Facebook, Twitch, Vimeo, or YouTube.

The plugin is from Nathan Parikh who recently joined the Post Status club! Come and welcome him in Post Status Slack. 👍


Manuel Matuzović shares what looks like a solid HTML boilerplate, and he explains every line of it. Even if you build HTML from scratch, you will learn something you've forgotten.
Andy Stitt is the lead developer of his state's (Delaware) COVID-19 informational website (built with WordPress). Andy sat down with Eric Karkovack for an interesting interview recently:

"Initially, we worked with the governor’s office, public health, and emergency management to define the scope, information architecture, content, etc. We got approval to build a WordPress website so that non-technical people could make content edits on the fly if they needed to."

The site is pretty impressive, and success stories like this will continue to fuel WordPress's growth and respect in the government sector. 📈


This tool from an ex-Google engineer checks and visualizes the Cumulative Layout Shift of any website.

Cumulative Layout Shift is a "Core Web Vital" metric that measures "the instability of content by summing shift scores across layout shifts that don't occur within 500ms of user input. "

...or another way to put it:

"Have you ever visited a website and was about to click a link to an article, and then… the layout suddenly moves, an ad appears, and somehow instead of clicking on the article you wanted to read, you click on the useless ad?"


Here's a cheat sheet from Tobias Ahlin Bjerrome if you are interested in moving from jQuery to vanilla JavaScript. 🍨


Recently Github added the ability to support one-time payments to those on the site. Very useful if you want to contribute a one-time amount to an open source maintainer or book time with someone regarding their project. 💵


DAVID'S PICKS 📬

Video Picks

📹 Here are my video picks of the week:

Podcast Picks

🎙️ Here are my podcast picks:

Carefully crafted for you by humans.

The Post Status Team

Copyright © 2021 Post Status, All rights reserved.


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