


<p>[00:09:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The thing which I, well the takeaways which I have from my brief forays into using the navigation block are, number one to Dave&#8217;s point, the fact that it&#8217;s all happening on the screen is really, it&#8217;s quite interesting. It made me sort of sit up and think, okay, this is where it is now. This is new, this is interesting. I never quite found the difficulty in having a menu section. I think after a certain period of time, it kind of became instinctive. But then again, I was always playing with WordPress pretty much all day, every day. So I think Dave&#8217;s point is a really good one.</p>



<p>Now everything&#8217;s handled in the same place. The UI is the same. It&#8217;s easy to understand. And speaking to Isabel&#8217;s point, the fact that you can surround your navigation with whatever you choose. It&#8217;s no longer just what the theme handles. It can be anything, you know, so you could put a logo right next to it, or a button to the right of it, or anything you like. You can just surround it by other blocks if you so choose. So I can see that promise is really good. Are you happy with the implementation that you&#8217;ve got at the minute? Because obviously, there&#8217;s things which I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll be telling us later about roadmap features and so on. Do you feel that the jump, which people are going to have to go through on day one, so if they install a block-based theme and they&#8217;re suddenly confronted with navigation being something that&#8217;s done inside the block editor, do you feel that the UI is intuitive at the moment or are there things that you would like to have. Implemented fairly soon?</p>



<p>[00:10:37] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I can take a quick stab I think it&#8217;s important to look at what is available in the block today and you can import an existing menu, you can create a new one from scratch, you can swap menus, you can edit them, move these blocks around. You can collapse it into this little hamburger menu with a toggle in the sidebar, and instantly you see the effect in the canvas. You see it becomes that little menu button. You can create all these sub menus, build them visually. There are a number of styling options available. And in fact, you can accomplish some pretty complex layouts by combining this block, as you just said, with a number of other blocks. And being such a key part of full site editing it is in almost every website. The very header that makes up your primary point of interaction. It was very important to get the block out there, and I think with the experience we are shipping in 5.9, and the features it&#8217;s definitely ready to get some feedback. But I would also say that 5.9 is a great opportunity to find out some of those rough edges and figure out how to prioritize the next steps. There&#8217;s a lot of work to be done still. Some of those changes affect the block editor directly, like selecting the right block, moving it around, the right nesting level. All of these things, when fixed in the block editor itself, improved in the block editor itself, elevate the rest of the block editor UI. For example, the gallery block is also receiving nesting. So whatever we can improve there, will benefit both navigation and other nested blocks as well. So there&#8217;s definitely lots to do still, but it&#8217;s in a good place to use on your website even today, I would say.</p>



<p>[00:12:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Dave or Isabel.</p>



<p>[00:12:27] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> I agree with that assessment. I think it&#8217;s in a good place. And I think Joen said something very interesting here, which is, a lot of the improvements that we can make to it, our general block editor improvements. So things that will make the experience of nested blocks better. We&#8217;ll also as a consequence, make the navigation block, which is a series of nested blocks better.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m looking in particular to few accessibility issues. You mentioned accessibility earlier. I&#8217;d say, yeah, there are points that can be improved at the moment, particularly with keyboard accessibility, but those are overwhelmingly issues that affect the editor as a whole. So the nested blocks are complicated structures that we&#8217;re still working through in terms of usability.</p>



<p>So there are definitely improvements to look out for in the near future with regards to that.</p>



<p>[00:13:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you, Dave.</p>



<p>[00:13:21] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Yeah, absolutely, and all the points that&#8217;ve made so far been really accurate and really great. I think there&#8217;s also two ways of looking at this, because you can have coming to the navigation block from a classic world of WordPress and you&#8217;ve already used WordPress and it&#8217;s something you&#8217;re familiar with and you&#8217;re familiar with the menu screen. Or you can be coming to WordPress as a brand new user, you&#8217;re landed in full site editing and you experience navigation block. And I think there&#8217;s going to be two perspectives then, two different experiences. And as I said previously again, I worked for agencies and I can imagine some of the clients I used to work with. They&#8217;ve got familiar with the menu screen. They&#8217;re very happy with how it works. They&#8217;ve worked around the quirks of it, and then they are being asked to use this completely new interface. And obviously with any change like that, there&#8217;s going to be a bit of friction. There&#8217;s going to be a bit of pushback, and there&#8217;s going to be some overhead for people who&#8217;re having to teach these people how to use the new interface.</p>



<p>But again, the direct editing paradigm really makes things a lot easier because the overhead to learning how to use this new system is much, much lower. It is. Point and click, change things that are there and they&#8217;ll look like that on the front of the site. And that&#8217;s a really big win. And that also carries over really nicely into first-time WordPress users, because they won&#8217;t have that backstory of having used the existing menu screen. They will be probably familiar with other systems where they are more of a wysiwyg system, what you see is what you get, and that&#8217;s the acronym. And they will be familiar with something where they can just point and click and change things. And I think that really helps. So, yes, I definitely definitely agree, there are rough edges around the block. It is a V1, but we&#8217;re looking for feedback from WordPress 5.9, so if people have that feedback, they find these edge cases, all these frustrations, the best thing to do is to let us know. And yeah, we can look to address those in future releases as required.</p>



<p>[00:15:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Dave, could I ask at this point, given that that&#8217;s the case and you are looking for feedback actively, what is the best way that people could provide that feedback?</p>



<p>[00:15:19] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Yeah, absolutely. There are a number of ways, different people might find different channels helpful. I think perhaps one of the first ones might be the Gutenberg plugin forums, which you can reach at wordpress dot org, we&#8217;ll put a link to those, and there are plenty of contributors who go into those forums and regularly check them for people who are providing feedback.</p>



<p>Also there&#8217;s the full site editing outreach program, which is run by Anne McCarthy. Who&#8217;s a colleague of ours at Automattic. And she often has these series of sessions where we&#8217;ll go out saying we&#8217;re going to focus down on one particular aspect. And so there might be opportunity to provide feedback. There&#8217;s also make blog posts that came out, around these topics, which you can follow up with and leave your comments there. And there&#8217;s obviously also Github as well, where you can raise issues about your frustrations. Or if you&#8217;re really, really keen, you could join us in WordPress core Slack, everyone&#8217;s a friendly bunch and, you can just drop into the channels and say, hey, I&#8217;ve got this frustration, I&#8217;ve got this feedback. And someone will pick up that, and put you in the right direction and help you to get an answer and resolve those things. Joen and Isabel, have you got any other suggestions? You probably know some more, other interesting places.</p>



<p>[00:16:28] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I thought that was very exhaustive. I would only echo that we are very appreciative of all these thoughts. One of the opportunities we have with listening to that feedback and the plugin model where we can land features in the plugin. Already now, if you install the plugin, you&#8217;ll see some changes based on what we&#8217;ve learned already with the first set up state for the navigation block, it&#8217;s already being tweaked in the plugin. So we can react relatively quickly, and you can see those changes in the plugin and then eventually they&#8217;ll land in the next version. So definitely don&#8217;t hold back on the feedback.</p>



<p>[00:17:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just for the benefit of users, when you, I think it&#8217;s probably clear to all of us what you&#8217;re describing there, when you say the plugin, just explain for the listeners who perhaps don&#8217;t know what that step involves and what it means.</p>



<p>[00:17:16] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> Thank you, and I do apologize. So the Gutenberg plugin was the plugin project to create the block editor, way back for WordPress five point zero. And it has since become the testing ground for development. So what happens is we work in Github on the Gutenberg project to create these new features, fix these bugs. And then every, I think it&#8217;s every two weeks we land these new features in the Gutenberg plugin, so you can test them out. It&#8217;s fairly stable and we definitely push patches to make sure it&#8217;s pretty stable. It&#8217;s not going to be quite as stable as the full WordPress releases 5.9, 6.0 and so on. But it is a way to preview what&#8217;s coming next. You can activate the plugin, just search for Gutenberg in the plugins page. You can activate it, see these new things. You can deactivate it again if you like.</p>



<p>[00:18:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That clarifies it beautifully. So the intention there is that if you want to live on the bleeding edge and be involved with seeing what&#8217;s coming with Gutenberg, and in this case the navigation block, then that is the process that you would go through and you&#8217;ll be using something which may not be mission critical ready, but we&#8217;ll certainly be a lot of fun to play with, that&#8217;s for sure.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know who wants to take this one, but working on the basis that some of the listeners by now simply will never have touched WordPress 5.9. Would one of you take on the onerous task of trying to describe the differences in the UI? So I&#8217;m meaning things like the fact that we&#8217;ve now got edits site as a menu option. The fact that the traditional area where you would go and customize things, the customizer has been removed, if you use a block based theme. And then moving on to, how do you actually get a navigation area onto the website and, what&#8217;s the process that you go through basically? I know there&#8217;s an awful lot to unpack there, but it just occurs to me that there&#8217;ll be quite a lot of people who haven&#8217;t yet tried 5.9. Maybe they have, but they&#8217;ve stuck with their old theme and they don&#8217;t wish to dabble. So we&#8217;re trying to persuade them I think that it&#8217;s not as difficult as it sounds.</p>



<p>[00:19:23] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I could take a quick stab because I think it could be worth it to clarify one thing right upfront. That existing WordPress themes should work just as they already do, with the existing navigation screen and all that stuff. The new navigation block would be available for the block editor, but the site editor is primarily available when you activate a block theme. For example, Twenty Twenty-Two, which is just the most beautiful theme. If you haven&#8217;t seen it yet, I definitely recommend, just take a look, try it out. It is the most wonderful thing I&#8217;ve seen in a decade. And notably, if you are a WordPress developer, do download that theme, unpack the zip, take a look at the structure and see how it&#8217;s built. It is something else, makes me very excited about the future of theme development.</p>



<p>You can also mix and match between block themes and let&#8217;s call it classic themes, towards these hybrid themes. So you can, sort of, gradually opt to these new paradigms. But assuming you activate Twenty Twenty-Two today on a fresh install and you want to see all the new stuff, you go into appearance, you have this edit site button which lets you see the whole of Twenty Twenty-Two. Header and footer and the loop in the middle. With everything being blocks, you can click everything and edit it right there. It should be pre-populated because it comes with these templates, it already includes a header. It already includes a place for your navigation. So ideally the experience is that you activate this theme, you click the navigation block and then you, you start the flow, either create a new menu from scratch or import an existing</p>



<p>[00:21:07] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Great points that Joen&#8217;s made that. One of the key things, if you&#8217;re more of a developer mindset as well, is that we&#8217;ve moved away from a lot of the theme chrome as you might say. So that things like the header, the footer, the sidebar, instead of those being controlled via PHP templates in the theme, they&#8217;re now controlled via the site editor, with this again, direct manipulation paradigm, which I keep going on about, but it&#8217;s so critical to how full site editing editing works.</p>



