This maintenance release features 9 bug fixes in Core and 10 bug fixes in the block editor.

WordPress 5.9.3 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major release will be version 6.0.

You can download WordPress 5.9.3 from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now”.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

For more information, browse the full list of both Trac and GitHub changes in the release candidate post, or check out the changelog of version 5.9.3 on HelpHub.

Thanks and props!

The 5.9.3 release was led by Jb Audras and George Mamadashvili.

Special props to Sergey Biryukov for running mission control.

Thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.9.3 happen:

Aki Hamano, Alex Stine, aliakseyenkaihar, Anton Vlasenko, binarymoon, Carlos Bravo, Colin Stewart, David Baumwald, Dion Hulse, George Mamadashvili, glendaviesnz, Greg Ziółkowski, ironprogrammer, Iulia Cazan, Jb Audras, Joe Dolson, Joen A., Jorge Costa, jsnajdr, Marius L. J., Nick Diego, Paul Biron, Peter Smits, pgpagely, Rafi Ahmed, Richard B. Kreckel, Robert Anderson, Rufus87, Sergey Biryukov, Tor-Bjorn Fjellner, Tonya Mork, Abha Thakor, Oliver Juhas, and Weston Ruter.

In parallel to the work the community is doing in preparation for the next major release, WordPress 6.0, March has seen the launch of some exciting new projects and proposals. Read on to find out more about the latest updates and how to get involved.

The Pattern Directory is open for public submissions

The WordPress Pattern Creator is live! This new tool allows anyone with a WordPress.org user account to build, edit and submit their best block patterns to the Pattern Directory.

If you’ve used patterns in WordPress, you’ll know that they make it easy to add unique layouts to your website, such as galleries, call-to-action sections, testimonials, pricing tables, and more. Opening the directory to public submissions enables any WordPress user to enjoy a wider variety of patterns to customize and use on their sites.

WordPress 6.0 Walkthrough scheduled for today, April 5

A few updates to the WordPress 6.0 planning were published last month. In case you missed them, today (April 5) at 15:00 UTC there is a live and interactive WordPress 6.0 walkthrough hosted by contributors of the release squad.

The event will take place via Zoom and include a discussion on the new features, potential blockers, and a Q&A session with the community. Attendance is open to anyone who wants to know more about what’s coming in WordPress 6.0.

Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.8 and 12.9 are here

Versions 12.8 and 12.9 of the Gutenberg plugin were released last month and with them, some new exciting features and updates.

• Gutenberg 12.8 includes a new Webfonts API, iterative UX enhancements, and bug fixes to increase the editor’s stability.
• Gutenberg 12.9 introduces the new block locking UI, support for spacing between Gallery images, and many other improvements that give you more control over what is editable and presented to users.

Team updates: Team Reps for the Photo Directory team, community proposals, and more

• WordPress 5.9.2 is available for download. This security and maintenance release features one bug fix in addition to 3 security fixes.
• The Team Representatives for the Make Photo Directory team for 2022 have been announced. Congrats to Marcus Burnette (@mdburnette), Katie Richards (@katiejrichards), and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe)!
• The Community team considered revisiting the existing guidelines for in-person regional WordCamps. Conclusions and next steps will be shared soon.
• On a similar note, Cate DeRosia (@mysweetcate) is looking for ideas on how the Community team can support organizers who are trying to restart in-person events in their communities. Share yours by April 13, 2022.
• The Training team published new lesson plans, workshops, and social learning spaces on Learn WordPress. Check out what’s new in March 2022.
• How has WordPress helped grow your story? The Make Marketing team wants to hear about your experience!
• The Performance Lab plugin, a set of modules that aim to improve performance in WordPress, was released last month.
• Openverse released new updates in March, including a redesigned content reporting flow and new image detail pages.
• WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted a public statement on the removal of the Zamir plugin a few weeks ago.
• The March 2022 editions of the Meetup Organizer Newsletter and the Polyglots Monthly Newsletter were published.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress features the contributor story of the Argentinian web developer and product manager Juanfra Aldasoro.
• WordPress community members launched the Museum of Block Art (MOBA), a new initiative that seeks to inspire creativity and push the limits around what can be done with WordPress. All of the art curated in this virtual museum is built using the block editor.

Testing requests: WebP feature, template for author pages

• The Performance Team has published a proposal to integrate the WebP image format by default into WordPress core. Your feedback on this feature is appreciated.
• Version 19.6 of WordPress for iOS is available for testing.

The first flagship in-person WordCamp Asia is looking for organizers

• After two years since the WordCamp Asia organizing team announced that the first flagship WordCamp Asia was canceled due to the pandemic, they are back together and looking for more members to join them in planning the event tentatively scheduled for February 2023.
• The Call for Speakers for WordCamp US 2022 is now open. You can submit your application by April 17, 2022.
• Three in-person WordCamps are happening this month:
  • WordCamp Genève, Switzerland on April 9, 2022
  • WordCamp Athens, Greece on April 9-10, 2022
  • WordCamp Vienna, Austria on April 23-24, 2022
• Check out the latest episodes of WordPress Briefing with Josepha Haden:
  • Coming to a WordCamp Near You: A Return to In-Person WP Events
  • Is WordPress Made for Me?

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @rmartinezduque, @mysweetcate, @anjanavasan.

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

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann & Santana Inniss
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod
• Special thanks to: Angela Jin

References

• Event Safety Checklist
• WordCamp Asia Call for Organizers
• Open Discussion: Returning to In-Person Events
• Open Discussion: Returning to Regional Events

Transcript

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:00]  

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.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:40] 

I was checking the list of upcoming events recently as part of just my regular work and saw that the call for organizers for WordCamp Asia is open. On the one hand, it made my heart skip a beat with excitement. That event is six years or so in the making. And on the other hand, it reminded me of February 10th, 2020, the day that Matt told me that we had to proactively cancel WordCamp Asia. That week was truly heartbreaking for me as well as I think the entire organizing team.

But it also, fortunately, was prescient. As I think back over the two years since then, I’m grateful for our community wranglers and deputies who have consistently hosted important discussions about how to return to in-person events safely. And with two of our major flagship events returning this year, I’m here to summarize, sort of, what the rules and guidelines are.

But certainly I hope that you come away from this with an idea of what’s being done to keep everyone safe as we are best able.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:44] 

Firstly, before we dig into specifics, I want to be clear upfront that the guidelines for COVID-aware events are mandatory, unless otherwise stated. For folks who’ve been attending WordPress events, or participating in the community for a long time, this is a change. As a program, we have always done our best to be flexible with guidelines so that we can prioritize local knowledge. But our responsibility is to the long-term success of this community and this program. So moving forward with in-person events that risk the health of our community members poses risks to the program itself. So with that in mind, let’s learn what we’re going to see at events for the rest of the. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:02:28] 

For any WordPress event that is gathering more than 50 people, the new mandatory guidelines are:

Number one, follow local laws and guidelines. If your area has suggested guidelines on top of the mandatory ones, follow those.

Second, is if you are in a location where laws or guidelines require or permit venues to limit admission based on a person’s vaccination status and masking, then events can only happen in venues that are willing to provide staff to check for vaccination status at the door. And then also to remind participants to wear masks during the event.

And the third thing is if your area or venue legally cannot check vaccination status, your area must pass the in-person checklist, which I will link in the show notes below. But that in-person checklist has to be passed at the time of the application and then again at the time of the event. And in addition to that, the venue must be willing to provide staff who will remind participants to wear masks and check for temperature during the event.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:03:33] 

Organizers in these areas must be prepared to move online or cancel if the region fails the safety checklist, which again, will be linked in the show notes below. So those are the three things and they are pretty dense, but also I think allow for a fair amount of flexibility. There is also a tidy flow chart linked in the sidebar of make.wordpress.org/community that will help you to decide what sort of event your own area can support right now. 

So those are the mandatory guidelines for WordPress events in general right now, but you probably also have a few specific questions. So I’ve got the three most common questions ready to go with answers from Angela Jin who helped me to kind of pull together the information for this particular podcast props to Angela. Thank you. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:04:25] 

So, first question, anything specific to know about WordCamp Europe? WordCamp Europe will be following these guidelines as well. All attendees and participants are expected to wear a mask while they are at the event and catering will be offered outside so people can remove their masks to eat. 

The second common question is how will these guidelines change as countries and local governments begin deescalating restrictions and safety measures? We should consider these guidelines to be subject to evolution based on what the team is hearing and seeing from the community. But right now we intend to keep these stricter guidelines in place until we see how the loosened rules play out elsewhere. 

And then a third frequent question is what’s going to happen to all these online events?

The community team will continue to support online events right now. So if your community doesn’t feel ready to have an in-person event, but still wants to kind of get everyone together that is still allowed, and still  encouraged. And finally the community team will continue to keep a close eye on situations around the world.

If it becomes safe to do so, and your community is interested, they of course will be happy to chat with you about a WordCamp. There is an application that I will share the link to in the show notes below as well. In case that is something that your community is wanting to look into. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:05:54]

Oh, and I have a little postscript also. I know I was like finally, and now I’m doing a finally, finally. That’s what postscripts are about. P.S. If you have not stopped by the community team’s site or any of their meetings, they’ve been doing a really great job of keeping things moving through two years of unpredictable changes. If you are a community team member, I want to offer you a huge thanks. Thank you so much for helping us to stay aware and able to move forward. 

If you are an organizer, pat yourself on the back. I want to thank you for pivoting with us, moving through online events, even though they are not at all the same as in-person events and certainly they don’t share the reasons that we get people together sometimes.

And finally, if you are an end to end attendee, if you go to WordPress meetups or you go to any sort of WordPress online events or WordCamps, anything like that, thank your local organizer. They have been doing this probably for a while, and I’m sure that they are looking forward to getting back to in-person events themselves, but even, so they have been putting in a lot of volunteer hours to help make sure that we all know how to use WordPress.

And so find them, thank them, and I’m sure that they’ll appreciate it.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:07:20]

And with that, it is time for our small list of big things. Number one, WordCamp Asia has a call for organizers open! This event will be in 2023. And I think that we all simply cannot wait. So I’ll link the call for organizers in the show notes. And then of course you can follow that whole site to stay up to date on what’s happening there.

The second thing is, while we’re on the topic of events, there’s also an open discussion about how we can best support organizers who are getting back to in-person events. We’d like thoughts from both organizers and attendees. So feel free to drop by and leave a note in the comments section. And while you’re over there, the third thing in my small list of big things, there’s also an open discussion about regional events. So go over there, get all your thoughts about WordPress events together. Get them all sorted out in one go. Just leave comments, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All over the place. 

And that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

And I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:08:54]

So my most embarrassing WordCamp story actually has to do with where I was supposed to be versus where people thought I was supposed to be. This was early on in my time with WordPress, with Automattic. And I had convinced someone, I had convinced a colleague and friend of mine to go to my home WordCamp, WordCamp Fayetteville over there in Arkansas.

And then I didn’t go. But I knew I wasn’t going, I knew I was going to WordCamp Boston, but he did not know that I was not going to go. And so he arrived at WordCamp Fayetteville, WordCamp Northwest Arkansas. I can’t remember what it was called at the time. And immediately was confused about where I was and why I wasn’t there.

And so there was this excellent moment of mass confusion among states where the folks at WordCamp Fayetteville started tweeting about how I had convinced this contributor to go to that event and then didn’t show up. And then the folks at WordCamp Boston, we’re looking at all of those tweets, because if you are a WordCamp organizer, you are always looking at the tweets from all the other WordCamps happening in your weekend.

