In episode 24 of the WordPress Briefing, the Project’s Executive Director reviews three big-picture goals for the year: Increased Gutenberg adoption, support of all open source alternatives, and stewarding the open source ethos.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.
Credits
References
Transcript
Episode 24
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00
Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project. Some insight into the community that supports it and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:07
A couple of weeks ago, I published a post about the big picture goals for the WordPress project in 2022. As I was thinking through our planned releases for the year and looking out toward what would spell success for WordPress over the next three years, three things really lined up in both sets of answers for me.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:23
I provided some detail on how we can work toward these goals in the post, which I will link for you in the show notes, but I also wanted to take some time to explain why I feel we have to work toward these goals this year. So these all build on one another. To refresh your memory of the three big focuses, they are one to drive adoption of the new editor in WordPress, support open source alternatives for site building necessities, and three, open source stewardship.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:52
So the first one; is driving the adoption of the new WordPress editor. Early on in the start of the Gutenberg Project, folks could not go two days without hearing me talk about the phases of adoption and how those line up with the phases of Gutenberg, and who would need our support the most in each of those phases.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:09
I have always believed that what we would be shipping at this point in our project would prove the plausible promise of what we were doing in phase one. That’s definitely what I’m seeing from what was shipped in 5.9, as well as what we plan to ship in May with 6.0. And the people who need the most support right now are absolutely our users, your clients, no matter whether they were not keeping up with WordPress developments or simply were waiting to see what all the fuss was about.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:37
There will be people who look to you as someone who has been here a while to help them make sense of what they’re seeing. And what I find so exciting about this adoption, sort of, work in the WordPress project is that this is the time when we as practitioners of WordPress, no matter whether you are a designer or a developer or builder, business coach. This is the time when we get to guide others through the hardest parts of our learning processes.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:07
The process of helping people to learn new technologies relies not only on your hard-won expertise but also on the belief that the future is worth fighting for. Enabling someone’s success is an investment in the future and investment for that person or for WordPress or your community. All investments are welcome here.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:28
Fortunately, table stakes are just that you care. And speaking of future investments, the second focus is open source alternatives for site building necessities. So things like images, forms, stores, themes, etc. It literally just things you need to build a site. I would like to start by saying that I am completely aware of the fact that 99% of WordPress users will never care about open source freedoms and philosophies in the same way that WordPress maintainers and contributors care about open source freedoms and philosophies.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:04
You could substitute the name of any other open source project right there, and the statement would still be true. And yet, I will always believe that people should have the rights and freedoms that open source brings to them even if they do not know they are there. And so it makes all the sense in the world to me that as a project and open source community, we should strive to make choosing Open Source as easy as possible.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:33
And finally, open source stewardship is one of the focuses for this year. This one is obviously about supporting open source as a concept and maintaining WordPress as a project. But I also think that it is relevant to our current global circumstances. Open Source suddenly became very visible to the public eye last year following the Log4J vulnerability, and ever since then, I’ve been hearing consistent concern over how We make sure that WordPress is sustainable moving into the future. Fortunately, this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. And I have been delighted to see so many community members bringing that conversation to the forefront.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:14
There is a lot that is done in the WordPress project to keep us from the tragedy of the commons. But that work honestly never ends. Not only does it not end, but as we get bigger, there is more and more that we can and should be doing to keep us around for the long term. And, of course, for the keen readers of my posts, there’s a bonus focus.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:39
The bonus focus is, of course, that WordPress turns 20 years old next year. This year, we will also be seeing some preparatory work for that major milestone as well.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:56
So that brings us today to our small list of big things. There is a redesign of the News Page coming. We’ve been talking about this over on make.wordpress.org/design for a bit since like June of last year or something. But it’s coming in the next few weeks. I’ll share a link to the GitHub repo in case anyone has any specific things that they see as they are reading through all of our many news stories that come out on that particular page. I think it’s beautiful, and I’m very excited to take a look at it.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:30
The second thing is that planning is underway for WordPress 6.0; that release that we’re doing in May. I’ll add the project page link to the show notes. I’ve had a few raised hands for that release squad. But if you’re interested in participating in the release, I encourage you to keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org/core for updates and any news about how to get involved.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:53
And my third thing is actually that, in general, there are a lot of opportunities to contribute right now. There are discussions about projects, goals, and dreams happening all over the place. I’ll link in the show notes below the unofficial project “firehose” where you can see all the headlines and quickly find discussions that might be interesting to you.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:18
And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.
If you’re looking for high-quality images to dress up your website, there is no shortage of resources. Stock photography sites exist for just about every need and price range (including free).
But licensing for photos isn’t always simple. Commercial offerings can be both restrictive and difficult to understand. And even free photo websites have their risks. Not to mention the potential for a corporate takeover, such as when Getty Images acquired Unsplash.
This can lead to a bit of nervousness on the part of web designers and site owners. We want to be certain that the photos we add today won’t cause copyright issues down the road. Nobody wants to receive one of those threatening letters demanding a king’s ransom for unauthorized use of an image.
An alternative solution is just getting underway. The WordPress Photo Directory aims to provide an image resource for the open web. It’s a place where users will download photographs that can be used for any purpose. And there’s also an opportunity to submit your work as well.
