The expected release of WordPress 6.7, which will include the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, continues to be marred by the war between Automattic and WP Engine.
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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.
They say that after the storm comes the calm, and while it is true that since October 1st, the last episode of the drama between Automattic and WP Engine, mainly two things have happened.
The first is that WP Engine has sent a formal complaint to the courts of California, with a series of details about everything that is happening, from their perspective, of course.
Of the 11 legal claims, some affect the project or the website, such as blocking access to WP Engine’s networks, hindering the promise that WordPress would be an open and collaborative platform, or the claims suggesting that they do not contribute to the WordPress ecosystem and that they harm the community.
The second, which directly affects the WordPress community, in this case from Automattic’s side, relates to their employees. Let’s remember that a large part of the management and key community members were managed by people under the umbrella of the company.
According to Matt, 159 people (8.9% of employees) have accepted the severance package offered, which, among other things, prevents them from working for Automattic again. Some key individuals have already announced their departure.
Perhaps one of the most notable is Josepha Haden, known for having been the executive director of the WordPress project since 2019.
Another is Naoko Takano, who after 14 years says she is not aligned with the decisions that have been made.
Other people who have said goodbye include ChloĂ© Bringmann from the operations team, and Reyes MartĂnez, who was leading the recent Media Corps team.
This is not only affecting people from Automattic but also key individuals from some teams who are either leaving or considering leaving, as at the end of each year the elections for new team representatives come up, where some are already preparing for the election.
We now have available for testing, not in production, WordPress 6.7 beta 1, the first version of this new branch that includes most of the features proposed in recent months.
The highlights of this version are:
- the Twenty Twenty-Five theme,
- the Zoom Out for creating and editing patterns,
- Media improvements, with support for HEIC images,
- many enhancements in various blocks,
- the new API that allows extending the functionality of the preview,
- all improvements in the new Data Views,
- direct management of Block Bindings,
- enhancements and simplification of the Query Loop block,
- more control over font sizes,
- the change in the management of Meta Boxes,
- and the template registration API.
Although these are the most prominent elements, it is expected that in the coming days the detailed list of each of these features and many others will start to appear.
The Test team has prepared a post giving us a list of all the items to test in WordPress 6.7 beta 1 and subsequent testing versions. The key areas of testing include: the new default theme “Twenty Twenty-Five,” improvements in data views, refinement of the query loop block, new design tools, media handling improvements such as support for HEIC images and auto-sizes for lazy-loaded images, and compatibility with PHP 8. Users are encouraged to test in different environments, such as local sites, staging environments, and using WP-CLI.
The Plugins team has announced that starting October 1st, WordPress.org requires plugin developers to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to submit new plugins.
Additionally, all plugins must go through an automated check with “Plugin Check,” which reviews common issues such as misconfigured versions or incorrect text domains before being manually reviewed. These measures aim to improve security and reduce the review time for new plugins in the directory.
The Training team is preparing a training pathway related to design.
The Designer Learning Pathway now requires creating content for scriptwriting, voice recording, video editing, content creation itself, and its review.
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 .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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