And people got very confused about why I was in Boston while they were thinking that I was in Fayetteville, even though the tweets were talking about how, like, I wasn’t in Fayetteville. They probably didn’t say that it was probably more along the lines of like, “Hey, let’s share a photo with Josepha” to, like, make fun of the fact that I wasn’t there.

And so I caused mass confusion in multiple states. That’s probably my most embarrassing WordCamp story. You’re welcome. Bye!

WordPress offers something to everyone. For Juan Aldasoro, a developer and product manager for a large distributed company, it provides an opportunity to combine his different interests and skills to live the type of life he wanted. 

“I like visual, creative and technical things. The joy of WordPress is that you can do all of these things, you don’t have to limit yourself to any one aspect . You can also do this from almost anywhere in the world!”

From working in products since 2012, Juan sees WordPress as a major part of his skillset and toolbox. He said: “It gives you an opportunity to be part of building a product which could potentially be used by thousands of people and more on your site. It encourages you to think about different languages and how you can make it accessible. It allows you to work on different platforms. Working in WordPress gives you this broad approach. Working this way on products ended up pushing me into learning about all these different things. Only in open source can you really do this and use your creative side to find solutions.”

Learning about being part of a community

Born in a mid-sized city in Argentina, Juan was raised in a family in which music, arts and sports were always an essential part of everyday life.

“These activities encourage human beings to be creative and participative, and at the same time they are highly formative when it comes to mould people in order to become part of a group, a team, a community.”

The youngest of five siblings, Juan became highly motivated, trying to follow the steps of his siblings. Having a computer at home, he started to make connections that laid the foundation for his career as a developer. His interest in computers grew through that access to a machine running MS-DOS – the one with the black screen command line! Mastering this became a challenge to him and something to share with others. Through doing this, he found a way to more social interaction and new friendships. 

Without being conscious of it, my friends and I were sharing pieces of code.

He said: “I started learning some super easy stuff that made me feel like Houdini at that time. I could save a game play, something intangible, on a floppy disk and carry that piece of plastic and magnetic material back home. I was saving the play or game in a square object and then loading that back at home. I now realize, those were my first interactions with computer commands. Without being conscious of it, my friends and I were sharing pieces of code in a unique way.”

This interest grew further through computer magazines and experimenting as “there was always something new to learn.” Although sport became a big part of Juan’s life in his teens, he kept up his computer learning. Taking a new direction, he found online tutorials enabling him to learn how to play the guitar. This led to setting up a punk rock band with his friends. 

“Education has always been important in my family, and thanks to my parent’s efforts, I attended a school where I learned to express myself in another language.” The school had hired a satellite internet connection in the mid-nineties and had HTML on the computer studies program. These facilities were not that common in Argentina or many other countries either at that time. Also, his parents had the foresight to secure a rare internet connection at the house in 1997.

Juan recalled: “Browsing around the Internet opened a new universe in my mind. This new universe was extremely fantastic but also extremely expensive. I needed to make the most of every second online.”

“It was a whole new world and one thing led to the other. I started learning a bit of everything, editing graphics, scripting and so on. I still remember my first website in the fantastic sunset strip, Geocities.”

Trying to go pro

After high school, Juan moved to the city along with his brother and began to study IT at University. When he was asked by a friend to work at a software company, he decided to try that whilst continuing his studies. Through his job he had the chance to explore web-related opportunities, and with a friend from university, they started managing teams and projects across Latin America and Spain.

Juan describes this experience as one of the most fulfilling in his life. He was able to travel abroad for work, experience remote working, manage teams, present projects and speak formally in front of senior people. As the company grew at a fast pace, they learned how to set up and run a large organization. Eventually, he decided to drop out of his university program and focus on the opportunity of learning first hand.

One of the key early learning from working internationally was that business and web development could be just as fast-moving and successful in Argentina as in other places. “I realized there’s no such thing as a secret sauce for success. Projects are backed by people’s talent and time, and you can find that in any latitude.”

By his mid-20s, Juan decided he wanted to try building something from scratch. He created a social network for photo sharing in Latin America, which was used by more than 30,000 people across Latin America and Spain in its time. Through this, he discovered that other people had a blog and he did not want to be left behind. The discovery of WordPress was to change the focus of his life.

Hello to WordPress

Spending some time traveling around Europe, Juan found himself ‘surrounded by uncertainty’ and worried about what the future could bring. “I had some clues, but under uncertainty, the more you ask the less you answer. I started thinking about embracing the following philosophy: I didn’t want to be part of a large company, I didn’t want to continue studying and I wanted to travel as much as I could.” He did not realize at that time how this vision for his life was to mirror what he would find in WordPress.

He started using WordPress for a few sites in 2005. By 2007 he was using it for almost everything. He was struck by the magnitude and range of what the software could do, from a simple tool used to create a blog in the blink of an eye through to complex projects.

His first problem-solving project was simple and saved data received through a contact form plugin. “To complete this project I discovered the Codex and I learned how easy and intuitive it is to create a plugin. I had fallen in love with WordPress.”

I was truly amazed by how I could learn from others.

As he explored the options with the software, Juan was unsure of how intellectual property worked and wanted to be respectful of other people’s work. “I didn’t understand open source yet, and I wasn’t sure if I was stealing from others. That was my first interaction with GPL and open source. I was truly amazed by how I could learn from others and improve things created by others or by myself.”

He realized: “WordPress was the way to go if I wanted to pursue a dream of traveling, skipping winter, and working at the same time; what we now call a digital nomad. I already knew how to work remotely, I could work for companies located anywhere, as long as they could communicate in English or Spanish.”

Juan started his own web agency, where he provided services to small and medium-sized companies abroad in the USA, UK, and Australia. He built his reputation and developed strong relationships in WordPress. “The experience couldn’t be better. I was learning, having fun, making a living out of it, and at the same time exploring the world.”

In mid-2012, he discovered the full power of the WordPress community firsthand. In his spare time he started developing themes and from all he heard, wanted to attend a major event with lots of others in WordPress, a WordCamp. He took the plunge and booked for WordCamp in Edinburgh, in the UK. He said: “I got to meet many super talented people, and the atmosphere of the event was awesome. A place where competitors were also colleagues. Seeing the humility of somebody like Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress, was amazing.”

He added: “While there, unconsciously, I started dreaming of holding something like that in Argentina – the joy of hosting the WordPress community in my home country.”

Back home, while browsing the Codex, he happened to see that WordPress was turning 10. A lot of meetups were going to be organized worldwide to celebrate the birthday. But there was nothing organized in Argentina. This was a catalyst for starting a local meetup. Together with a colleague, he  organized an Argentinian 10th birthday meetup.

More than 20 people showed up. “There was a common denominator. We all loved WordPress, it was part of our day-to-day life. We wanted to share experiences, make new friends and continue growing from what we could learn from others. That day we were a group of people with shared interests. That’s the simplest way to define a community, isn’t it?” This early meetup led to the formation of what is now called WordPress Argentina.

In his desire to skip winters and do more traveling, his next adventure was to take him to visit family working in the US and attend one of the biggest WordCamps in the world in San Francisco. His interest kept growing and he traveled across Europe to be part of the first edition of WordCamp Europe in the Netherlands in 2013.

He said: “There’s almost nothing I could write to fully express what you experience in such events. They are the main WordPress events worldwide. The best part: I made a lot of good friends from many different places. I’m glad I have more excuses to continue traveling.”

Once again in Argentina, our organization started growing thanks to the energy of the whole group, we started hosting formal meetups. In May 2015, we crowned all these efforts with a new WordCamp in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Organizing such an event in my home country with many of the contributors I had met from the very first meetup was an experience I will always keep with me.”

Juan believes one of his biggest contributions to open source was as part of being able to expand the community in Argentina and to share this with other Latin American and Spanish speaking countries. He also contributes as a volunteer translator in the Polyglots Team, to the Make WordPress Support team, and contributes to code blocks and Gutenberg. “I am really excited about seeing the future of Gutenberg as it is the future of WordPress.”

Throughout his time contributing, Juan believes in helping to set the foundations and encouraging others to give their time and talents. He is keen to share that contributing does not have to be the same all the time and that you can have breaks and focus on one area in a particular period too. He gives the example of how in his spare time he watches Trac, where tickets about the software are logged, and looks where he might be able to help or think of solutions.

He said: “Anytime I find I can contribute to or make improvements in code-related areas, I will do as it is important to keep giving to the community. I enjoy crawling over meta, trac, GitHub and the different places that are requesting help. There is always somewhere you can help. At the moment, my focus is code and translations. I always try to save time to help these two areas. It is like you give and you get, you learn things. You meet amazing people and opportunities arrive.”

Finding your path in WordPress

“Life is about experiences, it is about the people you surround yourself with and trying to do what you love. What you can find in an open source project like WordPress is an environment full of people who work with a tool they love. An environment that is ready to help and to give advice. Follow what makes you happy, try to be surrounded by people who make you better, try to empower others, try to give back. Try. Make your own path.”

Share the stories

Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

Contributors to this feature

Thank you to Juan Aldasoro (@juanfra) for sharing his story. 

Interviews and feature by Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Surendra Thakor (@sthakor). Reviews by Mary Baum (@marybaum), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Meher Bala (@meher), Anjana Vasan (@anjanavasan) and Yvette Sonneveld (@yvettesonneveld).

Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) and others for their support of this initiative.

This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress

The WordPress Pattern Directory includes attractive, handy patterns created by designers that can make your experience building a stunning site much easier. Patterns can save you a significant amount of time and also give you greater freedom when you’re building your site. With patterns, you can make or replicate complex layouts with just a few clicks, and using them is as simple as copy and paste.

Create Your Own Bold, Beautiful Patterns Built Entirely with Blocks

As the name implies, the Pattern Creator allows anyone, from designers to content creators, to make custom patterns: a collection of blocks arranged in any way, for any purpose intended by the creator. Like most things in WordPress, these are available for public use once it’s submitted to the WordPress Pattern Directory. Have a look at these guidelines to learn more about what makes a pattern suitable for listing in the directory.

So what are you waiting for? Check out all the patterns already available or better yet, make your own!

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

Hosts: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Beatriz Fialho
Production: Santana Inniss

References

• WordCamp Europe call for volunteers
• WordPress Photo Directory team
• UNICEF
• Médecins Sans Frontieres 
• International Committee of the Red Cross 
• International Rescue Committee
• UN Refugee Agency 
• World Central Kitchen
• Tech For Ukraine
• #WP4Ukraine

Transcript

Episode 27

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:00] 

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!

Today, we’re talking about who WordPress is built for. I was talking to a group of contributors last week and we encountered some questions around just who WordPress is built for. And it’s a question that you’ll find any time that you’re working on user testing or on triaging tickets, and especially when that comes up when you look at the big picture, roadmap sorts of things. The easiest answer for this question is, of course, everyone because WordPress’ mission is to democratize publishing and that should be available to everyone.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:11]

However, everyone is a really big target and certainly doesn’t help get your mind around the people that you’re wanting to actually build it for, the people that you actually want to be able to use your product, your software on a day-to-day basis. So let’s take a look at the one question that can help us figure out who it’s built for today and how we get it to being something that’s built forever.

Firstly, there’s a basic premise of open source that informs this thought. And that premise is that we are citizens of a community of contributors therefore the decisions are made by the people who show up. In general, I believe that to be true, though, I also believe that some basic qualifications are needed.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:50] 

So with that in mind, the one question that can help us figure out who a software is built for is this: how do your active contributors see themselves? I would bet that most contributors to open source software projects, like WordPress, are developers of some sort, it is sort of written right into the definition of the project. 

