The Month in WordPress: August 2018
Many of the WordPress contribution teams have been working hard on the new WordPress editor, and the tools, services, and documentation surrounding it. Read on to find out more about this ongoing project, as well as everything else that has been happening around the WordPress community in August.
WordPress 4.9.8 is Released
WordPress 4.9.8 was released at the beginning of the month. While this was a maintenance release fixing 46 bugs, it was significant for Core development because it made a point of highlighting Gutenberg — the new WordPress editor that is currently in development (more on that below).
This release also included some important updates to the privacy tools that were added to Core earlier this year.
Want to get involved in building WordPress Core? Follow the Core team blog and join the #core channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
New WordPress Editor Development Continues
Active development continues on Gutenberg, the new editing experience for WordPress Core. The latest version features a number of important user experience improvements, including a new unified toolbar and support for a more focussed writing mode.
Users can test Gutenberg right now by installing the plugin, which currently has nearly 300,000 active installs. Along with that, the Gutenberg Handbook has some very useful information about how to use and develop for the new editor.
Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the #gutenberg tag on the Core team blog and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Planning Begins for the Next Global WordPress Translation Day
The Global WordPress Translation Day is a 24-hour event held online and all across the world. It is designed to bring communities together to translate WordPress into their local languages, and to help them connect with other communities doing the same thing.
There have been three Translation Days since April 2016, and the fourth edition is in the planning stages now. The Polyglots team, who organizes these events, is currently looking for input on the date, format, and content for the event and would love some feedback from the community.
Want to get involved in translating WordPress into your own language? Follow the Polyglots team blog and join the #polyglots channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.
Further Reading:
- The Update PHP page on WordPress.org has been revised and improved to make the reasons for upgrading more clear.
- The Mobile team is looking for people to help test the latest versions of the Android and iOS apps for WordPress.
- WordBits is a innovative new platform for publishing WordPress-based code snippets with the ability to download each snippet as a working plugin.
- The Community Team has some updates about how things are going with this year’s WordCamp Incubator program.
- The WordPress Support Forums now include a feature allowing forum volunteers to easily report a post to the moderators for a follow-up.
- WordCamp Kochi, India has unfortunately had to postpone their event due to floods in the region.
- WP Glossary is a new site that offers helpful definitions of words that you could encounter when using WordPress.
- A few WordPress community members have started a working group to tackle the idea of building diverse WordPress communities all across the world.
- A new Gutenberg Block Library is available, listing the details of the many blocks available for the new editor.
If you have a story we should consider including in the next “Month in WordPress” post, please submit it here.