<p>And so you can just go in and previously you&#8217;d have to, as a user, if you want to change, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say something like, you&#8217;ve got a list of posts and you&#8217;ve got an avatar picture of yourself, next to each one of those posts. You say, oh, actually, do you know what? I want to move my avatar over to the right hand side.</p>



<p>Now in classic WordPress, the only way you could do that is either you&#8217;d have to dig into the template files and understand a bit of PHP and HTML and move that and possibly, change some CSS styling as well. But with full site editing, what you can do is just go straight into the loop, like Joen&#8217;s mentioned, click on the avatar, the author, avatar and manipulate it however you&#8217;d like with the controls that the editor provides you. Now, of course you may not have all the controls you want from the get go, especially with 5.9. But the goal is that you can just do that directly and you don&#8217;t have to go then to your developer or your technical person to get that done.</p>



<p>And I think it&#8217;s like really democratizing design. We talk about this a lot of time in WordPress, democratizing publishing, but this is like democratizing the design of themes and of your site and giving users power. I hear a lot of, this is a scary thing to a lot of people, and I get that. I come, as I said, from an agency background and I&#8217;d be thinking, goodness, me, I don&#8217;t want to give my clients too much control, lest they do something to their site that would be less than desirable. But, I think we give the controls to be able to lock a lot of these features down and those will only improve.</p>



<p>But the key thing is that if you&#8217;re someone who just wants to start a website and you don&#8217;t have the technical expertise, you can do so much more now with full site editing, than you could ever do with classic themes without having to have that technical knowledge. And I think that&#8217;s a key thing.</p>



<p>[00:23:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s a nice answer. Isabel, anything to add there?</p>



<p>[00:23:21] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> Yeah, to add specifically to the issue of it being scary that people have all these power. That won&#8217;t necessarily happen. It depends also on how the theme is structured. So you can implement controls in the theme to limit the amount of editability of the various site areas.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s something that would potentially also be very convenient for agencies to use. It makes it a little bit less scary.</p>



<p>[00:23:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Good point. The way that you would interact with it then is you have a block. The best way to describe it really would be to go and install Twenty Twenty-Two and as Joen said, click on the navigation block, perhaps open up the list view. In fact, I would say, open up the list view first and you&#8217;ll be able to see the stack of things that may or may not be contained within the navigation. So for example there may be sub-pages that you&#8217;ve listed depending on how the menu is structured. And so let&#8217;s get into what the sort of features are that you can have inside of the navigation block.</p>



<p>If we click on the navigation block itself, we&#8217;re presented with some features in the menu on the right, some styling options and so on. So tell us what&#8217;s there at the moment. What can we configure? What can we change? Whoever wishes to take that.</p>



<p>[00:24:34] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> One thing I think it&#8217;s very important to keep in mind when we start working with the navigation block is, we create the block and let&#8217;s say we add a bunch of pages to it, links maybe a few social icons, whatever we want inside it. And then the block is saved and the contents of that block are going to be reusable in others. So I can have exactly the same navigation in two different templates. I can have it on my header and then again on my footer, and the changes that I make to the content of the navigation are going to be reflected in all the places that it&#8217;s used. But in terms of the presentation, that will be specific to the place where the navigation is.</p>



<p>So we have this difference between what the content is, so the links that make up the navigation, and then the presentational aspects that will be specific to wherever. So in the navigation being used in the header, it might have a background color. It might be set to be a hamburger menu on desktop and mobile.</p>



<p>And then the very same navigation being reused in the footer might have no background color. It might be set to always show all the links, and not turn into a hamburger at any point. So there&#8217;s this distinction that&#8217;s important to make between the presentation.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a lot you can change, well you can change the colors. You can change the layout, you can move it to align on left on the right or the center. If you have sub menus, you can configure those sub menus to open on hover or on click. As I mentioned, Joen also mentioned the hamburger menu. You can make it display as a hamburger menu on mobile or all the time or never. There are topography settings, padding settings. That&#8217;s probably the lot. I&#8217;m not sure if I&#8217;m forgetting something here.</p>



<p>[00:26:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think that&#8217;s right, certainly from what I&#8217;m looking at at the moment that it appears that you&#8217;ve covered everything, unless one of the other two of you have got something that we&#8217;ve missed.</p>



<p>[00:26:36] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> It is difficult to describe the UI, isn&#8217;t it? I think there&#8217;s a pretty good developer, not developer doc, a user facing doc for the block as well. And that was put together by Anne McCarthy. Again, that goes over a lot of these options. If people want to read that afterwards as well, and that&#8217;s kind of helpful.</p>



<p>[00:26:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Joen?</p>



<p>[00:26:50] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> Yeah, I would just add that it&#8217;s worth noting that these are the user-facing controls where you can configure and tweak and adjust in that way. There are some additional controls that aren&#8217;t yet surfaced to the user. We have this system called global styles, which ultimately is this reflection of properties in the theme dot json file.</p>



<p>And you can target specific sub blocks and add padding to those, and change these right in the code. The idea being that these properties would be reflected in the UI as well, at least as a rule of thumb. Some of those are on the to-do list. Some of them are already there, like Isabel mentioned fonts, colors, and line height, all that stuff.</p>



<p>And of course, ultimately we&#8217;re making markup here, and you could style things in CSS if that is your preference, provide some defaults in that way.</p>



<p>[00:27:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It might be a good idea to draw some comparisons with current themes. It seems like a lot of theme developers have really made things like menus and navigation and headers and footers make them a real feature of their work, and I can think of some, dot org themes as well as commercially available themes where the menus, the customization options that are there, are truly remarkable, you know, within the customizer, you can change more or less everything. You could have a logo that center aligned and you could have different fonts and hover effects and all of that kind of stuff. And it&#8217;s all available there in a sort of point click interface. I&#8217;m just wondering if there are things that, well any comparisons to be made? Are there any things that you are hoping to achieve in the near future that might bring some parity to those edge cases? Or is it very much going to be that WordPress is sticking with, here it is, it&#8217;s a menu, you can figure out how to do the styling yourself. You can learn a bit of CSS and what have you. I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s all going to be point click or if there&#8217;s going to be some sort of technical requirement to make them super individual</p>



<p>[00:28:47] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I can take a stab. I think the key feature of the navigation block. I apologize if I&#8217;m repeating myself, is that it is a block, which means you can insert it in patterns as well. A block pattern is a configuration, an already made configuration of a bunch of blocks. You click the blue plus button at the top left corner. You click patterns and you can insert this shortcut to a layout. Twenty Twenty-Two comes with a number of these header patterns pre-made, and they&#8217;re all completely beautiful. So you can browse those and you can insert this header that has maybe a circular logo and a tagline than the navigation below. Or you could find one that has the logo on the left, and the navigation collapsed into the hamburger on the right. And you can just insert one of those. And the entire layout is pre-made and pre inserted, wherever you like. And I think that is one of the key benefits of it being a block, that every single benefit, every single feature we add to the block itself will benefit the navigation block as well in the future. Any global style changes, any new features to fonts, font weights, or paddings, margin, spacing, gap colors, nested changes. All of those will benefit across all of blocks, rather than just for this one piece of software called the navigation block.</p>



<p>[00:30:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think you made a really good point at the start and maybe it&#8217;s something that we haven&#8217;t really dwelled on enough, is that it is a block, so it can go anywhere. So, you know, should you wish to have a page full of navigation menus, you could do that. I don&#8217;t know why you would wish to do that, but you could. Whereas in the past that would be probably out of bounds, for the expertise level of most people. They would just be happy with what came along with the theme.</p>



<p>And there it is right at the top usually, and probably something in the footer. But you could create, I don&#8217;t know, a layout where there were menus in sidebars of different types and menus all over the place. And that&#8217;s the point. It can be surrounded. You can put things in front of it, behind it, above it, below it, whatever you want. And maybe we haven&#8217;t made that point strongly enough.</p>



<p>[00:31:00] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> It&#8217;s a really, really good point? And it also comes back to, you know, getting back to your question it&#8217;s like, what can you achieve with a block versus what could you achieve with a classic menus system? And I think if we compare sort of a classic theme experience with a block theme experience. With the classic theme, if you want to style your navigation, your menu, all the control is really requires quite a lot of technical expertise, whether that be CSS styling, or changing the layout in terms of the ordering of things or where the actual navigation is placed. I mean, you might not want it in the header, you might want it below the logo or et cetera. And for that, you would need a developer. Contrast that to block themes, and as Joen says, it&#8217;s a block. So you can put your navigation wherever you like. It&#8217;s really opened up that power. And again, with styling, you&#8217;ve got all the power that the block provides, and that is actually quite a lot.</p>



<p>And I think that the barrier to entry for customizing your navigation has gone down considerably. Obviously with classic WordPress and all WordPress, you can install plugins and there will always be extenders that create these amazing systems that allow you to modify your menus. But I think there&#8217;s also opportunities for that with the block editor, and I&#8217;m sure that we&#8217;re going to see the extender community building on top of the block and creating really exciting, really, really powerful things. Perhaps sort of mega menu builders and things like this will come.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m excited to see what happens and what comes down the line. Also if we&#8217;re talking about some limitations of the block at the moment, specifically things that I&#8217;m aware of are the ability to style interaction states. And by that, what I mean is, imagine when you&#8217;re hovering over your navigation. Sometimes you see the style of the item you&#8217;re hovering over change, when you roll over it with your mouse or when you select it, focus it with your keyboard. And that&#8217;s not something you can do currently. You can&#8217;t change the style of that within the editor. So that&#8217;s one thing, and also like spacing and padding control for the menu items themselves. I don&#8217;t believe we can do that at this current time, but they&#8217;re all things that are on the roadmap and they&#8217;re looking to be addressed in future releases of WordPress.</p>



<p>And of course, there are always going to be certain advanced customization things that are always going to require CSS, and you can still do that. So if you need something really specific, really custom, you can still ask your technical person or you can jump in to learn CSS yourself, and that&#8217;s a great way to do it.</p>



<p>[00:33:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Isabel?</p>



<p>[00:33:15] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> Yeah. Well in terms of limitations or things that we have on our roadmap, rather like add-ons, I guess. A very interesting challenge will be mega menus, creating more complex drop downs, and that will be a challenge partly for semantic reasons because we had a lot of work in trying to keep a semantic structure for the navigation, with all the different types of blocks that can fit in there.</p>