If you work on software, then you need developers. And what I love about WordPress, in particular, is that we do work to include contributors who are not developers. Yet it still remains true that there is a fairly high level of technical knowledge required to actively contribute. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:2:25] 

Which kind of brings us to the second half of the original question of how can we make sure that WordPress can be something that’s built for everyone? The answer to this one is easy to say, hard to do, and that is to make sure to include them as co-creators in the development process. 

We’ve talked about co-creators in open source before. It’s this idea that people who use the software every day are likely to know the biggest pain points. So if you want your software to be used by people who don’t know HTML, talk to a bunch of people who don’t know HTML about how it is to use your software. 

If you want your software to be mostly used by enterprise agencies, talk to enterprise agencies, but also ask them what their clients hate, because everyone has more than one stakeholder. And I know that I said this already, but it bears repeating that, obviously, this is all very easy to say and hard to do. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:3:20] 

So what is my best guess for the how-to-do part for WordPress? There are three things. 

The first is testing. This not only helps bring in new contributors and helps train future contributors, which I’ve talked about on the podcast before. But testing also gives us a higher chance of actionable feedback from folks who don’t necessarily spend time directly in the WordPress project. 

Frequently the feedback that we do get that is just kind of undirected and ad hoc is exactly that– it is undirected and ad hoc and is then hard to follow up on and make sure that we understand what was wrong and how we can help fix it. And so testing is important for that. And testing it turns out is important for a bunch of things. When you’re working in open source. 

The next thing is support. So checking in with support teams at hosts, as well as the hardworking support teams in the project. And that can really help us to get early indications of what difficulties exist now. They have routinely seen problems and issues that are raised in support forums, and from their everyday users that they are providing support to. 

That probably could be fixed in WordPress if we had a good understanding of just what was not going right, how many people really needed it to go better, and what our targets were to fix that particular problem. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:4:45] 

And the third thing is communication. I know that I’ve gone on record in many places as saying that most of our problems at the end of the day are communication problems. And I’m going on record about it again here in this podcast, establishing better communication patterns with users is key. 

That can be a multi-year project in itself. And even after that, it’s going to be an ongoing journey. But it is one of the many things that WordCamps and other WordPress events have given to us over the years, an opportunity to really hear from and see the struggles that people who are not building with WordPress every day, or literally building WordPress every day are actually having.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:5:34] 

So now that you’ve heard my small list of way too big things, that brings us to our regular small list of big things. The first thing is that WordCamp Europe is still looking for volunteers. If you’ve never done that before, I think it’s quite fun. You get to meet a lot of people and the team of organizers is super fun, but I’ll leave a link for you in the show notes.

We also have a new code-free way to contribute through the photo directory. That team is just getting started and still is working toward building out its programs. So now’s a good time to drop in and just kind of see what they are up to. And finally, a reminder that we do have contributors who are affected by the war in Ukraine right now. I will reshare the list of humanitarian organizations in case you missed them a couple of weeks ago as well. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:6:21] 

And that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for this WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

This security and maintenance release features 1 bug fix in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.9.2 is a security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 6.0.

You can download WordPress 5.9.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now”.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

The security team would like to thank the following people for responsively reporting vulnerabilities, allowing them to be fixed in this release:

• Melar Dev, for finding a Prototype Pollution Vulnerability in a jQuery dependency
• Ben Bidner of the WordPress security team, for finding a Stored Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability
• Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, for finding a Prototype Pollution Vulnerability in the block editor

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.9.2 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.9.2 release was led by Jb Audras, with the help of Jorge Costa on package updates, Sergey Biryukov on mission control, and David Baumwald on backport commits.

In addition to the release squad members and security researchers mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.9.2 happen:

Alan Jacob Mathew, Alex Concha, André, Anton Vlasenko, David Baumwald, ehtis, Jb Audras, Jorge Costa, Peter Wilson, Sergey Biryukov, Tonya Mork, and ironprogrammer.

Props @davidbaumwald and @sergeybiryukov for peer review.

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

Credits

• Hosts: Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Matt Mullenweg
• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann & Santana Inniss

How You Can Help

UNICEF

Médecins Sans Frontieres 

International Committee of the Red Cross 

International Rescue Committee

UN Refugee Agency 

World Central Kitchen

Tech For Ukraine

#WP4Ukraine

Transcript

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:00

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special edition of the WordPress Briefing. I have Matt here with me today because we want to acknowledge that we are once again at the start of a very difficult time. Neither of us would presume to know what it’s like to be at the heart of such massive disruption in our lives. But who would we be if we didn’t stop and check in with you all, the project that we hold so dear? And with that, I’ll hand it right over to you, Matt.

Matt Mullenweg  00:27

Hello everyone. First, I want to thank Josepha for inviting me to join the WordPress Briefing to share what’s been on my mind in light of recent global events. 

Matt Mullenweg  00:37

I’ve been listening and watching events escalate in Ukraine, often in a state of shock. The scale alone is hard to take in. I mean, in the last 7 days, more than 500,000 people have fled their homes, more refugees are expected every day. The downstream humanitarian crises of the invasion are unimaginable.  

Matt Mullenweg  00:56

And seeing destruction in the world we live in is confusing, disconcerting, and difficult. In my experience, open source and WordPress bring people together; people from other countries and cultures, people that we know as friends and colleagues. Technology connects us, regardless of where we are. Nothing can negate the bad things happening in the world, but when I see how this community of contributors collaborates, regardless of borders, you all remind me of the good in the world every day.

Matt Mullenweg  01:30

I firmly believe that the web can be an equalizer and a force for good in the world. To me, the WordPress project is the epitome of goodness—everyone has a voice, a platform, and a community. You have the power to make your corner of the world, and the web, a sanctuary for those who need it—especially now.

Matt Mullenweg  01:45

If you or someone you know is affected by this war, I encourage you to be present as the ramifications unfold. While we may all feel fatigued and have a sense of languishing from the past two years of the Covid pandemic, the gift of time and support for one another cannot be overstated. I’m confident that every single person in the WordPress community will approach the situation in Ukraine with sensitivity and understanding. 

Matt Mullenweg  02:07

I invite you to join me in standing with those in the world working to end conflict and working toward a world of peace, promise, and opportunity. If you’re looking for a way to help support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, I will offer some suggested NGOs, or Non-Governmental Organizations, that provide assistance to local peacebuilders in the region. 

Matt Mullenweg  02:26

In closing, please know that my thoughts are with everyone in our community. I know that my words here can’t change anything there, but I hope that we all remember that words of support are never unwelcome. And we can never know when a little human kindness can help someone share the invisible heaviness in their heart. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:44

Thanks for that, Matt. My friends, there are links in the show notes to some of the groups that Matt referenced. And that is it for this special edition of the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Be safe, be kind to yourself and others, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

Overall, February has been a busy month for WordPress. To begin with, it was thrilling to see the enthusiasm for the release of WordPress 5.9 Joséphine from January continue last month, and that’s not all. 

We have many exciting updates to share, so keep reading to learn about the latest achievements from the WordPress community.

WordPress 6.0: May 24, 2022 is the proposed release date

• The proposed release schedule for WordPress 6.0, the second major release of 2022, has been published.
• While we’re waiting for 6.0, check out the WordPress 5.9.1 maintenance release which was released on February 22, 2022.

Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.5, 12.6, and 12.7 were released

The Core Team launched three new versions of Gutenberg last month. All come with new features, code quality improvements, and bug fixes.

• Gutenberg 12.7 is available to download. This version improves the Patterns experience, allows you to add border styles to column blocks, and includes other new features.
• Gutenberg 12.6 was launched on February 16, 2022. This release includes a new color panel, updated color controls, a new Post Author Biography block, Read More block, and plenty of other exciting updates!
• Gutenberg 12.5 was released on February 2, 2022. This version allows switching theme styles variations, custom taxonomies filtering, and more.

WordPress News gets a new look

The redesign of WordPress News, which was first announced by Matt Mullenweg, Co-Founder of WordPress, in State of the Word 2021, went live on February 16, 2022.

Team updates: #WP Diversity, a new blog for developers, and more

• The #WPDiversity working group, which is part of the Community Team, hosted an open Zoom meeting with volunteers on February 23, 2022. If you’re interested in contributing, read the recap of the meeting to view available roles. 
• The Core Team shared a proposal to start a blog on developer.wordpress.org to share news and updates relevant to developers. 
• The first Gutenberg Developer Hours session hosted on February 8th by the Core Team was successful. Head over to this page to learn more about the participants’ feedback.
• The Core Team published “Feature Project: Plugin Dependencies,” where they identified the problems with plugin dependencies and suggested potential solutions to improve the plugin experience.
• The WordPress Photo Directory has a new Make team. There is currently an open call for team reps and collaboration is happening at the new #photos channel of the Make WordPress Slack.
• The Polyglots Team shared a proposal for a milestone template for the Polyglots Locale Teams.
• The Community Team published a proposal for refurbishing camera kits.
• The Global Community Sponsors for 2022 have been announced.
• The February 2022 edition of the monthly Meetup Organizer Newsletter has been published.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress highlighting Tonya Mork was published on February 28, 2022. Read Tonya’s story to learn more about how WordPress helped her find herself again after a health crisis. 
• The February 2022 edition of the Polyglots Monthly Newsletter has been published.

Feedback/Testing requests: WordPress iOS 19.3 and Android 19.3

• WordPress for iOS 19.3 beta is available for testing, along with WordPress for Android 19.3

WordCamp Europe 2022 announces steps to ensure a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming event

• WordCamp Europe 2022 announced a plan to ensure more diversity and inclusion in events moving forward.
• The WordPress Foundation published a post on how open source software is good for business.
• In a recent episode of WP Briefing titled “Five Cents on Five for the Future,” Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy talks about future-proofing the WordPress project with the Five for the Future pledge.
• The Training Team is hosting several WordPress Social Learning Meetups in March 2022.
• Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps:
  • WordCamp Genève, Switzerland on April 9, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Athens, Greece between April 9 and 10, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Vienna, Austria from April 23 to 24, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal from June 2 to 4, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Montclair in New Jersey, USA June 25 (in person)
  • WordCamp US in San Diego, California from September 9 to 11, 2022 (in person)

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan @harishanker @rmartinezduque @mysweetcate

WordPress gave Tonya Mork a new lease of energy after a health crisis from which she nearly died. She had spent two decades as an electrical and software engineer in high tech automated manufacturing. But when she discovered the WordPress software, teaching it to others became her new purpose. Through this discovery, she has gone on to help thousands of developers understand and build code in great depth.

As part of her WordPress journey, she has shared her skills in the roles of Release Coordinator and the Core Tech Editor for the most recent major WordPress release, 5.9 Joséphine. 

Life takes an unexpected turn

For the first 22 years of Tonya’s life, she rose through the ranks from enlisted personnel in the US Navy to a highly sought after chief engineer with a multi million-dollar industrial automation engineering firm.  

However, while she was working in engineering, her life was to change dramatically. In 2007, Tonya started to face health challenges that had an impact on all that she had known.

“My career defined me. It was my canvas and my art. When it was gone, I did not recognize myself.

Tonya Mork

One day, she woke up at home ready to visit a client’s facility where her firm was building a robotic system. She said: “As I headed for the door, I fell to my knees, as this wave of pain crushed down on my chest.”

Doctors diagnosed her with a very rare heart disease that caused her blood vessels to spasm, cutting off blood to whatever was downstream of the blockage. 

