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Issue #443
Sandhills Development

“The speed of time is one second per second.

— Steven Wright


Howdy!

 
I spend more days as a WordPress user than someone building products, and that’s put me in the WordPress Admin a lot. In this week's episode of Post Status Excerpt, I had to rant a bit and give a warning to my WordPress product friends about Admin Notices. Excessive, even abusive notifications, have spurred some good dialogue in our Post Status Club Slack. Go check out the conversation.
 
—Cory 

🖥️ Post Status Draft

Beth Livingston on WordPress Project Management

Beth Livingston on WordPress Project Management

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David Bisset and Cory Miller talk about Cory's recent negative experiences with admin notices in the WordPress dashboard. If the WordPress community cannot control and improve upon the location, frequency, language, and other aspects of notifications inside the WordPress admin interface, the experience will continue to degrade for users, and Cory thinks WordPress.org will step in.

Also covered: David finds the animated GIFs (pronounced however David said it) starting to annoy him in the WordPress plugin repository.

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.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

▶️ Tune In Now

Héctor Prieto shares the next steps on Full Site Editing (FSE) now that the "go" was given last week.

One of the targets for WordPress 5.8 is to make it possible for end-users "to create custom block templates for posts and pages in classic themes." Additionally, "theme developers will be able to create block themes and provide quality feedback to iterate over these mechanisms."

Speaking of the block editor, Matías Ventura shared on Twitter how his exploration of "free flow drawing" could work in blocks, which I think is quite interesting. ✏️


On the morning of April 19th (Monday) Automattic released a new plugin called Jetpack Boost on the WordPress.org repo. The plugin is focused on performance and SEO issues users might have with their sites. 🚀

Boost has three "performance modules:"

  1. Optimize CSS Loading generates critical CSS for your homepage, posts, and pages. This can make your content show up on the screen much faster, particularly for viewers using mobile devices.
  2. Defer Non-Essential Javascript moves some rendering tasks to happen after the page loads so important visual information can be seen sooner.
  3. Lazy Image Loading only loads the images the user can see when they can see them.

Sarah Gooding took some initial benchmarks. 📈

Dan Walmsley, one of the engineers at Automattic who worked on Boost, shared how much XWP and WordPress VIP were involved in product development:

"We relied heavily on their expertise with high-end sites to distill the most effective, bulletproof optimizations for free for regular folks. It’s very hard to make performance optimization simple, but I really think we got the formula right."


After discussing it with several contributors, the decision has been made to officially remove IE11 support in WordPress 5.8.

The removal will be done in two phases:

  1. WordPress 5.8 (among other changes) will effectively remove IE11 support in the block editor and all generated CSS files used within the admin.
  2. WordPress 5.9 will focus on individual tickets that might be created to evaluate removing each instance of IE11 specific code.

Earlier this week there was a proposal submitted by Carike on WordPress.org to treat Google's cookie replacement — Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) — as a "security concern" and add a method in WordPress core to block it. ⛔

Many people weighed in on the proposal in the comments, and even mainstream tech media (incorrectly) picked up and incorrectly stated WordPress core would be blocking FLoC.

From a technical standpoint, the process isn't difficult: at least one person (Hendrik Luehrsen) has already published a WordPress plugin to opt out of FLoC.

Helen Hou-Sandi has opened a Trac ticket to monitor and discuss the issue with the ticket "milestoned for 5.8 to ensure that it remains on the radar but if information and consensus evolve rapidly we can certainly come back to shaping a proposal around minor release inclusion."


Sabrina Zeldan notes that if you have never contributed to Gutenberg or made blocks/plugins before, you should check out a series of posts from Marcus Kazmierczak that go back to 2017. Sabrina writes,

"For me, as a complete newbie, it was super helpful. I made my first PR to Gutenberg yesterday, and it was merged!"


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🎙️ The Week in WordPress

Frustrations With Admin Notices — Post Status Excerpt #7

Post Status Excerpt Podcast

WordPress Designers and Developers from Freelancers to Agencies Face the Same Problems

In this episode of Post Status Draft, Brian Krogsgard talks with Beth Livingston, M. Ed. Today, Beth is an Online Course Creator and Educator at WP Roadmaps and Coaching. Previously, Beth worked in education and corporate IT management. When she joined the WordPress community, Beth saw a need that combined these two roles: project management education and training.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

🔊 Listen Now

Tom Hirst makes a business case for headless WordPress. 💼

Tom rightly notes that a business "has to be comfortable at the bleeding edge of web technology," but if you're not ready today, good news — "if you start with traditional WordPress, you can switch to headless WordPress at a later date."

I'm confident headless will find its place with developers in the right situations, and another way of working with WordPress is a definite win. I can't wait to learn and share more about it.

(At the same time, I agree with this remark from Chris Lema on Twitter too.)


We have a clarification for the item we reported last week regarding accessibility issues people were having with some recent changes to WordPress.com. We linked to a post where Deborah Edwards-Onoro explained how to enable the Classic Editor for WordPress.com sites. Then we noted a communication from Automattic's public relations team about a blog post they had published about these changes.

