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WordPress Core Team Tackling Old, Neglected Trac Tickets in Upcoming Triage Sessions
According to Sarah Gooding's report at WP Tavern, 19 tickets are more than 15 years old, and 688 are 10 years old. The largest chunk of 3,484 tickets falls into the 5-10-year-old category.
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Eric Karkovack tweeted, "Looks like some of those very old #WordPress Trac tickets could finally be resolved!"
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Gooding notes that "Some tickets require deep historical knowledge of WordPress and will benefit from having participation from veteran contributors."
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Audras, who’s also CTO at Whodunit, also tweeted "Props @remkusdevries for contributing to the original idea 🙌" this week, acknowledging that Remkus de Vries, who runs Truer than North, kicked off the discussion about "cleaning up" old Trac tickets on Twitter last month that inspired the triage sessions.
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Another All-Women and Nonbinary-Led WordPress Release Squad in the Works for 2023
This week, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy planted the seed for a follow up tot the WordPress 5.6 release when she tweeted, "What if we did another women/nonbinary-led release for WP6.4?"
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There's been overwhelmingly strong support for the initiative ("My team would be interested in contributing," tweeted Cathi Bosco, co-founder UXATT, an experience design collective) with some inevitable pushback. Acknowledging the latter and offering his support, Taco Verdonschot, Yoast's Head of Relations, tweeted, "You'd probably get hate from some, and support from many people. So, how can I help making that happen? :)"
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Dee Teal, a project manager at Human Made, replied to Haden Chomphosy, "Yes! But let's also talk about how we make it stickier?" acknowledging that we need more people to stay on as ongoing contributors.
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WordPress 5.6, released in December 2020, has so far been the one and only WordPress release led by an all-women and nonbinary squad. At the time, Peter Wilson, a core contributor and Awesome Motive WordPress core developer, tweeted, "Most WordPress releases run very smoothly. The WordPress 5.6 release has been the smoothest I have seen for several releases. The release squad brought an extra layer of polish."
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WordPress 6.2 Release: Will the Site Editor Finally Shed its Beta Label?
Contributors have been aiming to get the Beta label removed since 6.1 but the criteria had not yet been met. Gooding notes that current blockers include a ticket to improve the Site Editor loading state so that everything is fully loaded before users start interacting, removing the jumpiness of half-rendered states.
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Beta 1 is expected to be released on February 7, with RC1 planned for a month later, and the official WordPress 6.2 release scheduled for March 28, 2023.
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WordPress Learn Project Seeks User Feedback Through Survey
The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete and covers a few basic demographic questions, learning styles, and also gauges respondents' interest in the possibility of a WordPress certification program.
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Laura Adamonis, a website designer at Add A Little Digital Services, tweeted, "Join in! Be part [of] the future of WordPress. Retweet and get the word out."
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In 2022, 12,000 people took a course on Learn.WordPress.org. The course catalog has grown to include everything from getting started with WordPress to building custom blocks, in addition to 140 shorter tutorials, and a nearly continuous stream of live online workshops.
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Matt Medeiros Grills WordPress Leaders On New WP Minute+ Podcast
This week, Matt Medeiros, founder and publisher of The WP Minute, launched The WP Minute+, a longer form version of his weekly 5-minute news podcast featuring conversations and interviews with WordPress business and community leaders.
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The first episode features an interview with Syed Balkhi, founder and CEO of Awesome Motive, following the announcement last month that his company had acquired Thrive Themes. During the interview, Medeiros grills Balkhi on the size of his business and its influence on the WordPress community, at one point asking him to justify why Awesome Motive engages in practices that many folks find distasteful, such as limited-time deals and displaying banners in the WordPress admin to upsell to users.
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Three additional episodes of the podcast feature Miriam Schwab (Head of WordPress Relations at Elementor), Chris Badgett (CEO at LifterLMS), and Chris Lubkert (co-founder of Extendify) and are available when you add The WP Minute+ to your podcast app.
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According to Medeiros, his long-running podcast Matt Report, which he launched in October 2012, "will live on." He says it will continue to focus on so-called blue-collar digital workers “who do good work and want to be paid for it."
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99% of WordPress Vulnerabilities Caused By 2% of Plugins, According to iThemes Report
According to the report's author, Dan Knauss, who recently left Post Status to join StellarWP as a Technical Content Generalist, vulnerabilities surfaced in 20-50 plugins and themes every week last year. Each month, an average of 121 plugins and themes had a vulnerability publicized. Worryingly, 26% of plugin and theme vulnerabilities were unpatched at the time of their disclosure. Knauss does report some good news: the severity of vulnerabilities declined significantly last year compared to 2021.
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His takeaway: "All our findings in this report repeat the trends of previous years and underscore the importance of keeping your WordPress site up to date," Knauss writes.
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"Run your updates kids!" tweeted WP Wednesday podcast host Marv Dorner.