A few months later, she was diagnosed with a second rare and more serious condition, related to the migraines from which she had been suffering. Combined with her heart condition, this made every migraine attack life-threatening.

For nearly seven years, the unexpected changes to her health left her mostly homebound and constantly monitored. This meant she had to close her engineering firm and say goodbye to staff and clients. 

“My career defined me. It was my canvas and my art. When it was gone, I was lost. I didn’t recognize myself.”

But in her darkest hour, she found her strength. Tonya made a choice to move forward, and make the most of her life.

“When you are at rock bottom, you have to make a decision or else it will consume you. My decision was that I chose to be happy,” said Tonya.

One of Tonya’s first steps was to start writing a blog using WordPress. In this she shared insights on how to find peace and joy in any situation. She wrote about kindness and helping one another. 

The joy of making solutions through WordPress became a way for Tonya to accept her new life and not feel as limited by her health. She wanted purpose, and in WordPress, she found just that.

Tonya felt she could do something worthwhile in the virtual world. 

A ray of hope for Tonya

In 2013, Tonya’s health deteriorated further. She was admitted into intensive care and was diagnosed with a third rare disease, this time related to her autoimmunity. She was not expected to survive this time. 

Following what she describes as a ‘miraculous recovery,’ she became stronger and was able to stop relying on a wheelchair. She used the energy from working on websites to keep going. “WordPress kept my mind alive,” said Tonya.

She had first used WordPress for her engineering firm’s intranet. But when she discovered the software’s full potential and the collaborative opportunities of open source, it opened a new world. 

During the years which followed, she donated her time to build some WordPress websites and plugins. She said: “Through giving my time, I was able to do something other than sit in isolation.” 

Tonya was amazed by the sharing in open source in general and in WordPress in particular. She said: “I was amazed to see people sharing so much information freely with one another. In my former engineering world, information was proprietary. Throughout my career, I had worked to break down those silos and help anyone to understand complex systems. I was drawn to this open community.” 

She also became aware that WordPress developers were hungry to learn more about development. She wanted to be part of the solution with her passion for teaching and the knowledge she had gained in industry.

She said: “Finding WordPress helped me to find myself again. Here in this community, I was able to feel like a person again, not a sick one, but a professional with something to give.”

As her interest in the software grew, Tonya decided to start a non-profit where she turned to WordPress to build the websites. This re-sparked her interest in programming. She said: “I wanted to really know the code and understand what made it tick.”

The realization led Tonya to start the WP Developers’ Club, which in turn spawned Know the Code, to help educate individual developers, and is still used today.

From helping WordPress companies to working on WordPress Core

Tonya went on to work with big and medium size WordPress companies helping their developers and supporting them in raising their firms’ leverage with WordPress.

By late 2020, she knew she wanted to do even more with WordPress.

In February 2021, Tonya joined an international firm in the ecosystem and began working closely on WordPress Core.

At that time, WordPress Core was pulling together a new Triage team. Tonya started volunteering on that team to find collaborative solutions, and help others do so. In 2020 for WordPress 5.6 Simone, she became the release’s Triage lead, and again for WordPress 5.7 Esperanza. 

In 2021, she became a Test Team Rep and helped to expand the team and is an advocate for the value of testing and feedback in the release development process.

A new, successful chapter with WordPress 5.9

Tonya’s passion for the software and getting people involved in its growth continued. For the WordPress 5.9 release in 2021, she took on the role of both the Core Tech Lead and the Release Coordinator. As this was a big release and included the first major implementation of Full Site Editing, it had many moving parts and hundreds of contributors. She was able to share the skills she had learned in communication and project management from her days streamlining and documenting engineering software and processes. 

In the first 24 hours of WordPress 5.9 landing, it had more than 10 million downloads—and 17 formally reported bugs.

Giving back to open source

Now in what Tonya describes as her third chapter. She said: “I’m a very different person from the engineer I used to know. What really matters in this world is when you reach out and make a difference in someone’s life.”

She feels she has found her purpose in this life. “I’m on a mission to give back and make a difference. Teaching is how I will do it. And in WordPress I have found my professional home, and I have all this software knowledge that I just want to share.”

Share the stories

Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

Contributors to this feature

Thank you to Tonya Mork (@hellofromtonya) for sharing her story. 

Interviews and feature by Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Mary Baum (@marybaum). Reviewed by Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk), Meher Bala (@meher), and Anjana Vasan (@anjanavasan). Photo editing Reyez Martínez (@rmartinezduque) and Jean Baptiste Audras (@audrasjb).

Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) and others for their support of this initiative.

This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress

This maintenance release features 82 bug fixes in both Core and the block editor.

WordPress 5.9.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. The next major release will be version 6.0.

You can download WordPress 5.9.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now”.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

For more information, browse the full list of both Trac and GitHub changes in the release candidate post, or check out the version 5.9.1 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.9.1 release was led by Jb Audras and George Mamadashvili.

Special props to @sergeybiryukov for running mission control.

Thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.9.1 happen:

Albert Juhé Lluveras, Alex Lende, alexstine, André, Anton Vlasenko, Ari Stathopoulos, ArteMa, Ben Dwyer, BlogAid, Carolina Nymark, Channing Ritter, Chris Van Patten, Colin Stewart, Daniel Richards, David Biňovec, David Smith, Dion Hulse, Dominik Schilling, Eddy, Ella van Durpe, Erik, Fabian Kägy, Flinim Asso, gadhiyaravi, George Hotelling, George Mamadashvili, glendaviesnz, Greg Ziółkowski, ianatkins, Ian Belanger, ironprogrammer, itsamoreh, Jb Audras, Jeff Ong, Jeremy Herve, Joe Dolson, Joen A., John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jorge Costa, Juliette Reinders Folmer, KafleG, Kapil Paul, Kjell Reigstad, linux4me2, Lukman Nakib, manfcarlo, Marius L. J., mgol, nidhidhandhukiya, Nik Tsekouras, Omar Alshaker, Paolo L. Scala, Pascal Birchler, Paul Bearne, Pavlo, Petar Ratković, Peter Wilson, Petter Walbø Johnsgård, Phil Johnston, Piotrek Boniu, ravipatel, Riad Benguella, Robert Anderson, Rolf Siebers, Sergey Biryukov, stacimc, Stephen Bernhardt, Sven Wagener, Team Staatic, Tim Nolte, Tonya Mork, webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK, WebMan Design | Oliver Juhas, wpcharged, wpsoul, Yunus Ertuğrul, and Rafi Ahmed.

Thanks to @estelaris, @pbiron, @ironprogrammer, @bph, @abhanonstopnewsuk and @threadi for their help to test the release package.

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

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann & Santana Inniss
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

• Five for the Future, on ma.tt circa 2014
• Governing the Commons, Elinor Ostrom
• Five for the Future White Paper
• 6.0 Planning Roundup
• Part I: Full Site Editing Course
• Part II: Full Site Editing Course
• Part III: Full Site Eiditing Course

Transcript

Episode 25

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:00] 

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!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:42] 

I have a non-mailbag mailbag question that I would like to answer for y’all today. Non-mailbag because no one actually emailed me about it and mailbag because Twitter is basically like a giant mailbag. And I do get a lot of DMS about this particular topic. If you want to send something to my actual WP Briefing mailbag, you can send it to wpbriefing@worpress.org. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:06] 

But the question that I frequently get asked in my DMS on Twitter is: what is Five for the Future? It’s not always that tidy the question, but that still is the question we’re answering today. So if you take a casual survey of active contributors to the WordPress project, the high-level answer that you’re likely to get to that question is “a way to remind people to give back to the project.” Or, if you run in more business-y circles, you might hear that it is an initiative that encourages companies to give back 5% of their resources. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:40] 

And both of those answers are true. So a quick mini-history lesson; the original concept of Five for the Future came from Matt Mullenweg in 2014. There’s a lovely blog post on it that I will link in the notes below, but it was essentially a call to any companies experiencing success with WordPress to contribute back to the project and make sure that the project was a success.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:02:07] 

The initial program then included outreach recognition, et cetera, proposed in 2017 by Tracy Levesque and Ian Dunn. Then that was defined and formalized with the help of the WordPress community in 2018. And then, in 2019, we had our first trial run with entire dedicated teams sponsored by companies inside the WordPress ecosystem.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:02:36] 

So that’s the mini-history lesson chronology of this program. The intentions that informed the work of building the program in 2017 have become a bit lost to the ages. So I’m here to share it with you. The basic heart and soul of the Five for the Future program is to make sure that there is a way to refresh the commons of the WordPress community and ecosystem.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:03:00] 

And as a result, ensure that the common resources of WordPress are available long after we have stopped being available to care for them. If you are familiar with the concept of the tragedy of the commons, Five for the Future was created to help avoid that tragedy. There were two original goals for formalizing the program.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:03:22] 

The first one was to acknowledge companies that participated in Five for the Future by sponsoring contributors to work on the WordPress project. And the second was to motivate more companies to sponsor more volunteers. Either by hiring them and paying them to contribute or by assigning their existing employees to contribute to the WordPress project.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:03:46] 

Of course, it’s hard to quantify participation and hard to qualify what should be seen as an impactful contribution, which is why when the program was originally created, it was in partnership with team reps and community members who were active at the time. There are many posts around that discuss the next steps for this program.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:04:07] 

And as I’m looking through them, the next steps revolve around some of the hardest and most important questions that we have to answer as a project and as stewards of open source. Those questions are things like:

•  How do we remain true to these gloriously subversive values of WordPress and open source while also finding a way to thoughtfully secure our organization’s future?
• Does contributing without the expectation of reciprocity hold up when we are looking at how to acknowledge contributors who sustain us?

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:04:40] 

And if you’re familiar with Elinor Ostrom’s award-winning work, Governing the Commons, you may also be wondering how this particular program aligns with her eight principles designed to sustain organizations like ours.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:04:57] 

As an aside to that last question, this particular program does not have all eight principles accounted for, but among WordPress’s many programs, we do account for most of them. Although imperfectly, as is the way with human beings, that’s probably a whole episode unto itself, I did want to quickly answer that particular question.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:05:16] 

So to get back to my non-mailbag, mailbag question, if I had to tell you in the span of an elevator ride what Five for the Future was, this would be my answer. It is a v1 program with a dual goal of boldly declaring the need to refresh the shared resources of WordPress and offering the ways and means for communities and individuals alike to participate in refreshing those resources.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:05:45] 

If you want to learn more about the Five for the Future initiative, you can check out wordpress.org/5. Like literally just the number five. Or, if you want to learn more about the program that has grown from the Five for the Future initiative, you can check out the white paper that’s linked in the notes below.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:06:11] 

And that brings us now to our small list of big things. Number one on my small list, the planning post for WordPress 6.0 is out. I’ve included a link in my massive list of links below. But it includes our best guess at timing, features that we intend to include, and a call for volunteers as well. So if you are looking for ways to give back, that is a clear and immediate option.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:06:38] 

The second thing on the list is if you are a team rep, don’t forget that we have daylight saving time ending and starting depending on your hemisphere within the month. If you move meetings, if you’re in a team that moves your meetings, discuss it now so that folks have time to adjust their calendars. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:06:55] 

And the third thing on my small list of big things is that there’s a suite of Full Site Editing courses that are now available on learn.wordpress.org. I will add that to my giant list of links below, but I encourage you to wander on over and see what all the fuss is about. I think the courses are excellent. They’re great for folks who don’t quite know what Full Site Editing is yet, but then also they give you a few intermediate tips and tricks as you’re getting your legs underneath you.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:07:27] 

So, that my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

In June 2021, @beafialho in collaboration with @pablohoney floated the idea of giving WordPress News a new look. Today, those ideas become a reality—we’re excited to share that redesign of WordPress News is live!