What we missed is how — according to the publish dates on both Deborah's and Automattic's posts — the announcement from Automattic came a day after Deborah's post. I want to take a moment to apologize to Deborah if it seemed that the official blog post announcement existed at the time of her post. Apparently, it didn't, so she and other people reacting to the changes at WP.com didn't miss it. After closer examination, the official announcement (at least on the blog) came the following day, and this seems to have happened after the changes impacting accessibility had already gone live.

I have been told there was an announcement in the WP.com app as well, but for an announcement to go up on a blog a day after the changes it concerns had already been live would explain the confusion.

As I mentioned last week this does prove that a significant need exists for the Classic Editor, including those who need a more accessible tool than the block editor if a delay of only one day is disruptive to them.


Renato Alves explains why GraphQL and WordPress work well together:

"...to author a GraphQL API you only need a one-time effort.... and another advantage of using GraphQL is its ease of integration with multiple data sources."

There are some downsides, however. There are some "rough-edges" (like caching), access control, and a "steep learning curve." Migrating completely to GraphQL without understanding its risks would be a bad mistake.


🔌 Iain Poulson noted in a recent WP Trends newsletter that he has started working on a new acquisition analytics feature for Plugin Rank:

"Find a free plugin on the WordPress.org repository that has a good user base but hasn’t yet been monetized. Acquire it, improve it and add a premium offering... But the problem is finding these plugins."


Allison Rivers reviews three Gutenberg block plugins for WooCommerce stores:

  1. ProductX's Gutenberg WooCommerce Blocks, which extend the basic WooCommerce block options;
  2. Toolset's WooCommerce Blocks, for more extensive customizations;
  3. The core blocks built into WooCommerce.

If you or your clients use Kaswara Modern WPBakery Page Builder (10k+ installations), then you might want to uninstall it when you can. Wordfence is reporting a critical zero-day vulnerability.

And if you use Elementor, make sure it's updated. A vulnerability was discovered last month, and more recently some third-party Elementor plugins received security patches too.  Collectively these vulnerabilities affect millions of websites. 🔒


📆 Upcoming Events


WordPress Jobs: The Post Status Job Board

💼 There are currently 20 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. »


IconicIconic has an opening for a full-time, remote WordPress Developer to work on their premium WooCommerce plugins.


Reaktiv StudiosReaktiv Studios is actively searching for a full-time Senior Web Developer to join their growing, remote VIP WordPress agency.


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.

 

View All Jobs

Brad Touesnard shows how you can make a PDF look scanned using ImageMagick and Automator in macOS.


The team at Ellipsis Marketing explains why user personas are so beneficial, how the Ellipsis team used them, and what they learned along the way. 👱

Tom J Nowell demonstrates two methods for turning off the Block Directory in the WordPress block editor. Here's why you might want to do that:

"As great as the block directory is for me personally, it’s not good for professional sites where a client expects a streamlined or controlled environment."


Joel Abreo has a great compilation of advice from rtCamp for people who are at the start of their careers.

One area of note is one's involvement with WordPress:

"...the code that you’ve shipped matters, but what matters more is a demonstrable ability to think through and solve a real-world problem using WordPress."


Craig Buckler shared a number of JavaScript developer tool "secrets."

One tip I picked up: Chrome’s Coverage panel allows you to quickly locate JavaScript (and CSS) code that has — and has not — been used. 👨‍💻


Jem Turner shares six things she does to make Gutenberg development easier. 6️⃣

These include making the editor full width, adding the Reusable Blocks to the left-hand menu, and using the breadcrumb trail and list view.

Jem includes some handy code snippets to make these interface changes.


Google has announced that it will delay the new page experience ranking signal updates until mid-June 2021:

"We'll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won't play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August. You can think of it as if you're adding a flavoring to a food you're preparing. Rather than add the flavor all at once into the mix, we'll be slowly adding it all over this time period."


A tweet from Gary Pendergast reminded me that he has written a Chrome and Firefox browser extension that mimics the WordPress feature where pasting a URL onto selected text will automatically transform that text into a link. 🔗

If you like that feature in WordPress, now you can do it everywhere with those browsers. 👏


If you think there isn't room for innovation or new products in the WordPress space, I recommend a recent Chris Lema post on some tips to consider for product builders. It really comes down to "niching down" and knowing who your target customer is.

I loved the example he used: Nicole Evans, who is building a product called Studiocart. 🛒


Some things I learned from the "Creator Economy Market Map" over at the SignalFire blog:

  • 2 million people are making enough content (primarily through YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch) to be their full-time career.
  • "The big trend we see here is that over time, creators are becoming more diversified in their revenue streams and are being funded directly by their fans."
  • "...with diversification comes resilience. Creators become less vulnerable to shifts in priorities of the tech giants or their algorithms by owning the direct relationship with their fans."

It makes me wonder how WordPress might tap into the creator economy since most creators seem to want to "own their own content and brand" once they achieve a certain level of success.


There is a cool new badge that GitHub has added to the profiles of open source developers who wrote code used by Ingenuity, the first helicopter to take flight in the Martian atmosphere. 🚁


Ahmad Shadeed explains why CSS Container Queries are an improvement on Media Queries and what layouts are possible with them.

Container Queries are currently available in Chrome Canary.


DAVID'S PICKS 📬

Video Picks

📹 Here are my video picks of the week:

Podcast Picks

🎙️ Here are my podcast picks:

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The Post Status Team

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