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Business Spotlight: Weglot
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WordPress translation plugin, Weglot, gives you a reliable and easy way to take your website from local to global in minutes. No coding required and no developer time needed. Add the Weglot plugin, select your required language(s) and watch as Weglot instantly translates your site. Start your free trial today.
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#WPCommunityFeels: Mark Westguard
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A podcast worth listening to: WP Builds is my go to weekly podcast, it is well worth listening to for a round up of the latest WordPress news and fantastic discussion from Nathan Wrigley and his guests. Also, check out WPMotivate from Michelle Frechette and Kathy Zant for a positive start to your week! It's good to switch off the news sometimes!
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A concept worth understanding: I often see developers getting confused about taxonomies and terms. I frequently see terms being called taxonomies. It can be rewarding to scan a quick rundown of their definitions.
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A Twitter account worth following: Follow Marcus Burnette. He is well connected in the WordPress space and produces some great content with GoDaddy Pro.
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An article worth reading: I'm all for accessibility online, but also offline and throughout our WordPress community. 5 Days Without a Shower by Michelle Frechette at Post Status highlights the challenges she faced at a recent WordCamp event and offers suggestions on how to improve the situation for those with disabilities.
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A habit worth forming: Sleep is so important. If you aren't sleeping well, work on improving it.
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Avalara + GoDaddy Pro Tax Mini-series
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Avalara partners with leading ecommerce platforms, including GoDaddy and WooCommerce, to provide retailers and brands with an automated sales tax solution that is easy-to-implement and easy-to-use. And with over 1,200 integrations overall, ecommerce sellers can connect the systems and platforms they use to manage tax transaction data from one place. In addition to automating sales tax calculation, Avalara helps businesses big and small with nexus monitoring, exemption certificates, return filing, tax research, and much more.
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Join our upcoming two-part series with Haley Johnson and India Anderson from Avalara to learn about the importance of sales tax and compliance, and to discuss the WooCommerce Connector available and the new WordPress plugin that is coming in February.
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These free virtual events are presented by GoDaddy Pro and will take place on Wednesday, February 8 and 15, 2023 at 3pm EST.
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In other WordPress news...
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- Could the WordPress project be doing more to raise awareness of WordPress and open source amongst young people? In the latest episode of Press The Issue, Allie Nimmons and Topher DeRosia discuss the challenges and possibilities around bringing more youths into the WordPress community.
- In the latest episode of Post Status Draft, DevriX founder Mario Peshev joins host Cory Miller to discuss WordPress retainers (a term he coined), entrepreneurship, and the future of WordPress. Peshev encourages agency owners to chase recurring revenue, describing it as the "Holy Grail."
- Twenty years ago on January 26, Mike Little left a comment on Matt Mullenweg's blog that kicked off the project that became WordPress. "Now WordPress powers over 43% of most popular domains. It is made by a worldwide community of thousands of contributors & millions of users. Wow!" tweets Little, linking to Mullenweg's blog post from January 24, 2003, The Blogging Software Dilemma.
- The WooCommerce core team is piloting a three-month program of monthly chats that will focus on WooCommerce Blocks Extensibility. Automattic Developer Advocate Stephanie Pi says the trial aims to determine the best way to speak directly and transparently with the WooCommerce developer community.
- The Page Builder Summit is returning on February 20. The four-day event, hosted by Nathan Wrigley (WP Builds podcast) and Anchen le Roux (owner of Simply Digital Design) will feature 32 speakers, including developers, designers, marketers, and business coaches.
- WordPress turns 20 this year. To mark this milestone, a set of 20th-anniversary commemorative logos are now available for anyone to use and enjoy. Official swag featuring the new designs is expected to be made available via the WordPress store in February.
- Aurora Ahmed and Brian Coords have launched viewSource, a new weekly podcast about tech, web development and WordPress. In the first episode, Ahmed and Coords recount their experiences trying out GitHub Copilot, debate its gender, how it will affect developers, and ethical concerns with AI coders.
- As part of ongoing work to improve the contributor journey, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy has started a discussion about ending the Eternal September in WordPress. She's asking folks for feedback on mentoring new contributors, dealing with influxes of new contributors, and pain points for existing contributors when new people join the project.
- WordPress.com users are getting early access to some of the major new features that are shipping with the upcoming WordPress 6.2 release, reports Sarah Gooding at WordPress. The platform rolled out Browse Mode this week, describing it as "an easier way to navigate the Site Editor."
- Need some advice on how to start a side hustle or deal with burnout? On the Crocoblock blog, Brian Jackson, co-founder of forgemedia and former CMO at Kinsta, shares his WordPress journey, tips for working with WordPress, and how to strike a healthy work-life balance.
- WordCamp Entebbe is coming up on March 10, reports Nyasha Green at MasterWP. The event will be held at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) and will include free tours of the center so participants can learn about the local wildlife and eco-tourism.
- Topher DeRosia has traveled extensively to WordCamps in India, Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Australia, and England, as well as events in his native USA. For MasterWP, he shares his tips on How To Travel To An International WordCamp.
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