The new design leans on the aesthetics of jazz, intrinsically connected to WordPress and which ultimately translates its uniqueness, historic significance and future potential. Among other improvements, the new design leaves more space for content and includes new typefaces for better readability. It also uses a color palette intended to reflect the evolving Gutenberg language.

The revamp of the WordPress News page includes the header and footer of the page. We also shipped those two global elements to all pages of WordPress.org. However, there’s more work to do within the header to improve the information architecture. This new design is just the first, small step to modernize and improve the site iteratively. Any further discussion on future redesigns will occur in the #design channel on Slack.

Take a look around and subscribe to WordPress News if you haven’t already. If you see something in the design that doesn’t look right, please submit an issue on GitHub.

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

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

• Big Picture Goals 2022
• Preliminary Roadmap for 6.0 (Gutenberg Phase 2)
• A New News Design
• Making WordPress: Unofficial aggregator for all Making WordPress blogs

Transcript

Episode 24

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:00

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!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:07

A couple of weeks ago, I published a post about the big picture goals for the WordPress project in 2022. As I was thinking through our planned releases for the year and looking out toward what would spell success for WordPress over the next three years, three things really lined up in both sets of answers for me.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:23

I provided some detail on how we can work toward these goals in the post, which I will link for you in the show notes, but I also wanted to take some time to explain why I feel we have to work toward these goals this year. So these all build on one another. To refresh your memory of the three big focuses, they are one to drive adoption of the new editor in WordPress, support open source alternatives for site building necessities, and three, open source stewardship. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:52

So the first one; is driving the adoption of the new WordPress editor. Early on in the start of the Gutenberg Project, folks could not go two days without hearing me talk about the phases of adoption and how those line up with the phases of Gutenberg, and who would need our support the most in each of those phases.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:09

I have always believed that what we would be shipping at this point in our project would prove the plausible promise of what we were doing in phase one. That’s definitely what I’m seeing from what was shipped in 5.9, as well as what we plan to ship in May with 6.0. And the people who need the most support right now are absolutely our users, your clients, no matter whether they were not keeping up with WordPress developments or simply were waiting to see what all the fuss was about. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:37

There will be people who look to you as someone who has been here a while to help them make sense of what they’re seeing. And what I find so exciting about this adoption, sort of, work in the WordPress project is that this is the time when we as practitioners of WordPress, no matter whether you are a designer or a developer or builder, business coach. This is the time when we get to guide others through the hardest parts of our learning processes. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:07

The process of helping people to learn new technologies relies not only on your hard-won expertise but also on the belief that the future is worth fighting for. Enabling someone’s success is an investment in the future and investment for that person or for WordPress or your community. All investments are welcome here. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:28

Fortunately, table stakes are just that you care. And speaking of future investments, the second focus is open source alternatives for site building necessities. So things like images, forms, stores, themes, etc. It literally just things you need to build a site. I would like to start by saying that I am completely aware of the fact that 99% of WordPress users will never care about open source freedoms and philosophies in the same way that WordPress maintainers and contributors care about open source freedoms and philosophies. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:04

You could substitute the name of any other open source project right there, and the statement would still be true. And yet, I will always believe that people should have the rights and freedoms that open source brings to them even if they do not know they are there. And so it makes all the sense in the world to me that as a project and open source community, we should strive to make choosing Open Source as easy as possible. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:33

And finally, open source stewardship is one of the focuses for this year. This one is obviously about supporting open source as a concept and maintaining WordPress as a project. But I also think that it is relevant to our current global circumstances. Open Source suddenly became very visible to the public eye last year following the Log4J vulnerability, and ever since then, I’ve been hearing consistent concern over how We make sure that WordPress is sustainable moving into the future. Fortunately, this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. And I have been delighted to see so many community members bringing that conversation to the forefront. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:14

There is a lot that is done in the WordPress project to keep us from the tragedy of the commons. But that work honestly never ends. Not only does it not end, but as we get bigger, there is more and more that we can and should be doing to keep us around for the long term. And, of course, for the keen readers of my posts, there’s a bonus focus. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:39

The bonus focus is, of course, that WordPress turns 20 years old next year. This year, we will also be seeing some preparatory work for that major milestone as well.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:56

So that brings us today to our small list of big things. There is a redesign of the News Page coming. We’ve been talking about this over on make.wordpress.org/design for a bit since like June of last year or something. But it’s coming in the next few weeks. I’ll share a link to the GitHub repo in case anyone has any specific things that they see as they are reading through all of our many news stories that come out on that particular page. I think it’s beautiful, and I’m very excited to take a look at it. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  06:30

The second thing is that planning is underway for WordPress 6.0; that release that we’re doing in May. I’ll add the project page link to the show notes. I’ve had a few raised hands for that release squad. But if you’re interested in participating in the release, I encourage you to keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org/core for updates and any news about how to get involved. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  06:53

And my third thing is actually that, in general, there are a lot of opportunities to contribute right now. There are discussions about projects, goals, and dreams happening all over the place. I’ll link in the show notes below the unofficial project “firehose” where you can see all the headlines and quickly find discussions that might be interesting to you. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  07:18

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

WordPress 5.9 Joséphine is here

Meet WordPress 5.9 Joséphine. Named in honor of the acclaimed jazz singer, Joséphine Baker, this is one of the much-awaited releases. Version 5.9 brings full site editing to WordPress, among other exciting updates! Download WordPress 5.9 and try the new features!

Check out the WordPress 5.9 Field Guide to learn more. Lastly, everyone’s invited to participate in a retrospective of the WordPress 5.9 Joséphine release!

Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.3, 12.4, and 12.5 are here

The Core Team launched three new versions of Gutenberg since last month’s edition of the Month in WordPress.

• Gutenberg 12.5 brings global styles variations and Query Loop block enhancements, along with the Code Editor view to the Side Editor. Moreover, inserting new buttons is now easier than ever!
• Gutenberg 12.4 was released on January 19, 2022. This version includes accessibility improvements, suggestions for assigning categories, keyboard shortcuts for the Site Editor, and more. 
• Gutenberg 12.3 was released on January 5, 2022. This release brings new blocks, like the Author Name, Comments Next Page, and Comments Previous Page blocks, and many other cool updates!

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow the #gutenberg-new tag for details on the latest updates.

Team updates: Proposals, announcements, and more for 2022

• Executive Director Josepha Haden shared a proposal on 2022 major release timing. 
• In the latest episode of WP Briefing, Josepha Haden Comphosy reviews the three major areas of focus for the WordPress project in 2022. She also shared the big-picture goals for 2022.
• The Core Team made a proposal regarding proper attributions for contributions to WordPress on GitHub. Although the proposal has since then been withdrawn, it’s still a discussion and comments are welcome.
• Check out the preliminary roadmap for WordPress 6.0 (Gutenberg Phase Two). 
• Core Team members proposed improvements to the Core Editor chat agenda and format. 
• The Accessibility Team made some major goal proposals for WordPress 6.0.
• The Polyglots Team shared a proposal for a milestone template for polyglots locale teams.
• The January 2022 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out!
• The Community Team shared an open invitation for the Diverse Speaker Training group Zoom call.
• Although the WordPress Photo Directory hasn’t fully launched yet, you can now submit your images. You can also contribute in other ways, as there’s currently a call for volunteers.
• Openverse has now a redesigned user interface and includes support for audio files. Check out this post to learn what’s new.
• The Community Team will be hosting open discussion sessions to collaborate on its goals for 2022. 
• The January 2022 edition of the Meetup Organizer Newsletter was published.
• The Community Team shared a proposal for mandatory safety measures for in-person WordPress events taking place this year.
• The Training Team published its February 2022 Team Sprint.

Take the course on Learn WordPress to learn about the full site editing features in WordPress 5.9!  Also, help spread the word about social learning spaces on Twitter!

Feedback/Testing requests: Share your thoughts on WordPress 5.9 Joséphine

• There’s currently a call for testing WordPress for Android 19.1 and iOS 19.1, along with Android 19.0 and iOS 19.0.

Share your feedback on the release of WordPress 5.9 Joséphine.

WordCamp Europe 2022 wants volunteers, photographers and media partners

• WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama has been postponed until April or May.
• The WordPress Foundation published a post explaining more about the nonprofit’s mission and why it exists.
• Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: 
  • WordCamp Prague, Switzerland on February  26, 2022 (online)
  • WordCamp Genève, Switzerland on April 9, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Athens, Greece between April 9 and 10, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Vienna, Austria from April 23 to 24, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal from June 2 to 4, 2022 (in person)
  • WordCamp US in San Diego, CA USA from September 9-11, 2022 (in person)

WordCamp Europe 2022 opened a new call for volunteers, photographers, and media partners!

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.

The following folks contributed to January 2022’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan @harishanker @rmartinezduque @lmurillom @webcommsat and @nalininonstopnewsuk

Welcome to Joséphine!

Introducing 5.9, “Joséphine”. Named in honor of acclaimed international jazz singer Joséphine Baker, this latest, most versatile WordPress release is here: download it or update it directly from your dashboard.

As a lifelong civil rights campaigner, Joséphine Baker believed that all people could live in harmony together, just as different instruments in a jazz band blend together to make a whole piece. Turn on a playlist from your favorite music service and enjoy her famous renditions of “You are the greatest love”, “Sans Amour”, and “Love is a Dreamer” as you discover all the features of this brand-new WordPress release. 

Full site editing is here.

It puts you in control of your whole site, right in the WordPress Admin.

Say hello to Twenty Twenty-Two.

And say hello to the first default block theme in the history of WordPress. This is more than just a new default theme. It’s a brand-new way to work with WordPress themes.

Block themes put a wide array of visual choices directly in your hands, from color schemes and font combinations to page templates and image filters, all from the Site Editor. So in one place, you can give Twenty Twenty-Two the same look and feel as your organization’s other materials—or take your site’s look in another direction.

You already have the Twenty Twenty-Two theme—it came installed with WordPress 5.9. You will find it with your other installed themes.

Your personal paintbox awaits

Twenty Twenty-Two is not the only theme built for full site editing. More block themes are in the Themes directory, and the number will grow. 

When you use any of those new themes, you no longer need the Customizer. Instead, you have all the power of the Styles interface inside the Site Editor. Just as in Twenty Twenty-Two, you build your site’s look and feel there, with the tools you need for the job in a fluid interface that practically comes alive in your hands.

The Navigation block

Blocks come to site navigation, the heart of user experience.

The new Navigation block gives you the power to choose: an always-on responsive menu or one that adapts to your user’s screen size. And your choices are remembered! In 5.9, the block saves menus as custom post types, which get saved to the database.

More improvements and updates

Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow help you say more, faster.

Better block controls

WordPress 5.9 features new typography tools, flexible layout controls, and finer control of details like spacing, borders, and more—to help you get not just the look, but the polish that says you care about details.

The power of patterns

The WordPress Pattern Directory is the home of a wide range of block patterns built to save you time and add to your site’s functionality. And you can edit them as you see fit. Need something different in the header or footer for your theme? Swap it out with a new one in a few clicks.

With a nearly full-screen view that draws you in to see fine details, the Pattern Explorer makes it easy to compare patterns and choose the one your users need.