<p>And mega menus will present the furthest step in that challenge. Which will be great to work on. And the other thing that I think would be good to see is the ability for extenders to add child locks to the nav. So say someone has, I don&#8217;t know, an e-commerce plugin, there&#8217;s sort of a products block that currently the nav only takes a very limited set of blocks that are hard-coded. And so one of the things that we will work on in the future is to make it possible for other blocks to be added. If a plugin has specific blocks that might suit the nav.</p>



<p>[00:34:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Turning attention towards accessibility. Probably reasonably briefly, but nevertheless an important part of any menu structure, the ability for people with different capabilities or different ways that they&#8217;re interacting with the internet. Has a lot of thought gone into that? Was that a particular challenge? Have you endeavored to make this as easy to use for everybody as possible?</p>



<p>[00:34:37] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> Yes. A lot of thought went into them. Well, yeah. a lot of thought went into the front end and that was why I mentioned the semantics earlier. We had to get it right for the structure of the navigation to make sense. When you&#8217;re navigating the page with various assistive technology, In terms of the interface itself for those who are editing a navigation block. Yes, but there&#8217;s always things that we can improve. So we&#8217;ve done a fair bit of work in that sense, but not specific as I think I mentioned earlier, there are not a lot of challenges that are specific to the navigation block in that area. There might be one or another issue, I think there might be a couple of issues, small things such as a button that&#8217;s specific to the block toolbar that&#8217;s not putting focus in the right place when it closes whatever. I mean 99% of accessibility issues that we have flagged for the navigation block that we have opened on our repo are issues that are transversal to other blocks.</p>



<p>[00:35:38] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I was putting together the new tracking issue for the navigation block, post 5.9. And if anyone is interested that&#8217;s 3 8 2 7 5 in Github. As part of that, one of the things that we want to focus on, was the accessibility and just put that of front and center from the start. A high priority item as we move forward with future releases, just keeping that like right there. So we&#8217;re not losing sight of that, and it&#8217;s really, really important and we continue to work with the WordPress accessibility to community on it.</p>



<p>[00:36:07] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Joen?</p>



<p>[00:36:08] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> Yes, I would add also that one of the best features of the navigation block, yet another reason why it took a while to get right. Isabel mentions the semantics, but the thing is when you use the navigation block, what is output all the front end, whether it is sub menus or even just the basic menu, or even the overlay is all fully accessible and you don&#8217;t have to worry about that aspect on its own. For example, by default the menu, you tab through it and menu items open on hover and sort of the classic menu default way for WordPress. But you can change that so that sub menus open on click instead. There&#8217;s even some details around how that little triangle dropdown for sub menus has a separate focus item. So you could focus the parent menu item, go to that or focus the sub menu toggle to open the sub menu. There&#8217;s a great deal of nuance to how you navigate through a menu. And the hamburger opens a proper modal that you have to close with escape and it traps the tab inside until you&#8217;re done.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s a great deal of energy already put into making sure that your website will be accessible when you use the navigation block. There&#8217;s always going to be additional work to do. Work is never over, but, there&#8217;s quite a lot of stuff already there which simply will improve and be there for any block theme that uses this block without the theme developer having to implement this accessibility themselves.</p>



<p>[00:37:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The three of you, we never really established this at the beginning, is the navigation block, is this your primary focus of your time when you punch the card at the beginning of the day and then knock off at the end of the day? Is navigation where you mostly spend your time?</p>



<p>[00:38:05] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> Well, it has been for me for most of a year, on and off, there were a couple of other projects that I worked on for little bit, but I&#8217;ve been mostly, I can say mostly working on navigation to the best parts of the year.</p>



<p>[00:38:19] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Yeah, same here. I mean I&#8217;m every day, the first thing I&#8217;m doing is catching up with the navigation block. Earlier on in the year, prior to 5.9, I was quite heavily focused on the navigation editor project to which you might come to later. But, certainly all this run up to 5.9 has been very much navigation, navigation, navigation block.</p>



<p>[00:38:37] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> Yeah, same here. I would add also that, as we mentioned, there are a lot of block editor specific issues that are surfaced due to the navigation block. Issues we encounter, but which need to be fixed for the block interface as a whole. Nathan, you appreciated the persistent list view.</p>



<p>One of the reasons for that to become this tool, this left sidebar that lets you drag and drop, move, delete blocks right there. That came also from the realization that the nested structure of menus, especially with multiple sub menus, was easier to get an overview of in that interface.</p>



<p>[00:39:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It was actually quite a realization to me when I saw it in the list view. I made it so that the pages were listed out and it was quite fascinating to see the list of pages in the menus, in the list view. I confess I hadn&#8217;t expected that. There it was, it was real easy for me to see what my menu structure looked like without having to dig into a further interface. It was really nice.</p>



<p>[00:39:34] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> And you can modify it as well, in place, within this list view up and down drag and drop. A lot of work went into</p>



<p>[00:39:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. A couple of things just before we round out. Yeah, you mentioned Dave, the navigation editor project, which my understanding is it&#8217;s now stalled. Do you want to just describe a little bit around that? What was that endeavor and why has it been mothballed?</p>



<p>[00:39:53] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> I think the first thing to say is that, I definitely don&#8217;t think the project is mothballed, and stalled might even be a step too far. It&#8217;s definitely on a moment of reflection and pause at the moment. it&#8217;s a topic of conversation within the contributor community around navigation.</p>



<p>One of the other things to say is that the navigation editor is not in 5.9 and there&#8217;s been some confusion around that, but it is not the menu screen remains for classic themes. And the navigation editor is not there. The original project was actually basically to a replace the classic menu screen in WordPress.</p>



<p>That scope of that project was very ambitious. It&#8217;s easy to say that with hindsight, but it never really managed to make it out of the experimental state, even in the Gutenberg plugin. I think part of the reason for that is that the scope called for the ability to edit both classic and block-based menus within the same interface and save them back to their original format so that you could switch back to a classic theme and still have your menu in place, even though you&#8217;ve edited it in a different interface.</p>



<p>And that is a big, big challenge. And the main reason for that, even though it was achieved and testament to the people who worked on it, but before me, it was pretty much there when I started working on that. it was very, very difficult for backwards compatibility reasons, and it quickly became clear that the scope was very, very large of what we had to achieve.</p>



<p>And then they&#8217;d run up to 5.9, there were some, a realignment of the direction on the nav block and specifically the creation of this ability to reuse menus, which required the creation of a custom post type, where the items or the menu were saved too. And that was a big impact on the editor. And basically it was determined that we need to sort of reprioritize the available contributor resources towards the block.</p>



<p>I&#8217;m glad we did so, because I think it allowed us to really focus down on the block rather than perhaps managed to not land either. But, going forward, I think we need to look really, really carefully at the use cases and the requirements and the scope of this project. The first thing is, is there a use case for a standalone editor for editing menus and WordPress?</p>



<p>Now the anecdotal feedback I&#8217;ve got so far from 5.9 is that, that seems to be a case for that. Specifically around block-based menus and the system we&#8217;ve just been talking about. There was no way to edit your menu outside of a navigation block itself. And that might sound good because, you know, I said direct editing is good, right? But, the problem is we have no safe space to create and explore and edit our navigations outside of the canvas of the post or the site editor. A good example of why that might be necessary is if you had a e-commerce site, you had your primary navigation, and then on black Friday month, your client comes to you and says, I need to use a different navigation for black Friday. Can you get it ready for me? And at that point, you&#8217;re in a really difficult use case where you can&#8217;t really change your things in your site editor and change your nav because then it would go live immediately. The workflows become pretty, pretty hacky. So there&#8217;s a good case there for an isolated editor to be able to edit these block based menus.</p>



<p>I will say this is my opinion, this is just a caveat that, but I think it&#8217;s unlikely that we&#8217;ll see the nav editor revived in nt current form and current scope because I&#8217;m not convinced there is a case to save back to the classic menu format at this point. I think we need to be really careful about taking it really slowly. Looking for actual user use cases and doing things in phases, perhaps starting with this focused navigation editor mode. And in fact, that&#8217;s something that Matias Ventura, the lead architect of the Gutenberg project outlined in his sort of what&#8217;s next for the 6.0 release post and this focusing editor mode for navigation would be the first step, and then in the future, perhaps we introduce the ability to import your classic menus, manage them there. But, that needs to be based on actual feedback. I think we should listen to the community about it.</p>



<p>[00:43:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you know, that&#8217;s really interesting, and it hadn&#8217;t occurred to me that your example of a, let&#8217;s say, black Friday menu, that the fact that it&#8217;s not done in the same interface could potentially cause problems. That&#8217;s really fascinating. Do you think there&#8217;ll be a time where theme developers are only able to use the block. I know that&#8217;s a bit of blue sky thinking and, at some point WordPress has to marshal its resources in, in one way or another. You can&#8217;t support everything forever. Much like we would like to. Is there any discussions around that? Whether the development will sort of stop on the pre 5.9 way of doing menus, or is it always going to be updated in perpetuity?</p>



<p>[00:44:09] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> Well, I don&#8217;t know if Joen or Isabel have got any insights into that, but my gut instinct to that would be, I can&#8217;t really imagine a situation where we&#8217;re going to cut off support for the previous menu screen, just because of the backwards compatibility contract that WordPress has with its users.</p>



<p>But that&#8217;s not to say, will there be continuing level of effort put into that screen as there was previously? Perhaps not because perhaps, you know, the world of WordPress moves forward with blocks, perhaps it doesn&#8217;t. But if it does then, you know, we&#8217;re probably going to see less and less features added to the classic menu screen and more effort put into extending the abilities of the block and any future isolated editor mode.</p>



<p>I&#8217;d be interested to hear what Joen and Isabel think.</p>



<p>[00:44:46] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I can only mainly echo your excellent insights already shared. I think one of the benefits of WordPress and open source also sometimes to its detriment is that it has this giant legacy that it&#8217;s supporting. It&#8217;s worth noting that this existing navigation screen, it still exists. You activate your classic theme and the navigation is there. I imagine so long as there are users that do that, it will be possible in some form or other. That&#8217;s just my personal thoughts based on how WordPress has always worked. I imagine it will be there for a long time.</p>



<p>[00:45:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Isabel?</p>



<p>[00:45:24] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> That&#8217;s it really, I mean, things in WordPress tend to linger for a long time because we&#8217;re big on backwards compatibility. And while there are classic themes, the menus interface will continue to exist, because that&#8217;s what classic themes use. There probably won&#8217;t be a lot of new features developed for it. It&#8217;ll just be low key maintained in the background as it were. So I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going anywhere anytime soon.</p>



