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In Case You Missed It – Issue 28

In Case You Missed It Featured Image
photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Changes to WordPress PHP Coding Standards

Based on changes that were proposed back in March, the PHP Coding Standards for WordPress have been altered. Note that these changes apply to WordPress core only and Gary Pendergast recommends that developers can and should choose practices that best suit your needs for plugins and themes.

PHP Coding Standards Changes

Excluding Remote Employee Job Applicants Based on the State They Live In

Like Brad, the topic of not hiring job applicants for a remote company based on the state they live in because of tax laws is not something I’ve seen discussed.

In certain situations, companies that go the extra mile to hire a remote worker can also turn that person into an advocate.

If you’re involved in the hiring process for a remote company, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments.

Would You Like to See A Product Hunt for WordPress Products?

Once you create something awesome in the WordPress ecosystem, it’s tough to get the word out. Ben from LyrWP wants to know if anyone is interested in a Product Hunt website for Themes, Plugins, and Services.

I think it’s a great idea and something I’d like to see become a reality. There are probably a ton of great products in the WordPress space that go unseen because there’s no easy way to reach a large mass of people outside of sites like the Tavern.

However, Mario Peshev is concerned that such a site may end up posting infrequently or promote mediocre products.

If Peshev’s concern became a reality, there wouldn’t be much of a point to continue with the site and developers would be back to square one.

Speaking of learning about new products, who remembers the Plugin Release posts on WeblogToolsCollection.com?

Early Look at What A Block Directory in WP-Admin Could Look Like

Mel Choyce has shared a collection of concept images that depict what a Block Directory could look like inside of WP-Admin. She describes the inspiration for each image and how each screen would work.

Block Directory in WP-Admin Concepts

What I find interesting is that users will be able to try out new blocks before installing them. “Inside the modal, you’d also be able to demo a block before installing. @ck3lee has figured out how to make this possible,” Choyce said.

It’s also great to see that the tech behind Shiny Updates will be used for quickly installing and activating new blocks. If you have feedback regarding the conceptual designs, please leave a comment on her post.

Notes From Lead Developer Conference

More than 20 Automatticians are attending the Lead Developer Conference in London, England, and are publishing notes from each day. You can check out Day 1 here.

WPCampus 2019 Will Be LiveStreamed

Thanks to Pantheon, all sessions excluding workshops at WPCampus will be livestreamed with captioning and available to watch for free. Simply visit the livestream page on Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27.

Apply for a DonateWC WordCamp Sponsorship

DonateWC is looking for applicants for its sponsorship program. DonateWC provides underrepresented and minority groups within the WordPress community with the means to attend a WordCamp.

That’s it for issue twenty-eight. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.

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In Case You Missed It – Issue 27

In Case You Missed It Featured Image
photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Carol Gann Awarded the 2019 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship

Carol Gann, who is a Meetup coordinator in the WordPress Orlando Community, has been awarded the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship is named after Kim Parsell who passed away in 2015 but her impact on the WordPress community is still felt today.

“My proudest contribution to the WordPress open source project is training small business owners and bloggers to be comfortable and conversant with their own WordPress websites. WordPress empowers people. Many end users of WordPress are not technically minded. As a WordPress Meetup co-organizer, I contribute to the coffee help desk, assisting others in finding solutions to their WordPress problems. I also host another help desk opportunity, ‘Coffee With Carol,’ to empower WordPress users,” Gann said.

I can tell from the quote above that Kim and Carol would get along well as Kim was also the type of person who would do what she could to help others.

GravityView Diversity Grant to Attend PressNomics 6

The folks over at GravityView are offering a grant to recognize the challenges certain groups of people face succeeding in technology fields and to promote inclusivity and diversity. The grant includes a ticket to PressNomics 6, a flight to Tuscon, AZ, lodging, transportation via a Lyft gift card, and a one-on-one business consultation with Zak Katz, Co-founder of GravityView. The deadline to apply is 11:59 PM MDT on June 30, 2019.