A revamped List View

In 5.9, the List View lets you drag and drop your content exactly where you want it. Managing complex documents is easier, too: simple controls let you expand and collapse sections as you build your site—and add HTML anchors to your blocks to help users get around the page.

A better Gallery block

Treat every image in a Gallery Block the same way you would treat it in the Image Block.

Style every image in your gallery differently, or make them all the same, except for one or two. Or change the layout with drag-and-drop.

WordPress 5.9 for developers

Theme.json for child themes

In 5.9, theme.json supports child themes. That means your users can build a child theme right in the WordPress Admin, without writing a single line of code. 

This dev note has all the details. Take a look!

Block-level locking

Now you can lock any block (or a few of them) in a pattern, just by adding a lock attribute to its settings in block.json—leaving the rest of the pattern free for users to adapt to their content. 

Multiple stylesheets in a block

Now you can register more than one stylesheet per block, which lets a given block load only the styles its markup requests, and not a whole sheet. Read the details in this dev note.

A refactored Gallery Block

The changes to the Gallery Block listed above are the result of near-complete refactor. Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure you read this dev note. It tells you what you need to do for compatibility.

Learn more about the new features in 5.9

Want to dive into 5.9 but don’t know where to start? Check out this free course about Simple Site Design from Learn WordPress. There are a variety of learning materials including short how-to video tutorials and resources on new features in WordPress 5.9, with much more planned.

Check the Field Guide for more!

Check out the latest version of the WordPress Field Guide. It has lots of useful information with links to detailed developer notes to support you building in WordPress for everyone you serve. WordPress 5.9 Field Guide.

The Squad

The WordPress 5.9 release was led by Matt Mullenweg, and supported by this highly enthusiastic release squad:

• Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
• Core Tech and Release Coordinator: Tonya Mork
• Triage Leads: Jb Audras and Ahmed Chaion
• Editor Tech: Robert Anderson and George Mamadashvili
• Theme Leads: Kjell Reigstad and Jeff Ong
• Technical Writer: Jonathan Bossenger
• Documentation Leads: Marcus Kazmierczak and Milana Cap
• Marketing & Communications Leads: Mary Baum, Abha Thakor, and Josepha Haden Chomphosy
• Test Leads: Piotrek Boniu and Anne McCarthy

WordPress 5.9 also reflects the hard work of 624 generous volunteer contributors. Collaboration occurred on 370 tickets on Trac and more than 1900 pull requests on GitHub.

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By release day, 71 locales had translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 5.9 in their language. Community translators are hard at work ensuring more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps to make WordPress available in 205 languages.

Many thanks to all of the community volunteers who contribute in the support forums. They help to answer questions from people across the world. The success of releases, from the first one in 2003, owes much to the efforts of the support contributors. 

If contributing to WordPress appeals to you, it’s easy to learn more and get involved. Discover the different teams that come together to Make WordPress website and find out the latest plans on the core development blog.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far toward testing and filing bugs to help make WordPress 5.9 a great release. WordPress 5.9 is slated to land in just one week—on January 25, 2022. You still have time to help! Since RC2 arrived last week, testers have found and fixed two bugs, 14 fixes from Gutenberg. There has been one additional Gutenberg fix today.

Testing the release

You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate 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: Download the beta version here (zip).

Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3, 4, RC1, or RC2 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC3

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC3 --force

Your help to test the third Release Candidate is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users, developers, and the WordPress community.

Thank you to all contributors who tested the RC2 release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and is a great way to contribute to WordPress.

How to help

Help test WordPress 5.9 features – this post provides a guide to set up your testing environment, a list of testable features, and information about how to submit feedback you find as you go.

Skilled in languages other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! Thanks to every locale that is working on translations.

Developers and those interested in more background to the features can find more in the Field Guide. You can also follow the 5.9 development cycle and timeline.

If you have found a bug, you can post the details 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, where you can also check the issue against a list of known bugs.

For their help in compiling this post, props to @cbringmann, @webcommsat, @psykro,@marybaum, @chanthaboune, @davidbaumwald, and @hellofromtonya.

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

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Transcript

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:10

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!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:40

Yesterday marked three years since the WordPress project welcomed me as their executive director. As I start my fourth year, I’ve spent a bit of time considering what the next five years will bring us. WordPress will turn 19 this year, which means that we will soon be a whopping 20 years old; for some of the people who have been with the project since the beginning, that can represent two-thirds of their whole life. And even if you were not that young when you got here, two decades as an open source project is really a cause for celebration. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:10

I am not in that group that has been here forever. I showed up for the first time in 2009, as a community organizer, self-sponsored, and I learned so much about myself as a person and as a leader while I was doing that. So when I arrived as a sponsored contributor in 2015, I already knew exactly what made this work so fulfilling for me was these three things: 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:34

First, the ability to lend a hand in those moments where I wish someone had lent a hand. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:40

Second is the delight of seeing people’s first successes and the joy of watching them grow over time. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:48

And the third was a chance to be part of something great, which turned out to be something greater; greater than me or you or a CMS. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  01:58

This list is still at the heart of what I feel I get out of the WordPress project. But it has also grown substantially in my seven years as a sponsored contributor. I now also love how we as a community of contributors get to foster a better way to lead and a better way to collaborate. And through those things help people find a way to have a better life. Not just through WordPress, the CMS, but through WordPress, the people, and WordPress, the project. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:25

And so when I think of what I want for WordPress in its 19th year, so that we can head with confidence and dignity into our 20th year, it is this: 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  02:35

I want you to remember that you are not alone here. People come together in the world often because of a shared location. But WordPress fosters this beautiful experience of bringing us together because of what we care about. Whether you care about PHP standards, diversity in technology, helping people with their first big wins, making WordPress more secure. I mean, if what you care about is being able to write the most arcane and complex apps on top of WordPress that the world has ever seen. Then there are others out there who want to do that with you, too. We have so many things to connect about. And fortunately, we support a great piece of software for getting our thoughts out in the world. Take some time to see who else shares your thoughts and potentially learn a bit about the view from the other side. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:26

And speaking of the other side, I also want us to approach our discussions as the US versus the Problem TM. WordPress may be 20 years old, and we may stand on the shoulders of giants, but right now, the people who are here you, you are explorers and creators and guides toward the best possible future for WordPress. The tension that we witness between teams is always about the best possible answers for the people who use our software. It is about securing the freedoms of the open web for everyone who comes after us whether they know they need those freedoms or not. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:04

And finally, I want us to expand our reasons for doing this at all. If you are a member of the community of contributors, We frequently talk about how we give back because WordPress gave to us. Or if you are part of a Five for the Future group. You have heard that companies who have experienced success because of WordPress should commit 5% of their resources back to the project to ensure WordPress’ long-term success. But the reason that I keep doing this, and hopefully a new reason for you to keep doing this is that we can take part in securing opportunities for future users of WordPress. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:42

Yes, I want WordPress to be the best CMS. Yes, I want this community to be vibrant and engaged. Yes, I want WordPress to be a shining beacon of how to work remotely. And I want all of that because I know it is our careful and tireless stewardship of this project that lets us continue to lend a hand in those moments where people wish for someone to lend a hand. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:11

Those are my hopes for WordPress in 2022 to move us forward into WordPress of the future. I hope you all will come with me and we can continue our journey together. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:23

Thanks again for listening. I’m Josepha Haden and this is the WP Briefing. See you again in a couple of weeks.

“Release Candidate” means the new version of the software is ready for release. It helps the community check that nothing is missed, given the thousands of plugins and themes and differences in how millions of people use the software.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far towards testing and filing bugs to help make WordPress 5.9 a great release. WordPress 5.9 is slated for release in just two weeks on January 25, 2022. There’s still time to help! Since RC1 was released, six bugs have been found and fixed. There were 13 bug fixes backported from Gutenberg.

Testing the release

You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate 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: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3, 4, or RC1, on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC2

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC2 --force

Your help to test the second Release Candidate is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the RC1 release and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is not just a critical part of polishing every release, it is also a great way to contribute to WordPress.

How to Help

Help test WordPress 5.9 features – a guide to how you can take part.

Can you write in another language other than English? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! Release Candidate 1 marked the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule. Thanks to every locale that is already involved with translations.

Developers and those interested in more of the background to the features can find more in the Field Notes. More developer notes will be added as the release progresses to its final stage. You can also follow the 5.9 development cycle and timeline.

If you think you have found a bug, you can post the details 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, where you can also check the issue against a list of known bugs.

Props to: @psykro and @webcommsat, and @hellofromtonya, @audrasjb, @cbringmann and @marybaum for final review.

WordPress 5.8.3 is a short-cycle security release. The next major release will be version 5.9, which is already in the Release Candidate stage.

You can update to WordPress 5.8.3 by downloading from WordPress.org or visiting your Dashboard → Updates and clicking Update Now.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

Security Updates

Four security issues affect WordPress versions between 3.7 and 5.8. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.8, all WordPress versions since 3.7 have also been updated to fix the following security issue (except where noted otherwise):

• Props to Karim El Ouerghemmi and Simon Scannell of SonarSource for disclosing an issue with stored XSS through post slugs.
• Props to Simon Scannell of SonarSource for reporting an issue with Object injection in some multisite installations.
• Props to ngocnb and khuyenn from GiaoHangTietKiem JSC for working with Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative on reporting a SQL injection vulnerability in WP_Query.
• Props to Ben Bidner from the WordPress security team for reporting a SQL injection vulnerability in WP_Meta_Query (only relevant to versions 4.1-5.8).

Thank you to all of the reporters above for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked. Thank you to the members of the WordPress security team for implementing these fixes in WordPress.

For more information, check out the 5.8.3 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.8.3 release was led by @desrosj and @circlecube.

In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.3 happen:

Alex Concha, Dion Hulse, Dominik Schilling, ehtis, Evan Mullins, Jake Spurlock, Jb Audras, Jonathan Desrosiers, Ian Dunn, Peter Wilson, Sergey Biryukov, vortfu, and zieladam.

(…) I know that we have gotten so much done together in the last few years. And I am equally sure that we’re going to get so much done in the years to come. And so thank you all so much for your continued work with WordPress and the way that you just bring your best at all times.

Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project

We said goodbye to 2021 with the annual State of the Word, along with the release of WordPress 5.9 Beta 4, among many other exciting updates. Read on to learn more about the latest community achievements.

WordPress 5.9: The first release candidate just landed

• Following the Beta 3 and Beta 4 releases in December, the first release candidate for WordPress 5.9 is now out and available for testing.
• With less than three weeks to go until the final release, this version continues the work from last year and marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule.
• Follow the 5.9 developer notes to learn more about the changes and updates coming with this release.

Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.1 and 12.2 are here

The Core Team launched two new versions of Gutenberg last month. Both come with new features, code quality improvements, and bug fixes.

• Gutenberg 12.1 marks the return of the template List View and includes several Navigation block enhancements, new global styles features, an improved developer experience for block themes, and more.
• The Gutenberg 12.2 release focuses on user experience improvements and brings the block styles preview to the Widgets Editor, among other new features.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow the #gutenberg-new tag for details on the latest updates.

Highlights from State of the Word 2021

• State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, was livestreamed from New York City on December 14, 2021. The event gathered WordPress enthusiasts at 29 watch parties around the world.
• Matt shared his thoughts on the progress of the WordPress project and made announcements regarding its future in 2022. The presentation was followed by a Question and Answer session.

If you missed the event’s livestream, you could watch the State of the Word recording and the Q&A session on WordPress.tv.