<p>[00:45:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> For the novice learner of WordPress, I can imagine that fork in the road is going to be, it&#8217;s going to be interesting, shall we say, because there&#8217;s probably a million YouTube demonstrations of how to make menus work in WordPress, and they&#8217;ll be now millions more about how to do it in an alternative way. And so a quick Google search of how do I structure my WordPress menus could well lead people down a very frustrating path I imagine it doesn&#8217;t even look like that. I don&#8217;t understand.</p>



<p>[00:46:18] <strong>Joen Asmussen:</strong> I think WordPress 5.9 is really an opportunity to try full site editing as it exists and then provide a great deal of feedback. And then WordPress 6.0, could be an interesting evolution and reaction to that feedback. So I would just echo that whatever feedback you have, it&#8217;s something we can act on and learn from.</p>



<p>[00:46:42] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> I had a bit of a point about the theme switching process. I&#8217;m not sure we touched on that much, but, there&#8217;ll be I&#8217;d imagine sizeable majority of your users who are on currently on the classic theme, they&#8217;ve probably got a menu in that theme, and they&#8217;re going to be thinking of, so what&#8217;s the process when I come to switch to this block theme, what happens? And as I think Isabel mentioned earlier that, you know, the menus are reusable so they are saved. So the good thing about it is that when you switched to your block theme for 2022, and you go to the editor page and you click on your navigation block, the initial experience is probably going to see a lot of pages there, but what you can do is switch and select a different menu, and you can actually select your classic menu from your classic theme, and use that immediately within the block theme. So there&#8217;s none of this, oh I have to recreate my menu from scratch.</p>



<p>You know, all of that overhead. All you have to do is just select that menu from under the classic menus section and it will immediately appear. I think that&#8217;s a really powerful thing. And again, if you switch from a block theme to another block theme, the same process. You can select the menu created in theme A and use that in theme B, even though there&#8217;s completely different styling and that&#8217;s really, really powerful,</p>



<p>Should also mention that if you do import a classic menu then it is a import. It is a copy. And your original classic menus is retained as was. This is perfect if you want to just experiment with full site editing, because what you can do is, you know, spin up a local copy of your site or a staging site. You can switch on to Twenty Twenty-Two, import your classic menu. Have a play around with that, see what you can achieve and then when you&#8217;re finished or if you don&#8217;t like it, you can switch back to your old theme and your classic menu will be still there as was, no changes at all. So that&#8217;s really confidence inspiring, I think these sort of flows allow people to just dip their toe in the water, so to speak.</p>



<p>[00:48:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s a really good point because every interaction that I&#8217;ve had with 5.9 so far has been basically on a vanilla site. I hadn&#8217;t really thought about the consequences of going to a block-based theme on a site which was already in existence with potentially lots and lots of complexity inside the menu. So well made. Thank you. And Isabel.</p>



<p>[00:48:42] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> I&#8217;d just add to what Dave was saying. If you are using a classic theme and you&#8217;re really curious about the navigation block and how it works, you can always make an experiment of adding a navigation block to a regular post because it&#8217;ll work in the post editor and just play around with it and see what you think. And by all means, do please give us feedback.</p>



<p>[00:49:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure that all of the things that we mentioned at the top of the podcast, ways to get in touch are listed as show notes. So please, if you are curious about this, go and have a play WordPress 5.9. See what you think. Play with the navigation block. These good folk will be very, very keen to hear whatever feedback you have, and go and check out the show notes on the podcast episode, and you can get in touch with them and let them know your thoughts. So thank you for joining us today. Dave Smith, Isabel Brison and Joen Asmussen. Thank you very much for joining me today.</p>



<p>[00:49:33] <strong>Isabel Brison:</strong> Thank you for hosting us.</p>



<p>[00:49:35] <strong>Dave Smith:</strong> It&#8217;s great to be here.</p>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"WPTavern: Yet Another Plugin Dependencies Discussion, Two Proposals This Time";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129830";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://wptavern.com/yet-another-plugin-dependencies-discussion-two-proposals-this-time";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6291:"<p class="has-drop-cap">It has been over nine years since the late Alex Mills opened a ticket on WordPress Trac titled <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/22316">Plugin Dependencies (Yet Another Plugin Dependencies Ticket)</a>. It is not the oldest of similar feature requests, but it is still open. Most predecessors were closed with the &#8220;wontfix&#8221; label, which is usually the final nail in the coffin of good and bad ideas alike.</p>



<p>The goal of the ticket is to create a system that allows one plugin to require one or more others to operate. Dependencies are nothing new in the programming world. Composer, the standard PHP package manager, is two weeks shy of turning 10 years old. On the JavaScript end, npm has been around for 12 years, and WordPress has heavily embraced it for core code.</p>



<p>However, those are developer tools. WordPress was built for users, and resolving plugin dependencies would need to happen from within the user interface.</p>



<p>Mills wrote in the ticket:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>It&#8217;s been a few years since we looked at plugin dependencies, and this still seems to be a feature people really, really want, especially for shared functionality that isn&#8217;t a plugin in itself. For example, a PHP library that isn&#8217;t popular enough to be in core but is popular enough to be bundled in multiple plugins.</p></blockquote>



<p>That statement is perhaps even more relevant today. In the past decade, many plugins have grown their own ecosystems of add-on plugins. The responsibility of making sure dependencies are installed has often fallen on the shoulders of end-users. Developers have come up with in-house solutions to ease that burden, and the <a href="https://github.com/TGMPA/TGM-Plugin-Activation">TGM Plugin Activation</a> script has become the <em>de facto</em> standard.</p>



<p>Relying on dependencies is almost a given in any plugin project, at least playing a part in the average build tools setup. It is probably safe to say that more WordPress plugin developers are comfortable coding in an environment that requires third-party code today than they would have been in WordPress&#8217;s formative years.</p>



<p>For a platform that has been working hard to modernize itself, resolving plugin dependencies is like traveling in a rocket ship to the Wild West.</p>



<p>The idea is not without precedent in the WordPress world. While it is a less complex case, WordPress automatically downloads and installs the parent when installing a child theme from the directory.</p>



<p>Many arguments for a plugin dependency system fall under the add-on scenario. The most obvious use case is WooCommerce and the dozens upon dozens of extensions written for it.</p>



<p>However, the other scenario that can reach deeper into how developers build on top of WordPress is the inclusion of frameworks and libraries. Right now, plugin authors must bundle third-party code within their projects and make sure it does not get loaded if already bundled within an entirely separate plugin.</p>



<p>Code reuse is one of the cornerstones of programming. The <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-plugin-directory-will-no-longer-accept-frameworks">WordPress plugin directory disallows new frameworks</a> and similar libraries.  However, we could revisit this decision with a dependency system in place.  It could open the possibility of making libraries available as standalone extensions that any other plugin could use.</p>



<p>For transparency, I have at least a dozen projects that fit under this category, packages sitting around that others could use. So, I at least have <em>some</em> skin in the game, and I am sure many others are in the same boat.</p>



<p>There are two pull requests on the WordPress GitHub repository for a plugin dependency system. There is also a Google Docs file that <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y5URlKW9GE89u7R3-z5o-0i5-9OVZd9HFaILhUE7mLA/edit">outlines both proposals in detail</a>.</p>



<p>Each asks developers to define dependencies via a plugin header. The following is an example that would require WooCommerce and Gutenberg:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: Sample
 * Requires Plugins: woocommerce, gutenberg
 */</code></pre>



<p>Both of the approaches are similar. From the user viewpoint, they would:</p>



<ul><li>Show an admin notice that there are dependencies to install.</li><li>Disallow deletion or deactivation of plugins without deleting or deactivating their required plugins.</li><li>Output a message in the plugin card on the manage plugins screen.</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/1547">The first implementation</a> is by Ari Stathopoulos. It creates an &#8220;activation queue&#8221; that would only activate a plugin once users have activated the required plugins. It also allows users to cancel activation requests.</p>



<img />Notices to activate dependencies.



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/1724">Andy Fragen&#8217;s solution</a> creates a new &#8220;Dependencies&#8221; tab on the plugin management screen. This approach would automatically deactivate any plugin with unmet dependencies and inform the user via an admin notice.</p>



<p>He has also released the <a href="https://github.com/afragen/plugin-dependencies-tab">Plugin Dependencies Tab</a> project separately on GitHub.</p>



<img />Plugin dependencies tab.



<p>There are still some practical concerns with both. Namely, what happens when there is a conflict between supported versions? The current proposals leave it up to the plugins to not break anything on the user&#8217;s end.</p>



<p>That may be the least confidence-inspiring piece of all of this. However, it is likely the most practical route. Plus, WordPress does not solve version conflicts in its current Wild West system.</p>



<p>A dependency solution could also be an opportunity for more code modernization. Seeing more developers embracing features like interfaces (contracts) would be welcome. Coding with dependents in mind means thinking through architectural problems differently than when any given project was a standalone plugin.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 16 Feb 2022 02:13:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"WPTavern: BP Rewrites Feature Plugin Now in Beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=130046";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"https://wptavern.com/bp-rewrites-feature-plugin-now-in-beta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3554:"<p>The ball is moving on a nine-year-old effort to migrate BuddyPress&#8217; custom URI parser to use WordPress&#8217; Rewrite API.  </p>



<p>BuddyPress currently requires sites to use <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/using-permalinks/#mod_rewrite-pretty-permalinks">pretty permalinks</a> in order to be compatible with its URL parser. The plugin analyzes the URL for whatever component you are viewing and performs internal checks to decide what to display there and determine the proper template file. This custom parser has been working well for years but has some drawbacks compared to WordPress&#8217; newer Rewrite API.</p>



<p>BuddyPress lead developer Boone Gorges summarized the problem in the original <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4954">ticket</a>:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>BP&#8217;s custom URI parser (living mostly in&nbsp;<code>bp_core_set_uri_globals()</code>) is slow, error-prone, non-extensible, non-testable, and out of step with WP best practices.</p></blockquote>



<p>In August of 2021, BuddyPress contributors moved this effort into the <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-rewrites">BP Rewrites</a> feature plugin with the eventual goal of getting it merged into BP Core after wider testing. The first beta was <a href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2022/02/13/bp-rewrites-1-0-0-beta1/">released</a> this week with a call for testing before it gets moved to the WordPress plugin directory.</p>



<p>BP Rewrites isn&#8217;t just an under-the-hood architectural improvement for BuddyPress, it also has several user-facing benefits: </p>



<ul><li>BuddyPress URLs customization improved and easier</li><li>Compatibility with plain permalinks</li><li>Improved Compliance with WordPress Standards</li><li>Improved User/Advanded user/Plugin developer/Theme designer BuddyPress experience</li></ul>