Today, we’ll take an early look at the directory and discuss its game-changing potential.
An Open-Source Approach to Stock Photography
Announced during the 2021 State of the Word, the WordPress Photo Directory is an effort by the platform to double down on its recent plunge into open-source media.
Earlier in the year, WordPress launched a successor to Creative Commons Search. Named Openverse, the search engine crawls several sites that offer images under various flavors of the Creative Commons license.
The difference here is that everything in the WordPress Photo Directory utilizes the most liberal of these licenses – CC0. This means images can be used for any purpose, modified, and freely redistributed.
The directory is also dependent upon community submissions. If you have an attractive, high-quality photo that meets the guidelines, you can contribute to the project.
To be clear, you don’t need to be a professional photographer or have access to expensive equipment. Everyone (including yours truly) is welcome to submit their work.
The Potential to Make an Impact
The WordPress Photo Directory has the potential to be beneficial in several ways. For one, it offers content creators a worry-free option for adding photography to their website. And one can envision a future integration within WordPress itself, making the process of finding and adding images incredibly easy.
Likewise, theme authors can bundle images without having to deal with potential copyright issues. This has long been a sticking point, with theme demos often displaying images that weren’t included with the final product. That led to a disconnect with users. Since CC0 licensing allows for redistribution, this longstanding gap might finally be closed.
The directory may also be seen as another perk to attract new users to WordPress. Several content management systems (CMS) offer integrated photo libraries – something WordPress has lacked. While it’s not likely to be the most important deciding factor, every little bit helps.
Lastly, there’s also something to be said for users that contribute photos. It’s a simple way to pitch in that doesn’t require technical expertise. The more an individual can contribute, the more likely they are to become invested in the project over the long term.
How Great of a Resource Will It Be? That Depends on What We Make It.
Will the WordPress Photo Directory become a serious threat to stock photography services? That seems unlikely for now. But that’s not necessarily the point of the service, either.
The early listings are attractive. Some may even be considered “pro” level. However, it’s unrealistic to expect that professionals will forgo the chance to make a living elsewhere and contribute their best work to an open-source project.
It’s also unlikely that we’ll see the same sort of depth as in other stock photo repositories. Some categories and concepts are likely to be lacking. Again, this is OK.
For many bloggers and website owners, what’s available in the WordPress Photo Directory will serve their needs. And if community participation is high, there will be plenty of high-quality photos to choose from.
And perhaps that’s the most exciting aspect of this project. We have an opportunity to make it a worthwhile resource. Like WordPress itself has shown, great things happen when people come together. This directory could prove to be another shining example.
The post An Early Look at the WordPress Photo Directory appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
There are a few significant moments in the history of the WordPress project. January 2022 is one of them, with the release of WordPress 5.9! But that’s not all. Read on to learn more about the latest updates and achievements from the community.
WordPress 5.9 Joséphine is here
Meet WordPress 5.9 Joséphine. Named in honor of the acclaimed jazz singer, Joséphine Baker, this is one of the much-awaited releases. Version 5.9 brings full site editing to WordPress, among other exciting updates! Download WordPress 5.9 and try the new features!
Check out the WordPress 5.9 Field Guide to learn more. Lastly, everyone’s invited to participate in a retrospective of the WordPress 5.9 Joséphine release!
Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.
Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.3, 12.4, and 12.5 are here
The Core Team launched three new versions of Gutenberg since last month’s edition of the Month in WordPress.
- Gutenberg 12.5 brings global styles variations and Query Loop block enhancements, along with the Code Editor view to the Side Editor. Moreover, inserting new buttons is now easier than ever!
- Gutenberg 12.4 was released on January 19, 2022. This version includes accessibility improvements, suggestions for assigning categories, keyboard shortcuts for the Site Editor, and more.
- Gutenberg 12.3 was released on January 5, 2022. This release brings new blocks, like the Author Name, Comments Next Page, and Comments Previous Page blocks, and many other cool updates!
Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow the #gutenberg-new tag for details on the latest updates.
Team updates: Proposals, announcements, and more for 2022
Take the course on Learn WordPress to learn about the full site editing features in WordPress 5.9! Also, help spread the word about social learning spaces on Twitter!
Feedback/Testing requests: Share your thoughts on WordPress 5.9 Joséphine
Share your feedback on the release of WordPress 5.9 Joséphine.
- WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama has been postponed until spring.
- The WordPress Foundation published a post explaining more about the nonprofit’s mission and why it exists.
- Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps:
WordCamp Prague, Switzerland on February 26, 2022 (online)
WordCamp Genève, Switzerland on April 9, 2022 (in-person)
WordCamp Athens, Greece between April 9 and 10, 2022 (in person)
WordCamp Vienna, Austria from April 23 to 24, 2022 (in person)
WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal from June 2 to 4, 2022 (in person)
WordCamp US in San Diego, CA USA from September 9-11, 200 (in person)
WordCamp Europe 2022 opened a new call for volunteers, photographers, and media partners!
Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.
The following folks contributed to January 2022’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan @harishanker @rmartinezduque @lmurillom
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The post Weekly News for Designers № 629 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.