10up OpenSource Project Scaffolding Suite

10up has released a project scaffolding suite that includes a WordPress starter theme, starter plugin, and NPM package. The purpose of the suite is to streamline repetitive tasks, encourage community contributions, and provide a starting point that includes 10up’s engineering best practices.

End to End Tests Added to Core

Introducing the WordPress e2e tests

WP Tavern Turns 10 Years Old

I was looking back through the Tavern archives and realized that this past January, WP Tavern turned 10 years old. It’s been quite a journey and it’s not over yet. Check out the first post I published on the Tavern announcing its opening.

Matt Mullenweg Announces That Automattic Is Sponsoring Jill Binder’s Work

Diversifying WordPress

John James Jacoby Releases A Plugin That Cryptographically Signs Posts

John James Jacoby has released a small plugin on GitHub that cryptographically signs posts. The plugin splits the content of posts in words and then stenographically inserts zero-width characters between them. These characters then form a unique, invisible pattern that can be used to detect plagiarised content. This plugin sounds like it would pair well with WordProof.

What does DXP Mean?

I asked on Twitter what does DXP or Digital Xperience platform mean? It comes across as fancy marketing lingo. Here are a few of the responses I received.

Matt Mederios – ‘DXP’ or in other words, how we want our customers to experience WordPress in our controlled ecosystem. All your solutions in one place, possibly to the point you don’t recognize it’s WordPress.

Stephen Cronin – DXP is an enterprise thing and has been around for ages in various guises. WordPress is not listed by Gartner, but Drupal and SharePoint are, along with other enterprise CMS’s. If people want to create DXPs out of WordPress, more power to them.

Karim Marucchi – Forget the buzz, large sites are moving past ‘just’ content, no one product (not #AEM not #Sitecore) will ever be perfect for all the existing & new features that are popping up ‘monthly’, so with #OpenSourse we all can make the most open easy/most compatible /cheap framework that will help the #enterprise manage/customize/blend all the ways you need to interact with your clients. And yes, the good Hosts, are staying out of trying to be all things.

Thanks to these three, the meaning of DXP is a bit more clear.

WordCamp EU Organizing Team Issues Apology

There were some things that took place during the WordCamp EU afterparty that didn’t sit well with some people. The WordCamp EU organizing team explained what happened and issued an apology for the mistakes that were made.

Torque Interviews Marcel Bootsman

Doc Pop of Torque caught up with Marcel Bootsman to talk about his walking journey to Berlin. Ironically, the interview occurs as they’re walking around.

That’s it for issue twenty-seven. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.

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In Case You Missed It – Issue 26

In Case You Missed It Featured Image
photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Birgit Olzem Could Use the Community’s Help

Birgit Olzem has encountered some financial hard times due to multiple illnesses and paying for acupuncture treatments and osteopathic therapy which are not covered by her insurance. Olzem fell ill earlier this year which prevented her from generating income as a self-employed person.

Olzem has translated WordPress, compiled release packages for de_DE, organized Meetups, WordCamps, answered support questions and has been part of different make/WordPress teams, some of them as a team-rep. She’s also contributed to WordCamps as a Speaker, Volunteer and Contributor day team-lead.

To learn more about her story and to donate, please read her request to the community.

Liam Dempsey’s Take on Gutenberg

Liam Dempsey describes what he likes and doesn’t like about the new WordPress editor.

Defending the Right to Publish Open Source Software in the UK

The EFF and Open Rights Group have submitted comments to the UK government defending the right to publish open source software.

Moreover, source code is a form of written creative expression, and open source code is a form of public discourse. Regulating its publication under anti-money-laundering provisions fails to honor the free expression rights of software creators in the United Kingdom, and their collaborators and users in the rest of the world.

Why Is It Important to Give Back to Open Source?