<p>Users who test the plugin will find a URLs customization screen (replacing the BP Pages screen) under the BuddyPress settings where page slugs can be easily changed. This is much more user-friendly than editing the wp-config.php file.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;When you deactivate the plugin, <code>buddypress</code> post type’s items are switched back to regular pages and you get them back into the corresponding WordPress Administation edit screen,&#8221; BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet said. &#8220;Post metas are still there in case you want to activate BP Rewrites back (this can happen when you’re testing another BuddyPress plugin). If you absolutely want to get rid of these post metas, you can delete the BuddyPress pages, create new ones and redo the page mapping from the BuddyPress Pages settings screen.&#8221;</p>



<p>This isn&#8217;t something you want to test on a production site, as it&#8217;s still uncertain how BP Rewrites will interact with different plugins. Testers can <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-rewrites/issues">report bugs as issues</a> on the plugin&#8217;s GitHub repository.</p>



<p>&#8220;There’s no secret: the only way to have enough confidence into this backward compatibility mechanism to start thinking of merging BP Rewrites into BuddyPress Core is to test, test, and test again,&#8221; Viet said.</p>



<p>When discussing BP Rewrites&#8217; progress earlier this year, Viet advised the feature plugin stay as an add-on for at least two major BuddyPress releases. This will give developers the chance to ensure there are fewer plugin conflicts before merging into BuddyPress core.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 15 Feb 2022 22:48:14 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21:"Matt: Junk Your Jabra";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=55546";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:38:"https://ma.tt/2022/02/junk-your-jabra/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1105:"<p>I usually wouldn&#8217;t do a post about this, but I was so surprised I had to share. I picked up a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WK5CZYY/">Jabra Evolve2 30 UC wired headset, with USB-C</a>, because my friend Hugo loves the wireless Jabra and I&#8217;ve been using an older USB-A headset and thought it would be nice to not need an adapter. I also thought for $89 it must be good. The reviews were also really solid (4.3 on Amazon right now).</p>



<p><strong>Do not</strong> buy this headset. There was a constant buzz/hum in the speaker, people sounded lower quality, and the mic also was lower quality. On the plus side, it was a nice build quality and comfort.</p>



<p>For <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07P76F99F/?tag=photomatt08-20">$29 cheaper ($60) the Sennheiser SC 135 USB-C</a> had better speaker, way better mic quality, very nice build and comfort. Get that one instead.</p>



<p>So <a href="https://ma.tt/2020/03/dont-mute-get-a-better-headset/">don&#8217;t mute, get a better headset</a>. <a href="https://krisp.ai/">Krisp.ai</a> is still great, too.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 15 Feb 2022 03:54:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"WPTavern: Gutenberg Contributors Explore More Advanced Template Creation";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129991";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-explore-more-advanced-template-creation";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4519:"<p>Gutenberg design contributors are <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37407">exploring</a> how the template creation UI can be updated to expand the types of templates that user can create using the Site Editor. In WordPress 5.9 users can edit any template that a theme includes, but template creation is limited to a few basics: </p>



<ul><li>Front page</li><li>Single</li><li>Page</li><li>Archive</li><li>Search</li><li>404</li><li>Index</li></ul>



<p>Many of these basic templates are already in use by FSE themes. Users will only see the option to create templates (from this limited list) that their theme hasn&#8217;t already introduced. Opening up template creation to the wider world of WordPress theme templates would enable so much more customization.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>Contributors are exploring adding the ability to create category, author, tag, attachment, taxonomy, date, CPT (custom post types), templates for a specific post or page, and &#8220;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/36860">general</a>&#8221; templates.</p>



<p>Automattic designer James Koster shared a short video demonstration of what he imagined the flow for this might look like. </p>



<p>&#8220;What I felt worked well was separating templates by their specificity,&#8221; Koster said. &#8220;That is to say: templates that serve a static purpose (<code>404</code>, <code>front-page</code>, <code>*-$slug</code> etc) are grouped together, and templates with a dynamic purpose appear beneath.</p>



Video Credit: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37407#issuecomment-1032512081">James Koster</a>



<p>&#8220;This arrangement elevates the prominence of creating templates for a specific context – which I think is likely to be quite a popular flow – while still making it very simple to add common templates like <code>page</code>.&#8221;</p>



<p>He suggested that the &#8220;Advanced&#8221; section at the bottom of the menu could house templates that are less likely to be used, such as taxonomy or date.</p>



<p>This is isn&#8217;t guaranteed to be the UI that lands for advanced template creation but it&#8217;s one exploration of how it could work.</p>



<p>WordPress developer Steve Graboski commented on how CPT template creation through the Site Editor would give users more freedom to change the site, while reducing the number of theme files developers need to maintain:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Like several other web developers, I help manage a WP Multisite implementation. If the Site Editor allowed devs like us to make CPT templates, it would make for a profound improvement to our experience with WordPress.</p><p>For starters, we could remove several child themes that exist only to provide our departments with CPT layouts, archives, and search pages. The only files we would need are the plugins that define the CPTs. Who wouldn&#8217;t love a less complicated repo?</p><p>The advantages stretch past the dev team. In theory, we could offer our editors the ability to edit these CPT templates, no coding required. This would enable our non-programming co-workers to change template layouts without relying on our assistance. The editors get more power over their sites, and the developers gain more hours of productivity.</p></blockquote>



<p>The idea of putting CPT template creation inside the Site Editor prompted participants in the discussion to consider making the creation of the CPTs themselves more user friendly.</p>



<p>&#8220;I enjoy the idea that core might provide a UI for CPT creation, sometimes I want a CPT, but don&#8217;t want to have to pull out the code editor to do it, especially if it&#8217;s going to have pretty much the same capabilities as a post,&#8221; WordPress developer Aurooba Ahmed said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Creating templates for <em>existing</em> CPTs feels like table stakes, but also a fairly developer oriented solution because it requires the CPT to be registered in the first place,&#8221; Koster said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Thinking further along the road&#8230; I wonder if there&#8217;s a world where the Site Editor could enable users to add modules like &#8216;Portfolio&#8217; or &#8216;Testimonials.&#8217; These modules could register the CPT and create all the necessary templates in a single flow. With block patterns and other tools available to us we could potentially make this quite a compelling experience.&#8221; </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 15 Feb 2022 02:20:39 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"WPTavern: Clarity Ad Blocker for WordPress Announced, Receives Mixed Reactions";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129980";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"https://wptavern.com/clarity-ad-blocker-for-wordpress-announced-receives-mixed-reactions";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8007:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Stanislav Khromov announced <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/clarity-ad-blocker/">Clarity</a>, a plugin for hiding obtrusive banners, via <a href="https://twitter.com/khromov/status/1493151526306693122">Twitter</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/advancedwp/posts/5094252490636924">Advanced WordPress</a> (AWP) Facebook group today. It was first pushed to WordPress.org around a year ago, but the developer seems to be just now publicizing it.</p>



<p>The <a href="https://wp-clarity.dev/">Clarity website</a> describes its mission as: &#8220;Ads, upsells, and analytics banners have been running rampant in our WordPress dashboards for too long. It&#8217;s time to make them go away, once and for all.&#8221;</p>



<p>Clarity does not come with a settings screen. Once users active it, it attempts to hide banners and other notifications falling outside of its &#8220;acceptable ads policy,&#8221; which is <a href="https://github.com/khromov/clarity/blob/master/acceptable-ads-policy.md">currently a draft</a> that Khromov has encouraged feedback on. This policy covers plugins that ask for reviews, inform users of discounts, or prompt them to upgrade to a commercial version.</p>



<p>The plugin&#8217;s goal is to hide those notices unless they are:</p>



<ul><li>Shown only on an options page that belongs to the plugin or theme and nowhere else.</li><li>Shown only to Administrator role users.</li><li>Not intrusive or distracting.</li><li>Not displayed in the main column, but rather in an &#8220;aside.&#8221;</li></ul>



<p>The plugin does include a link on the plugins management screen to report unwanted banners. It leads to a <a href="https://github.com/khromov/clarity/issues/new?assignees=khromov&labels=filter-request&template=1-report-notification.md&title=Plugin%2FTheme+name%3A+">pre-filled issued template</a> on Clarity&#8217;s GitHub repository.</p>



<img />Report unwanted banner link.



<p>The announcement was well-received by many on AWP, judging by the likes from members. However, several vocalized their opposition to the idea. Some called it &#8220;unethical&#8221; and &#8220;damaging&#8221; to the ecosystem.</p>



<p>Ads are a fact of life. They generate the necessary revenue for companies to continue maintaining their current products and building new ones. The WordPress industry is no different in that regard. However, these are often small companies where the wrong placement in the admin can mean the difference between creating new jobs and barely scraping by.</p>



<p>Freemium products are one of the ways that shops provide free features to end-users while also making a commercially-viable solution that keeps their business running. Banners for ads and user ratings are often the most effective methods of making a sale or generating more interest in the project.</p>



<p>&#8220;By creating an ad blocker &#8211; your selfish disregard to the commercial realities of [open-source] damages a delicate ecosystem,&#8221; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/advancedwp/posts/5094252490636924/?comment_id=5095139490548224&__cft__[0]=AZXnbECB2CcPnlx-pb3V8SA5Po9FYTj8FmUjpTEGWVIkHlskFHD4WV_wSpxMIBK95oHETSrZVtwTVwdAGx4316M6APCJ4ezP7CtaXvl4GFY2VcVWfx8c_QZIVbOh-_yCHxWDKsmMecIInvI1MIeQuqoh&__tn__=R]-R">wrote one developer</a><a href="https://wptavern.com/feed#footnotes-1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> in the AWP thread. &#8220;If you use a free product &#8211; pay for it by tolerating a few nags.&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;The idea of taking someone&#8217;s work product, but bypassing their ads, is at a minimum unethical,&#8221; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/advancedwp/posts/5094252490636924/?comment_id=5095382177190622&__cft__[0]=AZXnbECB2CcPnlx-pb3V8SA5Po9FYTj8FmUjpTEGWVIkHlskFHD4WV_wSpxMIBK95oHETSrZVtwTVwdAGx4316M6APCJ4ezP7CtaXvl4GFY2VcVWfx8c_QZIVbOh-_yCHxWDKsmMecIInvI1MIeQuqoh&__tn__=R]-R">wrote another developer</a>. &#8220;Nobody is forced to capitalize on the fruit of anyone else&#8217;s labor.&#8221;</p>



<p>Free software means giving users the freedom to change all that. If another developer comes along and blocks the behavior that those users want, it is fair game. Playing in the free-software sandbox means accepting that others can and will change the code you write every now and again. WordPress makes it even easier to do so via its hooks system.</p>



