The departure of Josepha Haden as Executive Director of the WordPress project has paved the way for the arrival of Mary Hubbard, also from Automattic after her tenure at TikTok.
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Program transcript
Hello, I’m Alicia Ireland, and you’re listening to WPpodcast, bringing the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
In this episode, you’ll find the information from September 30th to October 6th, 2024.
With a brief message on the official WordPress site, Mary Hubbard was introduced following her exit as Director of TikTok Americas, Governance and Experience. She will begin her role as the new Executive Director of WordPress.org on October 21.
Previously, she worked at Automattic from 2020 to 2023 as General Manager of Marketplace and Director of Experience and Product for WordPress.com.
According to Matt Mullenweg, in response to a question about whether her role would be the same as Josepha Haden’s, he stated, “The scope will be much broader, as Mary brings many talents to the ecosystem.”
Another announcement is that Jason Bahl has revealed that WPGraphQL will become a canonical plugin of WordPress, as he joins Automattic after three and a half years at WP Engine.
As a canonical project, like WP-CLI, Gutenberg, or the REST API, WPGraphQL will receive support from Automattic.
Canonical plugins are developed by the community, with contributions from multiple developers, not just one individual, and they address some of the most requested functionalities. These plugins are GPL-licensed, available in the WordPress.org repository, and developed in collaboration with WordPress core.
Although there has been no official announcement, since last Wednesday, it is now required to accept a message on the WordPress.org login or registration screen that reads: “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.”
On the social network X, the official WordPress account suggested that if you’re unsure whether you’re affiliated with WP Engine, you should contact them for clarification.
In the community Slack, Colin Stewart, a WordPress core contributor, asked Matt Mullenweg some questions about the new checkbox. Matt responded that this is part of WP Engine’s ban, and that the company’s lawsuit has put all WordPress.org participants in a position where they might require legal representation.
Following that conversation, several community members, such as Ryan McCue, co-leader of the WordPress REST API, Andrew Hutchings, Director of Contributions at the MariaDB Foundation, and Javier Casares, representative of the Hosting Team and lead of the Advanced Admin Handbook, were blocked from the community’s communication tool, as other members later referenced in that same conversation.
This is not the only change we can find on the website. Here’s an alert for all users of Advanced Custom Fields. Since last Saturday, the WordPress.org user has taken ownership of the plugin and renamed it Secure Custom Fields.
The official statement mentions that, on behalf of the WordPress Security Team, guideline 18 of the plugin rules has been invoked, and a fork of ACF has been created into a new plugin, removing the possibility of upgrading to the Pro version, which goes against community rules established in 2021, while also addressing a security issue.
Several factors need to be considered here. First, the ACF plugin is still under active development, and the developers cannot release the security updates they’ve already applied in the version available on their own website due to the recent block. Additionally, this is not a fork by definition, as the existing plugin was overwritten rather than creating a new one, which is what typically defines a fork.
In the round of updates, we now have WordPress 6.7 beta 2, with 18 changes in the editor and 28 core changes compared to beta 1.
Additionally, Gutenberg 19.4 has been released, implementing some changes from the previous version and officially launching the editor APIs for Block Bindings.
Another change is in the Edit and Select modes, which have been renamed Writing Mode and Design Mode. Writing Mode focuses on content-related sidebar elements, while Design Mode shows elements related to colors, sizes, and other visual aspects.
The Core team has proposed making unit test tickets easier to identify.
They suggest using specific tags to differentiate these tickets from general development issues. This improvement would make collaboration easier by allowing contributors to better focus on unit tests and their resolution.
The proposal aims to enhance the organization and efficiency of WordPress’s ticket-tracking system, helping the community to find, manage, and resolve issues more easily.
Typography management updates in WordPress 6.7 have also been presented.
Now, you can modify theme-provided presets or create your own custom options. A key feature is the ability to toggle fluid typography, which allows responsive scaling of fonts, with an option to set custom fluid values for more precise control over responsiveness.
Fonts are now grouped by origin, such as theme-provided or custom, giving you a clearer understanding of where each font comes from.
And following the trend of people temporarily stepping back from contributions, we have Scott Kingsley, who until now had been leading the Fields API project and has decided to step aside while awaiting changes.
In his post, he provided a list of the considerations discussed at WordCamp US, along with a collection of posts and materials that have been worked on over the past 10 years.
The Accessibility team has temporarily halted their team meetings due to the uncertainty caused by the new checkbox on the website’s login page, although tasks outside the site, like those on GitHub, will remain active.
The Hosting team has introduced a new project to test WordPress hosting profiles. These profiles enable hosts to share optimized server configurations for WordPress, improving performance and compatibility.
The team is seeking feedback from the community to adjust and refine these tests, facilitating collaboration between developers and hosting providers to enhance the hosting experience.
The Polyglots team has put forward a proposal on using GlotPress to translate localized content within WordPress Rosetta sites.
The proposal explains how to use GlotPress, providing a step-by-step guide for translators, highlighting how to find translation projects, suggest and validate translations, and use features like filters and translation strings to manage translation work more efficiently.
The Community team has published a summary of the review project and results of the WordPress Meetup Chapter program, conducted between July and September 2024.
Out of 372 inactive groups, 216 (58%) were reactivated, and 156 (42%) were closed. The program helped increase Meetup activity, raising the percentage of active groups from 51% to 69%. Additionally, $4,700 in Meetup.com subscriptions were saved by removing those groups from local communities. The plan is to run the reactivation program twice a year.
We also have the announcement of the third cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program for Q4 2024, highlighting efforts to attract and support new contributors to the platform. This program offers mentorship through quarterly cohorts to guide participants in making meaningful contributions to WordPress.
Experienced mentors from various areas of WordPress will help participants better understand the ecosystem, fostering active collaboration.
And finally, this podcast is distributed under a Creative Commons license as a derivative version of the podcast in Spanish; you can find all the links for more information, and the podcast in other languages, at WPpodcast .???.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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