JC Mae Palmes on Twitter asked, why is it important to give back to the WordPress community? Here are a few responses. To see all of the responses, check out this Twitter thread. 

WordCamp US Speaker Selection Process

If you’re wondering how speakers are being selected for WordCamp US this year, check out this post by the Programming Team. The team is using a new process that includes, limiting the number of submissions per speaker to two instead of unlimited, reviewing submissions based on the organizer’s sphere of experience, and using blind reviews. Speakers who are chosen are scheduled to be notified by the end of this month.

An Easy Way to Make an Impact in The WordPress Community

David Bisset shared the following idea on Twitter and while a few companies have started doing this, I think it will catch on with individuals more than businesses.

That’s it for issue twenty-six. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.

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In Case You Missed It – Issue 25

In Case You Missed It Featured Image
photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Open Call for People Interested in Being Team Leads

Josepha Haden has published an open call on the Team Updates blog looking for people interested in learning about the Team Lead role. The post includes links to training materials that will be open for two weeks where people can make suggestions.

Once the training materials are complete, interested parties will be sent the team leads training materials and quizzes. Those who pass the quizzes will then be part of a group orientation in which team leads and future leads will be chosen. Even if you’re not interested in becoming a team lead, the training materials in the post contain a lot of useful information about the inner workings of the project.

Marcel Bootsman Continues on After Hospital Visit

Marcel Bootsman who is walking more than 700km to Berlin, Germany for WCEU recently made a hospital visit. “The doctor asked about what I’m doing, and what the problem is, so I explained everything,” Bootsman said. “She examined both legs and found that there was a swelling on my right ankle. She sadly could not diagnose further, since it’s impossible. An expert has to look at it, and an x-ray picture has to be taken.”

The doctor diagnosed him with having an overloaded right ankle. After wrapping his ankle for extra support, Bootsman continued on. Check out his description and photos from day 19 of his travels.

WooSesh is Coming Back

WooSesh, a global, virtual conference devoted to WooCommerce, is scheduled to take place on October 18-19th. You can follow WooSesh_ on Twitter or sign up to their email list to be notified of when tickets are available.

GitHub Repo Templates

Earlier this week, GitHub launched Repository Templates to help developers manage and distribute boilerplate code. Web development agency 10UP has a Theme and Plugin repo template that is available for anyone to use.

WordPress 5.2.2 Release Date Changed

WordPress 5.2.2 was originally scheduled to be released on June 13th, but the release team has decided to push the date back. Tickets that are slated for WordPress 5.3 that meet the requirements to be in a minor release will be merged into 5.2.2. The new release date is Tuesday, June 18th, a few days before WordCamp EU.

WordCamp US After Party Is Now Wordfest

There won’t be a big after party at the conclusion of WordCamp US this year. Instead, organizers are hosting WordFest on Friday, November 1, 2019, at City Museum in St. Louis. According to organizers, the party doesn’t always have to be at the conclusion of the event thus the name change.

How to Use and Create Reusable Block Templates

Justin Tadlock has published a tutorial that explains how to create, use, import, and export reusable block templates in WordPress.

“A lot of this is not intuitive at this point and might take some digging for someone not intimately familiar with all the block editor features. But, this is an extremely powerful feature that I’m sure will become more useful in the future. I can even see things like theme authors sharing reusable blocks to help users build out certain page designs.”

I’m looking forward to seeing other people share their reusable blocks or templates. One of the beautiful things about the new editor is that it doesn’t require a developer to sort blocks into a particular layout and then save it as a reusable block that can be shared.

C02 May Be the Cause of Feeling Drowsy During Conference Sessions

I always thought it had something to do with lunch but I’ve felt drowsy before then. Interesting data shared in a Twitter thread. Hat tip to David Bisset.

That’s it for issue twenty-five. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.