<p>Clarity is merely one tiny fish swimming in a vast ocean of plugins. If it had over a million active installs, maybe it would be realistically put a dent in some commercial shops&#8217; profits. However, that is not the case. Any claim that it is damaging to the ecosystem is tip-toeing into hyperbole.</p>



<p>If it did have that many active installs, perhaps it would be a wake-up call for developers, a warning that users want to see change.</p>



<p>The question is: <em>Do most users need such a plugin?</em></p>



<p>Maybe not, but it depends. The directory guidelines require that any admin notices &#8212; where most of the &#8220;offending&#8221; ads are located &#8212; <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-org/detailed-plugin-guidelines/#11-plugins-should-not-hijack-the-admin-dashboard">must be dismissible</a>. However, the standard is relatively loose in definition. Some plugins show the ad to every user logged into the admin, requiring each to dismiss it. Others refresh themselves on plugin updates, requiring additional action by the user. If a plugin is updated multiple times per week and adds a new admin-wide banner each time, it almost feels like it is skirting the rules, <em>just a little bit</em>.</p>



<p>Advertisements and other notices can also be problematic on client builds. Freelancers and agencies sometimes get that frantic call when a plugin update displays a new pro upsell message to clients who thought they had already paid what was required for their site. There are some ways to mitigate this, but they are not all 100% fool-proof in every scenario. Clarity would just be another wrench in the ol&#8217; toolbox for tightening up those client sites, creating some extra peace of mind.</p>



<p>The plugin itself is not &#8220;intelligent.&#8221; It does not learn and grow on its own, evolving as more plugins are created. It requires a manual process of creating a curated list of selectors to target via CSS. The plugin hides banners according to this custom set of definitions.</p>



<p>As long as third-party developers do not create an <em>ad-block blocker</em> method within their own plugins, Clarity should keep some of the notices at bay. It is unlikely most even knew about this project until its announcement. With it now in the public sphere, I have few doubts that some will override it. It may depend on individual stances on user choice in advertising.</p>



<p>Clarity provides a method for plugin and theme authors to opt into the blocking of their own advertisements. They only need to check for a PHP constant to do so:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>if ( defined( 'CLARITY_AD_BLOCKER_ENABLED' ) &amp;&amp; CLARITY_AD_BLOCKER_ENABLED ) {
        // You should not serve ads or upsells to this user.
}</code></pre>



<p>I doubt most would willingly buy into this system. However, I like the idea. The users who go through the trouble of installing and activating an ad-blocking plugin are unlikely the target audience anyway.</p>



<p>Clarity is a decent option for users who want to find a little calm amidst the noise, but it has its limits.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/clarity-ad-blocker/">Clarity &#8211; Ad blocker for WordPress</a></blockquote>
</div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-tavern-separator" />



<h2 id="footnotes">Footnotes:</h2>



<p id="footnotes-1">1. Advanced WordPress is a private Facebook group.  Therefore, I did not include the names of the quoted sources in this article.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 15 Feb 2022 01:26:48 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Matt: Thirty Eight";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=55514";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://ma.tt/2022/01/thirty-eight/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4642:"<p>This is an unusually late birthday post (still backdated to January 11). I woke up on my actual birthday and was not feeling it. I was locked down even more strictly than January 2021 because I was trying to be extra cautious prior to a surgery my Mom had later in the month. I was also on a fairly strict diet and exercise regime after slipping into a weight range I wasn&#8217;t comfortable with.</p>



<p>So I was feeling extra isolated, had a strange pain in my lower back, and I just felt old all over. I thought of the <a href="https://genius.com/12523">Drake line</a>, &#8220;I&#8217;m really too young to be feeling this old.&#8221; (Maybe <a href="https://genius.com/Garth-brooks-much-too-young-to-feel-this-damn-old-lyrics">originally from Garth Brooks</a>?)</p>



<p>I meditated with a <a href="https://www.calm.com/">Daily Calm</a> from <a href="https://jeffwarren.org/">Jeff Warren</a> called &#8220;The Boggle,&#8221; which unfortunately I can&#8217;t hotlink but here&#8217;s how it starts: <em>Sometimes we&#8217;re in the boggle, life is throwing everything at us: complicated situations, complicated relationships, we have all these feelings, all these impulses pulling us in different directions, and we have no idea what to do. No idea how to resolve it all. Even no idea what self-care strategy to implement right now. So what&#8217;s interesting about the boggle is that there&#8217;s the challenge of the situation itself, or situations, and there&#8217;s the added challenge of the confusion of it, the scrambling to make sense of everything. So we&#8217;re going to try something different, we&#8217;re going to stop scrambling and accept, even forgive, the boggle. We&#8217;re going to let ourselves be right here, inside any confusion, and take a break from trying to fix any of it. That&#8217;s the itinerary, let&#8217;s go.</em> It hit close to home, and I&#8217;ve ended up returning to that meditation several times since.</p>



<p>The day really shaped up, though! Friends surprised me with a trip to <a href="https://www.teamlab.art/">a Teamlab exhibit</a> at a museum that was closed on Tuesdays but they got opened up just for us. The museum was magical, but the best part was seeing friends I wasn&#8217;t expecting to, even if masked and relatively distanced. I wore a new <a href="https://ma.tt/files/2022/02/IMG_7081-scaled.jpeg">comfy matching tie die outfit too</a>, because, why not? Ended the day with a small dinner with Mom and three friends.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t have any particular wisdom from this birthday except no matter how you feel, take some Advil and keep going.</p>



<p>This year on the personal side I&#8217;d like to take more silent retreats, get settled at home and out of liminal states, particularly construction projects, and listen to more operas. On the work side I&#8217;d like to set up alternative ecosystems for people tired of the traditional options for social with <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>, listening with <a href="https://www.pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a>, and writing <a href="https://dayoneapp.com/">with Day One</a>. (Update: A few weeks after my birthday <a href="https://photomatt.tumblr.com/post/675023779369566208/how-the-snowflakes-won">I announced I&#8217;m working on Tumblr full-time</a>.) Finally, I&#8217;d like to do my birthday post on time next year, but I&#8217;m forgiving myself for prioritizing friends and family that day. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f604.png" alt="😄" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<p>All birthday posts: <a href="https://ma.tt/2003/01/bday/">19</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2004/01/so-im-20/">20</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2005/01/hot-barely-legal-matt/">21</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2006/01/matt-22/">22</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2007/01/twenty-three/">23</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2008/01/twenty-four/">24</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2009/01/twenty-five/">25</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2010/01/twenty-six/">26</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2011/01/twenty-seven/">27</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2012/01/twenty-eight/">28</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2013/01/twenty-nine/">29</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2014/01/matt-3-0/">30</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2015/01/thirty-one/">31</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2016/01/thirty-two/">32</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2017/01/thirty-three/">33</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2018/01/thirty-four/">34</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2019/01/thirty-five/">35</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2020/01/thirty-six/">36</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2021/01/thirty-seven/">37</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2022/01/thirty-eight/">38</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 12 Feb 2022 08:45:02 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Developer Hours, from Zero to Hero Series and Adoption paths — Weekend Edition 203";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=20426";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:117:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-developer-hours-from-zero-to-hero-series-and-adoption-paths-weekend-edition-203/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24084:"<p>Howdy, </p>





<p><br />Among other links, today&#8217;s edition links to three posts about technology adoption, feature adoption, FSE adoption. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Tammie Lister and Anne McCarthy shine their light on different paths you can take on your journey to explore and conquer the new features,  for contributors, theme developers, site owners or site builders. </p>



<p>The most approachable parts of designers are <strong>Block Patterns</strong>. For inspiration, visit Tammie Lister&#8217;s, <a href="http://patternspiration.com/">Patternspiration</a> site, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/">WordPress Pattern Directory</a> or install the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/extendify/">Extendify plugin</a>. </p>



<p>In any case, don&#8217;t go it alone. Every week, you can join other WordPress practitioners on various levels on the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/"><em>Social Learning Spaces</em></a> or in Hallway Hangouts. You find a list of the upcoming events below. </p>



<p>As always, there is more in this edition from generous people that accompany all of us along our journey. </p>



<p>Grab your favorite hot or cold beverages and enjoy this Weekend&#8217;s Edition. As always, let me know what you think, or what you need on your block editor journey. </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br />Birgit</p>



<p>PS: &#8220;If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.&#8221; African Proverb</p>



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<p><strong>Table of contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#highlights">Highlights</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#building-blocks-and-plugins-for-the-editor">Building blocks and plugins for the editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#building-themes-adopting-to-fse">Building themes, adopting to FSE</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#content-creators-and-site-owners-tools">Content Creators and Site Owners Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#wordpress-events">Hallway Hangouts, Webinars, and WordPress Social Learning events.</a></li></ul></div>
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<h2 id="highlights">Highlights</h2>



<p>Join us again <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/">February 22, 2022 on 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</a> for another Gutenberg Developer Hours. </p>



<a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/"><img /></a>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<p><strong>Josepha Haden</strong> <strong>Chomphosy</strong>, Executive Director of the WordPress open-source Project, published <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/02/11/a-theory-of-technology-adoption-in-the-wordpress-project/"><strong>A Theory of Technology Adoption in the WordPress&nbsp;Project</strong></a>. </p>



<p>In the introduction, Chomphosy quoted Calestous Juma <em>&#8220;Many of the dominant technologies that we take for granted have weathered moments of social tension and threats of succession.&#8221; </em></p>



<p>&#8220;As we head into the iterative part of Gutenberg’s phase 2, there are a few things that we should be aware of that will motivate or inspire our community of users to take a fresh look at the WordPress editor.&nbsp;In my observation, that breaks down into three parts.&#8221; She wrote. </p>



<ul><li>Apparent usefulness (to the extender) – aka, what does this do for me?</li><li>Apparent ease of use (to the extender and user) – aka, is the difficulty ≤ the current technology?</li><li>Apparent trustworthiness (social proof/social sentiment)&nbsp;–&nbsp;aka, do my trusted friends trust this thing? </li></ul>



<p>Intrigued? <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/02/11/a-theory-of-technology-adoption-in-the-wordpress-project/">Deeper insights in the post.</a>  </p>



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<p>At WCUS 2021,  <strong>Helen Hou-Sandí</strong> talked about  <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2021/12/23/helen-hou-sandi-a-voice-for-the-new-white-house-administration-with-the-block-editor/">custom blocks development for the new website of White House</a>. You can watch the recording now on WordPress.tv.</p>