Team updates: 2022 major release timings, new team rep announcements, and more

• The Core Team opened a discussion on the release dates for 2022 and the possibility of having four major WordPress releases this year.
• The following teams announced their team representatives for 2022: Themes, Support, Polyglots, and Community.
• In 2021, 2572 people contributed to WordPress source code using Trac, including 305 first-timers. Check out A Year in Core – 2021 for more interesting stats on WordPress Core contributions.
• The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) shared its accomplishments from last year in this 2021 year-end report.
• The Training Team planned a sprint to audit and revisit the Learn WordPress content for the WordPress 5.9 release.
• The Design Team summarized some of the key changes behind the Openverse redesign.
• The December 2021 editions of the Polyglots Monthly Newsletter and the Meetup Organizer Newsletter are out.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress features Collins Agbonghama from Nigeria.
• The Core Team announced a proposal to change the JavaScript coding standards for complete Prettier compatibility.

Are you looking for some 5.9 resources to share with your local community? Check out the WordPress 5.9 Talking Points for Meetup Organizers post.

Feedback/Testing requests: Contribute by testing or translating WordPress 5.9

• Your feedback on WordPress 5.9 release candidates is still needed and appreciated! If you haven’t tried this version yet, you can find instructions on testing 5.9 features in this post.
• Do you speak a language other than English? The Polyglots Team announced that WordPress 5.9 is also ready to be translated.
• Version 18.9 of WordPress for Android is available for testing.

Share your feedback on WordPress 5.9.

Apply to speak or host a workshop at WordCamp Europe 2022

• WordCamp US 2022 is currently looking for organizers.
• The WordPress community celebrated its first in-person WordCamp after 21 months in Sevilla (Spain) on December 11-12, 2021. WordCamp Taiwan was held online the same weekend.
• The Test Team organized the Hallway Hangout titled Let’s talk about WordPress 6.0 on December 21, 2021. The team also shared a wrap-up of the Site Editing Safari as part of the FSE Outreach Program.
• The Training Team hosted several WordPress Social Learning Meetups last month, and there will be many more in January 2022.
• Last year the WordPress Foundation made significant progress in its mission to educate the public about open source software. Learn more about it in this 2021 recap.

Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama 2022, WordCamp Genève 2022, WordCamp Vienna 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022.

The Call For Sponsors and Call For Speakers for WordCamp Europe 2022 are open! Read this post to learn more about the Organizing Team’s plans for the first in-person WordCamp Europe in three years.

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.

The following folks contributed to December 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker @lmurillom @meher @nalininonstopnewsuk @webcommsat

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to reach this important milestone in the community’s progress towards a WordPress 5.9 release.

“Release Candidate” means the new version of the software is ready for release. It helps the community check that nothing is missed, given the thousands of plugins and themes and differences in how millions of people use the software.

WordPress 5.9 is slated for release on January 25, 2022. This is just three weeks to go  – and there’s still time to help!

Testing the release

You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate 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: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3 or 4 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC1

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC1 --force

Your help to test the RC1 is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is not just a critical part of polishing every release; it is also a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Help test WordPress 5.9 features – a guide to how you can take part.

What is in WordPress 5.9 release candidate?

This will be the first release of 2022 and continues the work towards 5.9 from last year. It features the latest advances of the block editor and is the first version of full site editing in Core.

WordPress 5.9 also brings more refinements to the developer experience. To keep up with the latest updates and discover more about how the community works to continually improve the software, please subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog. In particular, the developer notes tag will keep you up to date on changes that might affect your products or how you use the software.

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.9 and update the Tested up to version  to 5.9 in your readme file. If you find compatibility problems, please post to the support forums, so volunteers and developers can help you figure them out before the final release.

The WordPress 5.9 Field Guide will be out very shortly. It will give you a deeper dive into the major changes.

How to Help

Do you speak a language that is not English? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! Release Candidate 1 marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule. Thanks to every locale that is already involved with translations.

If you think you have found a bug, you can post 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, where you can also check the issue against a list of known bugs.

Props to @webcommsat for the post and to @marybaum @hellofromtonya @audrasjb @davidbaumwald @estelaris @cbringmann for final review.

Creating a life in the WordPress Ecosystem

Collins Agbonghama started his journey to becoming a web developer by reading the football news headlines on a friend’s mobile phone. His fascination with development and learning continued to grow, and he now makes a living using WordPress and the web.

Read on to discover his story, which shows with creativity and determination you can create products and make a living using WordPress. 

Starting web building on a phone

Collins began his exploration of the internet while attending Secondary School in Nigeria, or High School as it is known in some other countries. 

A friend at the school had a simple mobile phone which could browse the internet. Collins had his first introduction to the World Wide Web through access to this device. He became hooked by reading headlines on a sports site about a famous English Premier League Football Club, Chelsea, a soccer team which he has long supported.

“Being a very inquisitive person, I wanted to learn how the web works as well as have my own website. I was able to buy a classic mobile phone through the menial jobs I did after school,” he said. 

His first website was a wapsite or Wireless Application Protocol site optimized for mobile devices. 

He took to Google to learn how to actually build a site. He discovered he needed something called an ‘email address’ to sign-up for site builders. Google Search came to the rescue again, and he created the first email account for his first website.

A desire for a website was the catalyst for further learning, starting with HTML and CSS from an online provider. His interest in building sites with more advanced tools grew, and then he came across WordPress. 

Using his savings, he bought the cheapest hosting plan from a local Nigerian web host. He installed WordPress and started writing tutorials for a mobile device platform. He built the site, created the lessons, and started his entry into WordPress all on a mobile phone. 

This led to him having the confidence to start building sites for others, and he was able to earn a small income from that. 

Collins said: “I couldn’t go to the university because of my precarious financial situation. I continued to do menial jobs during the day and started learning PHP in the evenings and at night using my mobile phone via online learning platforms.”

He was later able to get an old laptop, which helped him access ebooks to learn more and practice his coding. 

Keen to share this learning, he started blogging about what he was learning on his website.  

Collins said: “I later took up a job teaching children at a school primarily because I got tired of the menial jobs and wanted to earn enough to take care of my internet data plan. After a while, I became fairly proficient in PHP and even took up a job to build a school management system.”

Using WordPress to make a living

Collins’ blog wasn’t making money through advertisements, but he discovered opportunities to write tutorials for other platforms. 

“I started writing PHP and WordPress development tutorials and got paid a few hundred dollars per article. In Nigeria, that’s quite a lot of money. I was able to improve the life and wellbeing of my family and myself,” he said.

After getting into a higher education program to study computer science, his life dramatically changed. He decided to stop writing and began to focus on building and selling WordPress plugins. His first one was a user and profile plugin for WordPress sites.

“Thankfully, after a year, it started making enough revenue for me to live pretty comfortably here in Nigeria because the cost of living here is relatively low,” he said

Today, Collins has several plugins which have given him a sustainable source of income. He’s also a Core and Translation volunteer contributor to the WordPress.org Open Source project.

“I am also thankful for the community. I have made lots of friends that have been very supportive and helpful in my journey.”

He added: “I tell people, life won’t give you what you want. You demand from life what you want. You make these demands by being determined and never giving up on your dreams and aspirations.

“If you are poor, perhaps because you came from a humble and poor background, it is not your fault. You can’t go back in time to change things. I implore you to be strong, determined, and work hard.”

Meet more WordPress community members in our People of WordPress series.

Contributors

Thanks to Michael Geheren (@geheren), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), for writing this feature, to MeherBala (@meher) for follow-ups and photo-editing, and to Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk) for the final proofing. Thank you to Collins Agbonghama (@collizo4sky) for sharing his Contributor Story.

Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune), Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) and others for their support of this initiative.

This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress

This software version is still under development. Please do not run this software on a production site; install it on a test site, where you can try out the newest features and get a feel for how they will work on your site.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 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: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, or 3 to Beta 4 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta4

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta4 --force

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which is only five weeks away. Your help testing this beta is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Some Highlights

Since Beta 3, 20 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 4:

• Bundled Theme: Fixed duplicate CSS rules in Twenty Twenty-One theme (#53605).
• Customizer: It’s possible to switch to a block theme from within Customizer (#54549).
• Themes: Provide guidance to users seeking to preview block themes on WordPress versions below 5.9 (#54575).
• REST API: The get_theme_item method should respect fields param (#54595).
• Editor: Block Patterns: “Featured” category & patterns missing from inserter (#54623).
• Login and registration: Add a filter to allow to disable the Login screen language dropdown – (#54675).

How You Can Help

Do some testing!

Testing for bugs is vital for polishing the release in the beta stage and a great way to contribute. 

Please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums if you find a bug. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Got questions? Here are some answers

In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that will cover these items in detail.

So far, contributors have fixed 326 tickets and 108 new features and enhancements in WordPress 5.9. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to @cbringmann, @psykro, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @audrasjb, @costdev and @meher for contributions to this post.

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

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

Have yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Transcript

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:10

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!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  00:39

So, ages and ages ago, when I first started this podcast, someone basically requested that Matt and I do a duet for the last podcast of the year. A Christmas carol duet; him on the saxophone and me on voice. I obviously did not get that coordinated I don’t even know why I said obviously. I’ll tell you right now I did not get that coordinated. I was a very busy lady this year. So I don’t have a Matt on saxophone. Still, I did think that maybe it might be nice just for me to sing a teensy little Christmas carol for you all just because it seems especially poignant the words this year, especially after the 2020, 2021 COVID, all the things and trying to get back in person. So I’m going to sing you all one little verse from Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:35 Singing  

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles

Will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Make the Yuletide gay

From now on our troubles

Will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us, once more

Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us, once more

Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  03:34

Alright, my friends, that was from my heart to yours if you happened to listen. If you skipped a few seconds to get through it, which I would totally understand, that is also fine. But I did want to just kind of wrap up the year to let you all know that I am so incredibly grateful for all of the people who show up for the WordPress project to make it a success. I have made so many friends and wonderful acquaintances throughout my time here with the WordPress project. And especially in my three years as the project’s Executive Director. You all have put a lot of trust in me and a lot of faith. And I know that we have gotten so much done together in the last few years. And I am equally sure that we’re going to get so much done in the years to come. And so thank you all so much for your continued work with WordPress and the way that you just bring your best at all times. 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  04:32

One other little thanks I want to give. Over the course of this year, I’ve had an excellent team that works with me on this podcast. I have editing and design folks and people who’ve joined me here and there, folks who helped me with my production. So big thank you to Dustin, Bea, I realize your name is Beatriz in the actual credits, but I call you Bea, and so thank you. Also, a huge thank you to Chloé, who does all of our production and wrangling every couple of weeks. A big round of applause and kudos to that tiny but tough team that helps me get this all done.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy  05:10

That’s to go on top of the general thanks to the WordPress project. And if you all are celebrators, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. If you are not celebrators, I hope that you have a wonderful end to your year and that everything you wanted to get done, you did get done, and that you can start 2022 with a fresh slate. Again, this is the WP Briefing. Thank you so much for listening. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in 2022.

State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, happened on December 14. The hybrid event took place in New York City with a small audience (proof of vaccination required). As Matt said, “we had people join by plane, train, and automobile.” Those who didn’t make the trek to the live event watched the livestream from wherever they call home, all around the world. 

It was an exciting moment for the WordPress community which also celebrated its first in-person WordCamp in Sevilla, Spain, after a lengthy hiatus for in-person events.

You can view the full recording, complete with captions and transcripts on WordPress.tv.

It was thrilling to see so many meetup organizers host watch parties worldwide. Twenty-eight watch parties were held across eleven countries, with more than 300 RSVPs.  