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In Case You Missed It – Issue 24

In Case You Missed It Featured Image
photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Marcel Bootsman Is on His Way to WordCamp EU

Earlier this week, Marcel Bootsman began walking his way to Berlin, Germany, the host city for WordCamp EU. The journey is more than 700 kilometers and Bootsman estimates it will take him about 30 days to reach his destination. Along the way, Bootsman has been publishing blog posts to keep readers informed of his progress.

So far, he’s published a post a day with stories that include a run-in with a bull in an open field, angry cyclists, and amazing photos of the scenery. You can follow along via the WalkToWordCamp.EU website. Donations raised from the event will go to DonateWC.

WPSiteSync v1.5.2 Released

The folks over at ServerPress have released a new version of WPSiteSync. This plugin enables users to migrate specific content from one site to another without the need to update target URLs for media files. This version fixes a couple of UI related bugs and interactions with Gutenberg.

CannaBiz 2.4 Released

Robert DeVore has released CannaBiz 2.4, a WordPress theme that’s specifically tailored for the Cannabis industry. This release includes two new action hooks, a Yelp social media link, CSS style updates, new customizer controls for button colors, and third-party plugin style updates.

Alternative Gutenberg Block Styles Library

Carolina Nymark has created a website and GitHub repository dedicated to creating and sharing alternative styles for Gutenberg blocks. The website contains tutorials on how to create new block styles, add them to child themes, and how to contribute to the library.

Patches That Get Lost in the Void

Daniel Jalkut describes what he experienced when trying to contribute a patch to WordPress to fix an issue he and his clients were having. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good one.

When somebody comes to your project with a well-thought-out, unit-tested fix, and is met by radio silence? The chances are high that they will never come back again. I have submitted WordPress patches in the past, but after this experience I don’t know if I will bother submitting them again. That’s a big change in my perspective on how the WordPress team works, and on how it should work.

Jalkut isn’t the first nor will he be the last to have an experience like this. WordPress is a large project that encompasses many areas and if a particular ticket is not in line with higher priorities, the chances of it slipping through the cracks are pretty high.

Human Made Launches A New Product but Some People Have No Idea What It Is

Human Made has launched a new product called Altis which is a DXP or Digital Experience Platform for WordPress. After reading the press release and the associated blog post, I found it difficult to understand what the product is and who it’s for and I’m not the only one.

Noel Tock, Chief Growth Officer, and Partner at Human Made chimed in and admits that the language used to describe the product is geared towards the enterprise market. He explains that Altis is an evolution beyond WordPress that supports personalization, artificial intelligence, experimentation, and faster developer experience.

In a nutshell, Altis is a highly specialized version of WordPress with a UI and features that are geared towards specific clients. If you think you can explain what Altis is in a simpler way, please give it a shot in the comments.

Tips for Speaking at Your First WordCamp

Justin Foell of WebDevStudios explains what you need to know if you’re speaking at your first WordCamp. If you’re looking for tips on applying to speak at WordCamps, Jennifer Bourn has you covered.

Speaking at Your First WordCamp? Here’s What You Need to Know!

After the Deadline Alternatives

In light of After the Deadline being removed from Jetpack, users have been searching for alternatives. This post on WordPress.com highlights a few of them.

WPCampus Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statement

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

That’s it for issue twenty-four. If you recently discovered a helpful resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.

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Leveraging The New AWS Well-Architected Tool

Review and refinement are integral components of cloud computing best practices. In order to ensure a reliable and efficient cloud environment, regular reviews need to be performed at certain intervals. The goal is simple: making workloads more robust and protected while maintaining cost efficiency.

We have covered the AWS Well-Architected Framework—a complete framework for building solutions for a wide range of industries—extensively in the past. ICYMI, don’t forget to check out our blog series on the Five Pillars that help create secure and reliable cloud architecture which is optimized for operational excellence, performance efficiency, and cost. To make following these best practices easier, AWS has recently released the AWS Well-Architected Tool, making assessing your cloud infrastructure that much easier for administrators.