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</div>Video: <strong>Helen Hou-Sandí</strong> WordCamp US 2021 




<p><strong>10up</strong> recently published more details of the project on the company blog. <strong>&#8220;<a href="https://10up.com/our-work/white-house/">A Voice For A New White House Administration</a>. </strong> Videos enrich the various aspects of the work. Quite a few interesting aspects of the design and build process are noted. For instance:  &#8220;To simplify the content creation experience, 10up removed sidebar options in favor of new blocks for the featured image, category, and date that are displayed in the editor in the same position that they appear on the page.&#8221; </p>



<p>Take your time to digest the learned lessons and experience reported by one of the leading WordPress agencies. There are quite a few takeaways that might help you navigated the block universe of WordPress. <br /><em>Thank you to <a href="https://mailchi.mp/poststatus/485">Post_Status</a> for surfacing this blog post.</em></p>



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<p><strong>Matias Ventura</strong>, principal architect of Gutenberg was our guest on the <strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world/">60th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog</a></strong>. Grzegorz (Greg) Ziolkowski and I  discussed with him way to restrict customization in a full-site editing world, the Gutenberg 12.5 release and some changes coming with WordPress 6.0</p>




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<p><strong>Subscribe to the&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a>&nbsp;podcast </strong><br />🎙️&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>&nbsp;|<br />🎙️&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a>&nbsp;</p>



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<p>✨ ✨ <strong>Friendly Reminder: </strong><br /><strong>Eleven days left to respond to </strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/"><strong>All Things Media</strong> <strong>Call for Testing</strong></a> </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/">English version</a> by Anne McCarthy</li><li><a href="https://ja.wordpress.org/team/2022/02/04/2637/">Japanese version</a> by Mimi and Akira Tachibana</li><li><a href="https://it.wordpress.org/team/2022/02/07/esplorazione-per-il-programma-fse-tutto-quello-che-fa-media/">Italian version</a> by Piermario Orecchioni </li></ul>



<p>It&#8217;s a great way to collaborate on ideas on how to integrate the rapidly growing WordPress <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">Photo Directory</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/openverse/">Openverse</a> into the block editor. </p>



<h2 id="building-blocks-and-plugins-for-the-editor">Building blocks and plugins for the editor</h2>



<p>One change in 5.9 to the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/09/cover-block-refactor-dev-note/"><strong>Cover block</strong> is now documented in this DevNote</a> by <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz">Glen Davis</a></strong>. He explains the changes made during refactoring of the Cover block. He also notes that theme and plugin developer were surprised by these changes, as there was no documentation published until now. The most considerable changes was that opacity styling for background color was moved. It broke some sites. </p>



<p>This has already been fixed, and is scheduled to deploy as part of the WordPress 5.9.1 release. Until then, you can use Davis&#8217; suggested work around or rollback your WordPress 5.9 upgrade with this powerful nifty little plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/core-rollback/"><strong>&#8220;Core Rollback&#8221; by Andy Fragen.</strong></a></p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jonihalabi">Joni Halabi</a></strong> found a way to <a href="https://jhalabi.com/blog/core-dynamic-render-override"><strong>Overriding WP core: Dynamic blocks edition</strong></a>. She shares how she replace the <code>render_callback</code> function for the Core RSS block to render a customized HTML on the front end. </p>



<p><em>If you have similar needs, you can override a single argument to avoid unregistering a block via <code><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/register_block_type_args/3:45">register_block_type_args</a></code> or modify the content generated for the block with <code><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/render_block_this-name/">render_block_this-name</a></code></em></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s main (trunk) branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total" /></p>




<h2 id="building-themes-adopting-to-fse">Building themes, adopting to FSE</h2>



<p>Next week Friday, <strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> and <strong>Sarah Snow</strong> will offer the fifth session in their five-part series: <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283927573/"><strong>Zero to Block Theme Series #5: From Site Editor to Theme</strong></a>. The recordings of the first four parts are available on YouTube: </p>



<ul><li>Session 1:&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/ntT1GT6Yr3w" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Foundations</a></li><li>Session 2:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjSZOJZspe0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Theme.json</a></li><li>Session 3:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxIjfkc9O0Q" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Theme.json continued &#8211; Styles</a></li><li>Session 4:&nbsp;<a href="https://youtu.be/APsu8Jc570A" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Templates and Template Parts</a></li></ul>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published in the series of Core Editor Improvement &#8220;Core Editor Improvement: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/09/core-editor-improvement-curated-experiences-with-locking-apis-theme-json/"><strong>Curated experiences with locking APIs &amp; theme.json</strong></a>. She explores <em>&#8220;some practical ways you can perhaps apply these locking options to your individual projects to both provide some guardrails and still allow users to make things their own.&#8221;</em> If you are working on creating an editor experience following the strong standards for publishing and brand design, this post is for you. </p>



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<p><strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>posted a short video on <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hNXRdfYx7g">Locking down theme.json</a></strong> and discusses how to control the effect of adding a theme.json file to your classic theme.</p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jameskoster">James Koster</a></strong> showed in his post <strong><a href="https://jameskoster.design/2022/02/04/expanding-template-creation-options-in-the-site-editor/">Expanding template creation options in the Site Editor</a></strong> and embedded videos early concepts on creating full page prototypes. You can follow along <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37407">the PR on GitHub</a>. And if you have an idea or opinion, add it there. </p>



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<p>One of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">47 Block Themes</a> built for full site editing in the WordPress repository is <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/miniblock-ooak/">Miniblock OOAK</a> </strong>by <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>. She describes it as &#8220;One page, all the blocks. If all you need is one fully customizable page, it does not get simpler than this.&#8221; <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> took it for a spin and posted his review on the WPTavern:  <a href="https://wptavern.com/miniblock-ooak-and-outside-the-box-ideas-in-the-theme-directory"><strong>Miniblock OOAK and Outside-the-Box Ideas in the Theme Directory</strong></a></p>



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<p>In her article, <a href="https://extendify.com/gutenberg-full-site-editing-does-not-have-to-be-full/"><strong>Gutenberg Full Site Editing does not have to be full</strong></a>, <strong>Tammie Lister </strong>lays out a path for gradual adoption of the various tools  coming with WordPress 5.9., that starts with stopping to use the term Full-Site Editing. That term hides the fact that it&#8217;s a conglomerate of many pieces for each could stand alone and be integrated separately with existing sites. <em>&#8220;My best advice to anyone looking to start on this journey right now is to start with patterns, move to theme.json, and from there, gradually move through whatever makes sense for you.&#8221;</em> Lister wrote. </p>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> suggested a similar path in her post from last fall, that&#8217;s still immensely relevant <a href="https://nomad.blog/2021/09/29/sharing-approaches-for-fse-feature-adoption/"><strong>Sharing Approaches for FSE Feature&nbsp;Adoption</strong></a>. As always, Anne is ahead of us all, so I bring the article back to everyone&#8217;s attention. McCarthy divided her advice for different kind of users, some are for site owners and site builders, others for theme developers. Then she defined four level and explained each one with the matching tools and features, that collectively make out Full-Site Editing. </p>



<p>If you are struggling to see the forest for the trees, let Lister and McCarthy guide you on the first steps of your journey. Or join us for <strong>Gutenberg Developer Hours</strong> on <strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/">February 22, 2022, at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</a></strong></p>



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<h2 id="content-creators-and-site-owners-tools">Content Creators and Site Owners Tools</h2>



<p>Let&#8217;s celebrate with <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> the latest updates of WooCommerce Blocks and Storefront block, both premium plugins. They now leverage the new full-site-editing features of WordPress 5.9 and allow  for editing your store&#8217;s templates through the site editor. In this video Marsland demos, how to edit a Single Product page as well as a product category page. </p>



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<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reported on an addition to the Kadence Blocks collection: <a href="https://wptavern.com/kadence-blocks-2-2-4-adds-lottie-animations-block"><strong>Kadence Blocks 2.2.4&nbsp;Adds Lottie Animations Block</strong></a>.&#8221;Kadence Block’s implementation is in the free version of the plugin and includes block controls for further customizing the animations. Users can adjust playback settings, like autoplay, toggle controls on/off, and change the playback speed and loop settings. The animation’s size, padding, and margins, can all be customized.&#8221; Animations can be a fun tool to add a little whimsy to a site, usually, I find them overdone and quite distracting. So use at your own risk 🙂 </p>



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<p><strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> host of the <em>WordPress Jukebox </em>podcast had  <strong>Chris Lubkert</strong> and <strong>Rich Tabor </strong>on his show and discussed with them <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/13-chris-lubkert-and-rich-tabor-on-building-sites-with-extendify"><strong>Building Sites With Extendify</strong></a>. You can learn more about their vision for a future of page layouts and block patterns in WordPress.  Interestingly enough, Extendify&#8217;s 1400 block patterns and page layouts are all based only on core blocks, coupled with their unique utility design system. </p>



<p>Rich Tabor also is a contributor on the Gutenberg repository and has been exchanging ideas and solutions with the Gutenberg team since the early days of the block editor in 2017. </p>



<p><em>Nathan Wrigley has increased the frequency of publishing: After three years without it <a href="https://wptavern.com/feed/podcast">WordPress Jukebox </a>is now a weekly show again! You can subscribe to it on your favorite podcaster and you never miss another show. </em></p>



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<p>In his latest video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OME2hZcUvUE"><strong>Future of WordPress Page Builders is Gutenberg</strong></a>, <strong>Matt Medeiros </strong>monologues about page builders in the era of Full-site Editing in Core. What do you think? </p>



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<h2 id="wordpress-events">Hallway Hangouts, Webinars, and WordPress Social Learning events.</h2>



<p>As shared last week, Anne McCarthy has a new FSE Outreach Program Exploration for you. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/"> All Things Media</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress Photo directory</a> She invites you to the upcoming Hallway Hangout on <strong>February 16th, 12:30 pm ET / 17:30 pm UTC</strong> to with her and a designer from the Openverse project to chat about the call for testing. The link will be shared in the WPSlack channel <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C015GUFFC00">#fse-outreach-experiment.</a> </p>



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<p>If you can&#8217;t make it, <strong>Courtney Robertson</strong> invites you to the GoDaddy Event &#8220;<a href="https://events.godaddy.com/events/details/godaddy-events-godaddy-pro-online-presents-call-for-testing-wordpress-media/"><strong>Call For Testing WordPress Media&#8221;</strong></a> on February 18th, 2022 at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC.  </p>



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<p>On <strong>Feb 23rd 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</strong> <strong>Hallway Hangout: Navigation Block. </strong>Designers and developers working on the feature will join Anne McCarthy to chat about the new feature. Join the WPSlack <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C015GUFFC00">#fse-outreach-experiments</a> channel for details and zoom links. </p>