Similar to past State of the Word events, Matt covered a broad range of topics. This year was no different. WordPress’ past, present, and future were in the spotlight, with highlights on the growth of the contributors, language translations, recent release milestones, and educational initiatives, to name a few.

Audience members and livestreamers alike viewed product demos showcasing upcoming features that will be the hallmark of WordPress 5.9, such as full site editing, block patterns, global styling options, and enhanced image controls.

Matt took the opportunity to remind everyone of the WordPress roadmap which includes native multi-lingual support and real-time collaborative site editing. He also pointed out that anyone can contribute to WordPress’ progress through a number of different initiatives ranging from creating new features and testing to helping spread the word and educate others.

Matt emphasized the way that open source software gets better by reminding everyone that “The more people that use a program like WordPress, the better it gets.”

Broader topics covering the tech landscape including web3, merger and acquisition activity, as well as the growth and support of open source software, rounded out the energetic presentation. 

The one-hour multimedia presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Matt fielded questions that were submitted ahead of the event, as well as questions from the livestream and studio audience.

Discover everything that was covered by watching the official event recording and join the ongoing #ILoveWP conversation on Twitter!

Special thanks to @dansoschin for review and edits!

This software version is still under development. Please do not run this software on a production site; install it on a test site, where you can try out the newest features and get a feel for how they will work on your site.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 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.

Option 3: If you use WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1 or Beta 2 to Beta 3 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta2

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta3 --force

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which gets closer every minute. Your help testing this beta is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Some Highlights

Since Beta 2, 14 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 3:

• Editor: Add FSE infrastructure from Gutenberg plugin into Core (#54335).
• Formatting: Allow PDFs to embedded as objects (#54261)
• Language switcher on the login screen (#43700)
• REST API: Add navigation areas REST API endpoint from Gutenberg plugin (#54393)
• Themes: Live Preview button bug (#54578)

How You Can Help

Do some testing!

Testing for bugs is vital for polishing the release in the beta stage and a great way to contribute. 

If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

For even more ways to test, you can also refer to this official Full Site Editing post from @annezazu.

Got questions? Here are some answers

In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that cover these items in detail. So far, contributors have fixed 316 tickets in WordPress 5.9, including 100 new features and enhancements. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to @psykro, @estelaris, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @cbringmann, @costdev, and @audrasjb for contributions to this post.

Filed under #release, #5.9, #beta

This software version is still under development. Please do not run this software on a production site. Instead, install it on a test site, where you can try out the newest features to get a feel for how they will work on your site.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 2 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: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta1 

Command Two:

 wp core update --version=5.9-beta2 --force 

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which is just seven weeks away. Your help testing this version is a vital part of making this release as good as it can be.

Some Highlights

Since Beta 1, 24 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 2:

• Block Editor: Remove navigation areas (#54506)
• Block Editor: Navigation block view JavaScript error (#54456)
• Block Editor: Block template theme error related to child themes (#54515)
• General: Fixing existing links to Customizer when the Site Editor is enabled (#54460)
• Media: Media library showing only the selected image (#53765)
• Media: Fatal error uploading media on PHP8 (#54385)
• REST API: Add Global Styles REST API endpoints from Gutenberg into Core (#54336)

Also, note that some users testing 5.9 Beta 1 faced some fatal errors upon upgrade. In turn, these errors revealed the need for some extra work on the filesystem and upgrader. Those fatal errors are no longer a problem, and the enhancements will be part of version 6.0.

How You Can Help

Do some testing!

Testing for bugs is vital for polishing the release in the beta stage and a great way to contribute. 

If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

Where can I get more information?

In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that cover these items in detail.

So far, contributors have fixed 305 tickets in WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to @psykro, @estelaris, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @cbringmann, @davidb, @audrasjb, and @pbiron for contributions to this post.

Now, the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has thousands of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day.

Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project

As always, contributors across various teams are working hard to ensure the upcoming release of WordPress 5.9 doesn’t disappoint. With State of the Word 2021 coming up soon, there are many exciting things in the works. Read the November 2021 edition of the Month in WordPress to learn more about what’s happening.

WordPress 5.9: Expected to release on January 25, 2022

• The Core Team announced the WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule, and the release is now planned for January 25, 2022.
• WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 was recently released and is available for testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Check out the release post to learn more about what’s new in version 5.9 and how you can help testing. 
• Check out “A Look at WordPress 5.9” for a first peek into the exciting features included in this major release.
• WordPress 5.8.2, a security and maintenance release, was out on November 10, 2021. This release includes two bug fixes and one security fix.

Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out

Two new Gutenberg versions have been released!

• Version 11.9.0 brings new Gutenberg blocks for working with post comments, a fullscreen pattern explorer modal, further iterations on the Navigation block, and many other improvements.
• Gutenberg 12.0.0, released on November 24, improves the Block Styles preview and includes featured image block visual enhancements, a site Editor welcome guide, official JSON schema updates, and much more.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow #gutenberg-new for details on the latest updates.

State of the Word 2021: Join a watch party in your local community

• State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 14, 2021 between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 pm – 12 am (December 15) UTC. The event will be livestreamed from New York City, and include a Question and Answer session. 
• Host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Check Meetup to see if a watch party is scheduled to be held in your local community!

Add the event to your calendar so you don’t miss State of the Word 2021! Want to ask Matt a question during State of the Word? Please send your questions ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask them live during the event via YouTube chat.

Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway

• Requests 2.0.0 has been released. This release is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1, indicating that a legacy codebase can be modernized, made more stable and secure without breaking backward-compatibility. The Requests project is a dependency of WordPress core, which was adopted into the WordPress organization earlier this year. 
• The 2020 WordPress Annual Survey results are available to be viewed. 
• The Core Team added six new committers.
• Last month, the Marketing Team opened its call for team representatives, joining Core, Themes, Accessibility, Support, and Hosting from October 2021.
• The Core Team announced its new Team Rep for 2022 (and beyond).
• The Design Team and the Accessibility Team’s meetings will be held bi-weekly moving forward.
• The Marketing Team published the latest edition of People of WordPress, featuring Devin Maeztri from Indonesia.
• There’s an open call for suggestions for Global Community Team, Training Team, and Polyglots goals for 2022. Please drop your ideas by December 6, 2021.
• The Accessibility Team has opened 1-2 volunteer positions for the #diverse-speaker-support channel.
• The November 2021 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out. 
• The Marketing Team welcomes any help to promote WordPress Meetups on a weekly basis and thus keep the community connected.

We want to hear from you! Suggest your 2022 goals for the Global Community Team by December 6, 2021.

Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience

• WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing and we’d like to hear from you! Testing is vital to ensure the release is as good as it can be—it’s also a great way to contribute. Read the comprehensive guide, “Help test WordPress 5.9 Features,” to learn how to test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 and report any bugs.
• There’s an open call for testing for WordPress iOS 18.7 and Android 18.7.

The 2021 WordPress Annual Survey is out! Please respond to the survey, so your WordPress experience is reflected in the results.

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021

• Several WordPress Social Learning Meetups were held in November by the Training Team, and there will be more in December 2021.
• Tuesday Training sessions are paused until 2022.
• WordCamp São Paulo was held online on November 27, 2021.
• Get excited for WordCamp Sevilla 2021, coming up on December 11-12! Sevilla is the first in-person WordCamp happening in over 18 months, since WordCamps moved online in March 2020 due to COVID-19.
• Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Taiwan 2021, WordCamp Birmingham 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022!
• Check out the latest episodes of WordPress Briefing with Josepha Haden on
  • “All Things Block Themes!”
  • “WordPress=Blogging+”
  • “The People of WordPress”

Give back to open source. Please donate to the WordPress Foundation’s mission this holiday season.

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know  by filling out this form. 

The following folks contributed to November 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @jrf, @webcommsat, and @nalininonstopnewsuk

This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 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=5.9-beta1. Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive.

The current target for the final release is January 25, 2022, which is just eight weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to make sure the release is as good as it can be.

Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will break down all upcoming changes in greater detail.

How You Can Help – Testing!

Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing the release in the beta stage. It is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide will help walk you through what and how to test.

If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

To see every feature in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 5.8, check out the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 10.8, 10.9, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9. 

Beyond the noted changes, which include 580 enhancements and nearly 450 bug fixes, contributors have fixed 297 tickets for WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More fixes are on the way.

Happy testing!

Want to know what’s new in version 5.9? Read on for some highlights.

Full Site Editing

The Styles Interface

Combine all the features that went live in 5.8 with those making their entrance in 5.9, and you get Full Site Editing.

Formerly known as Global Styles, the Styles Interface lets you interact directly with your blocks and elements right in the WordPress Admin. From typography to color palettes, this cohesive design interface means a design change—even a dramatic one—can happen without a theme switch. No code needed.

Theme.json

Introduced in WordPress 5.8, theme.json has been improved to enable features and default styles for your site and its blocks. With 5.9, theme.json can support child themes and the duotone treatment. Coordinate layers of style with theme.json, taking the weight off of your theme’s required CSS.

Other features supported by theme.json include:

• Border: color, style, and width augment the border-radius property that landed in 5.8.
• Flex layouts: Block Gap support, courtesy of spacing.blockGap.
• Typography: font families, font style, font weight, text decoration, and text transform.
• Images: Duotones.

A New Navigation Block

Welcome to the most intuitive way to build navigation: the Navigation Block. 

Here are the features that need testing the most:

• Responsive menu options you can turn off, have always on, or opt to use only for small screens.
• Built-in keyboard accessibility.  For accessibility, for speed, or both.
• Add extra blocks like Search and Site Icon blocks (and customize them to your liking).
• Submenu items with styling options.
• Horizontal or vertical alignment.
• Reusable navigation? Even across themes? Yes. Because the Navigation Block you build gets saved as a custom post type.

A Better Gallery Block

What if you could treat single images in your Gallery Block the same way you treat the Image Block? Now you can.

Make every image in your gallery different from the next, with inline cropping or a duotone and change layouts with the ease of drag and drop. With the improved gallery block, every image is its own Image block.

One thing to note: Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure to review this Dev Note, which details what you need to do for compatibility.

Focused Template Part Mode

Building template parts can take a level of focus all its own because you’re making decisions for the entire site. So WordPress 5.9 adds a focus mode that shows you only the part you’re working on right now (and you can get back to the regular view with a keystroke). 

Block Pattern Directory

The Pattern Directory offers a range of prebuilt block patterns, from a couple of blocks that show an image and text, to an entire page layout with columns and sections. Since the 5.8 release, the directory has become a hub for exploratory UI and patterns, taking submissions and offering them to the community. So now, your creation can help other people build out their perfect site.

Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme

A whole new way of building WordPress themes.

WordPress 5.9 introduces features that make Full Site Editing possible, including the first default block theme.

Using minimal CSS, theme styles reside in theme.json so that you can configure them in the Styles interface of the WordPress Admin. Make this theme take on its own personality site-wide, with a wide array of color schemes, type combinations, page templates, premade components (forms), and image treatments to choose from.

More Improvements and Updates

• Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow let you add new posts just seconds after hitting Publish on your latest post.
• List View lets you drag and drop content as easily as you could always cruise through it – and collapse entire sections – so you can concentrate on a task or get the bigger picture.
• The Buttons and Social icons blocks now absorb and display their parent block’s toolbar controls.  
• Choose your language on the login screen.
• More performance improvements (i.e., speed).

Props to @chanthaboune, @priethor, @psykro, @annezazu, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @hellofromtonya, @davidbaumwald, and @rmartinezduque for their research and copy.