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This week in WordPress
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WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine” is here
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It's here: WordPress 5.5 "Eckstine" was released on Tuesday. This version focuses on speed (lazy loading), search (sitemaps), and security (auto-updates for plugins and themes). There's also a long list of new features for the block editor. As is tradition, the release is named after a jazz musician — Billy Eckstine.
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"🎉 #WordPress 5.5 "Eckstine" is out! Help me thank 805 (!!!) contributors, families, friends, pets, and therapists for their hard work," tweets freelance developer and contributor David Bisset, while WHODUNIT CTO and WordPress Core Team rep Jb Audras tweets: "WordPress 5.5 «Eckstine» is now available! ✨ THANK YOU to the 805 people who contributed to #WordPress 5.5! ♥️ They come from 58 countries and work in 215 different companies. More importantly, 306 people are NEW CONTRIBUTORS, which is 38% of the total! 🙌"
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One such contributor is Mukesh Panchal, a team lead at LinkSture Technologies, who tweets: "I'm humbled to share that I'm Noteworthy Contributors for the @WordPress ❤️. It feels great to be recognized for my contribution work. Fifth time in a row 🥳🎉🌟"
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Of course, with every new release comes some trepidation. "Updating to Wordpress 5.5. Pray for me," tweets digital marketing coach Arielle Hale. "WordPress 5.5: just different enough in the admin area that all your documentation now looks out-of-date 😬" tweets PublishPress founder Steve Burge.
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Now that work on WordPress 5.5 is done and dusted, Siteground's WordPress Community and Partnerships Manager Francesca Marano, who's also a WordPress Core Team rep, is gearing up for WordPress 5.6 and its all-women release squad. She tweets: "Does anyone else feels like this is the best superhero movie ever? WordPress Women... assemble!"
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Astra theme suspended and then delisted for violating theme directory guidelines
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Just a few days out from the release of WordPress 5.5, however, the suspension was overturned in favor of delisting Astra from the popular themes list for six weeks. The suspension would've impacted Astra's 1 million users, preventing them from updating to a newer version of the theme for five weeks and potentially leading to broken sites after updating to WordPress 5.5.
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Others, such as Impress content writer Taylor Waldon, have questioned why there isn't a mechanism in place to warn affected users. She tweets: "Regardless of what they did, the process for this needs to change. One million users are affected by the fact that there was 0 warning in place before a 5 week suspension? Were they given a list of changes and said 'no?' (No) I saw no due process in those threads."
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Like all good #wpdrama, there's more to it: According to Search Engine Journal's Roger Montti in WordPress Suspends Astra Theme – Affects 1 Million Users, the Themes Team has previously asked Brainstorm Force, the company that makes Astra, to remove affiliate links from its theme and failed to do so.
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Brainstorm Force CEO and co founder Sujay Pawar has published an open apology letter on the Astra blog. According to Justin, Sujay has also promised to contribute 16 hours from one of the company's senior developers to the Themes Team along with 5% of the company's resources toward the WordPress project's Five for the Future initiative.
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WordPress Core Team rep offers behind-the-scenes look at how releases come together
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Francesca, who works full-time at Siteground and was recently named a WordPress Core Team rep, writes about her journey to becoming a core contributor — one who doesn't write code. She offers a behind-the-scenes look at how WordPress releases come together as well as her thoughts on how core development could be reorganized to make it easier and more appealing for newcomers to contribute.
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"Thank you Francesca, I hope every single person who wants to help make WordPress gets the chance to read this," comments Castos lead developer and core contributor Jonathan Bossenger. UX designer and WordCamp organizer Estela Rueda adds: "Thank you for your words. Thinking back, I am glad I was part of the 5.5 squad. People don't realize how much work goes into a release, it really shows the commitment and love contributors have for the project. Looking forward to being part of the 5.6 squad and learning even more."
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Automattic relaunches long-time internal collaboration tool P2 as a new product
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Romain tested the beta version of P2 and says it's a "clean and focused product that would work particularly well in that spot between company-wide emails and announcements getting lost in Slack."
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"Looks like Automattic is gunning for the distributed team/remote work SaaS space with a new freemium model for P2. If you‘ve checked out the Make WordPress blogs, you'll have a rough idea of how P2 is used for async convos and collaboration," tweets GoDaddy Senior Community Manager Andy McIlwain.
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In other news...
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- – Want to disable the new Unsplash plugin's CDN? There's a plugin for that. In the wake of the #wpdrama that has played out over the image library's licensing, WP Tavern reports the Disable Unsplash CDN plugin is the first of several new WordPress plugins that disable the Unsplash CDN to land in the WordPress.org repository. Plugin author Xaver Birsak, who created Mailster, says he released the plugin to help users who may experience slower page speed caused by the Unsplash CDN.
- – Is WP Notify the Silver Bullet WordPress Needs to End Admin Notification Spam? asks Jonathan Bossenger, who's leading the WP Notify project. He opines at WP Tavern: "The answer might not be as simple as we think." His piece comes after he recently put out a call in WP Notify – next steps for feedback on how best to move forward with the project.
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