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<p><strong>February 14, 2022 – 4 pm ET / 21:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283237147/"><strong>Exploring Theme Blocks</strong></a><strong> </strong>with Wes Theron</p>



<p><strong>February 15, 2022 &#8211; 4:30 pm ET / 21:30 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283844528/"><strong>Adding Custom CSS to Your Site</strong></a> with Hugh Lashbrooke </p>



<p><strong>February 16, 2022 1 pm ET / 18:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283827100/"><strong>Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Full Site Editing</strong></a> with Sarah Snow via WordPress Social Learning</p>



<p><strong>February 18, 2022 1 pm ET / 18:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283927573/"><strong>Zero to Block Theme Series #5: From Site Editor to Theme</strong></a> with Daisy Olsen and Sarah Snow </p>



<p><strong>February 21, 2022 &#8211; 12 pm (noon) ET / 17:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283644263/"><strong>Hello Blocks! Coding a custom block</strong></a> with Wes Theron and Ryan Welcher. </p>



<p><strong>February 22, 2022 &#8211; 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/">Gutenberg Developer Hours</a></strong> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and expert panel </p>



<p><strong>March 1, 2022 5 pm ET / 22:00 UTC</strong> <br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283842451/"><strong>Intro to Templates and Template Parts</strong></a> with Wes Theron </p>



<p><em>Featured Image: <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/97061fef69/">Jennifer Bourn &#8220;Pile of blue glass chunks in the sun&#8221;</a> found in the WordPress Photo Directory</em></p>




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<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 12 Feb 2022 03:09:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"WPTavern: WordPress Photo Directory Gets Its Own Make Team";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129821";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-photo-directory-gets-its-own-make-team";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4799:"<img />



<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a> is taking off, growing to more than 1,400 approved free photos in under two months. After a successful call for testers and volunteer photo moderators, the directory has an enthusiastic team of contributors ready to move the project forward. </p>



<p>Angela Jin&#8217;s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/01/13/wordpress-photo-directory-call-for-volunteers/">pitch for photo moderators</a> resonated with a lot of people for a couple reasons &#8211; it outlined an approachable time commitment (1-2 hrs/wk) and didn&#8217;t require any special skills beyond appreciation of photography:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Photo Directory Moderators can expect to spend 1-2 hours in coming weeks learning about the Photo Directory and current moderation tools, and discussing future best practices. To keep the Photo Directory a thriving resource, Moderators are needed for the foreseeable future, perhaps dedicating up to an hour of their time each week.&nbsp;</p></blockquote>



<p>Nearly two dozen people responded to this call. It was a good strategy for building a wide base of contributors instead of depending on a smaller team that would be required to devote more hours.</p>



<p>This week Jin formalized the new contributor group, announcing the Photo Directory as <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/02/10/new-wordpress-make-team-the-photo-directory/">a new WordPress Make team</a>. Collaboration is now happening at the new #photos channel in WordPress Slack and the team will begin publishing  at <a href="http://make.wordpress.org/photos">make.wordpress.org/photos</a>. They will be working on two handbooks &#8211; a public one and a private one that will outline processes for moderators handling topics like curation and inappropriate content.</p>



<p>There has been some confusion about the difference between the WordPress Photo Directory and the Openverse project, which indexes 600 million Creative Commons licensed and public domain image and audio files. Openverse pulls from many different sources, and the WordPress Photo Directory is a new source that will be included with all images licensed under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0</a> license. </p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored Openverse contributor Zack Krida explained the difference between the WordPress Photo Directory and Openverse:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>The&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/"><strong>WordPress Photo Directory</strong></a><strong>&nbsp;</strong>is both a new curated source of free, high-quality photographs and a new submission tool for Openverse, powered by the WordPress community. Without it, you’d need to use Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, or other sources to submit your work to Openverse.</p></blockquote>



<p>Another way to contribute to the Photo Directory is by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/submit/">submitting photos</a>.  I am quite fond of making steel-cut oats for breakfast, so I decided to test out the submission process with a photograph of my oatmeal. The process is simple and takes less than a minute once you have already selected the image you want submit. Pending photographs are listed in a table after you submit, and the moderation queue for each account is limited to five at this time.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>I was surprised by one of the agreements before sending my photograph: &#8220;Photo must not contain any human faces.&#8221; The guidelines state that submissions cannot contain faces of people at this time for legal reasons. Hopefully, this limitation is being worked out before launch, because the directory needs faces to have the best chance at becoming a world class resource for free images.</p>



<p>No attribution is required for CC0 photos, but it would be nice to have an easy way to copy attribution info and credit the photographer with a link back to the individual photo listing. This would also be helpful for furthering adoption of the photo directory, with links back coming from around the web. I filed a meta trac <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6097">ticket</a> requesting the feature, as it looks like this is the best way to request an addition to the directory&#8217;s roadmap.</p>



<p>The Photo Directory has so much momentum right now and offers a  good opportunity to contribute back to the WordPress world without having to know how to code. Meetings have not yet started for the project, but contributors can jump in on the new Slack channel and subscribe to the new <a href="http://make.wordpress.org/photos/">Photo Directory blog</a> on the Make network once it launches.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 12 Feb 2022 02:14:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WPTavern: Block, FSE, Hybrid, Universal? What Do We Call These New WordPress Themes?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129860";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"https://wptavern.com/block-fse-hybrid-universal-what-do-we-call-these-new-wordpress-themes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7006:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Ellen Bauer, developer and co-owner of ElmaStudio, posed the question on Twitter last week that many have been asking. What do we call these new types of WordPress themes made from blocks? She was not the first to ask. The question also came up via the <a href="https://poststatus.com/">Post Status</a> Slack chat earlier this week.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Naming is still so confusing <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f914.png" alt="🤔" class="wp-smiley" /> Is it block themes, FSE themes, block-based themes or better FSE block themes? I see all of them being used for the same thing, let’s change that asap!!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Community?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Community</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FullSiteEditing?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FullSiteEditing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FSE?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FSE</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gutenberg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Gutenberg</a></p>&mdash; Ellen Bauer (@ellenbauer) <a href="https://twitter.com/ellenbauer/status/1490123705972031489?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2022</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>The short answer is that these new themes are &#8220;block themes.&#8221;</p>



<p>The WordPress Themes Team decided to use this terminology in December 2021. The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/12/15/themes-team-meeting-notes-december-14-2021/">consensus during their meeting</a> was to clarify the difference between block and classic themes.</p>



<p>The terminology has also grown organically as the new theming system has emerged. Block themes are themes that are literally made from blocks. The long-term goal should be to simply call them &#8220;themes,&#8221; but the &#8220;block&#8221; prefix will stick with us for a while.</p>



<p>The long answer is more nuanced. As Anne McCarthy noted in the Post Status discussion, there are four types of themes now:</p>



<ul><li>Block</li><li>Classic</li><li>Hybrid</li><li>Universal</li></ul>



<p>Technically, developers can create an entirely custom theming system. That is just how flexible WordPress is, but we will stick to the somewhat more official definitions. There are enough terms for our own little mini dictionary of theming as it is.</p>



<h2 id="block-themes">Block Themes</h2>



<img />Editing a block theme via the site editor.



<p>Block themes have been officially supported since WordPress 5.9&#8217;s release last month. They provide users access to new tools such as the site editor and global styles interfaces. These features have replaced many past settings pages, such as the customizer and widgets screens.</p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentytwo/">Twenty Twenty-Two</a> is the first default to support this new set of tools. There is also a small but growing number of other block themes.</p>



<p><em>Why do we not call them FSE themes?</em> Full Site Editing is a collection of components and not a single thing. WordPress has released several of these components before version 5.9, such as the template editor, block-based widgets, and <code>theme.json</code> support. In a sense, a classic theme with any level of feature support is also an FSE theme.</p>



<p>The thing that makes block themes different from classic themes is that they are built from HTML templates made entirely of blocks. This automatically enables the site editor, template editor, global styles interface, and more.</p>



<h2 id="classic-and-hybrid-themes">Classic and Hybrid Themes</h2>



<img />Customizing Twenty Twenty, a classic theme.



<p>I have grouped classic and hybrid themes together because there is no need to differentiate the two.</p>



<p>Classic WordPress themes are those that we have known and loved all of these years. They feature PHP-based templates in most cases. There are some, like <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/foxhound/">Foxhound</a>, that are primarily made of JavaScript. However, none have the necessary block HTML templates to qualify as a block theme.</p>



<p>Hybrid themes are classic themes that have adopted one or more FSE components, such as the template editor or <code>theme.json</code>.</p>



<p>I do not separate the two theme types because we have never done so before when themes adopt new features. For example, when the nav menus system was first introduced, there was no need to call themes something different based on whether they supported the new menu system. The same can be said for most other features in the past.</p>



<p>If anything, the official theme directory may need to expand its tags to include additional features as they arise. Filters allow users to search for the things they want from a theme.</p>



<h2 id="universal-themes">Universal Themes</h2>



<p>Universal themes work in both a classic and site editor context. Ben Dwyer offered a <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/10/06/universal-themes/">more thorough explanation</a> via the Theme Shaper blog last year:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Universal themes are an attempt to bridge the gap between the classic themes and block themes, by adding some layers to a block theme to make it work.</p><p>A Universal theme is a block theme that can use the Full Site Editor but can also be configured in a more classic way. That means that you can use classic WordPress tools, like the Customizer, Menus and Widgets dashboards as well as the Site Editor.</p></blockquote>



<p>I have not seen much appetite from developers for creating universal themes. I am not sure if any exist, at least not in the official directory.</p>



<p>It is too early to tell if they will eventually catch on with theme authors. Supporting both classic and modern WordPress tools likely only makes sense for the most popular themes. Their authors may need to rework their codebase, opting into more FSE features and transitioning from a classic/hybrid state to universal support. If the demand is there, some will undoubtedly meet it.</p>



<p>The support and maintenance burden would be unappealing for most. A clean break from classic is probably the best route for developers building with the latest WordPress features.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-tavern-separator" />



<p>Naming things is hard, but it is crucial to have equal footing among participants in discussions. The distinction between classic and block themes will likely be the most useful.</p>



<p>I doubt the terms matter much for the average WordPress user. They need to know whether a theme supports Feature X or Feature Y. It has been a while since theme tags (filters) were overhauled, and many are outdated.  They might be worth revisiting to ensure that we are meeting user needs today.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 12 Feb 2022 01:49:53 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:08:18 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Mon, 28 Feb 2022 10:00:09 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20220126143042";}