	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"Post Status: On The Fediverse, WordPress, And Activity Pub With Matthias Pfefferle — Post Status Draft 135";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=146145";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"https://poststatus.com/on-the-fediverse-wordpress-and-activity-pub-with-matthias-pfefferle-post-status-draft-135/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7437:"<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group eplus-wrapper has-theme-palette-2-color has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-text-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><div class="wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt"><a href="https://notiz.blog/">Matthias Pfefferle</a> is head of WordPress development at a hosting company in Europe and the creator of <a href="https://activitypub.rocks/">Activity Pub</a>, a WordPress plugin. He joins Cory Miller to discuss the rising need for decentralization in social networking, the current movement, and the future potential available within WordPress. </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer eplus-wrapper"></div>



<p class="yoast-reading-time__wrapper"><span class="yoast-reading-time__icon"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__spacer"></span><span class="yoast-reading-time__descriptive-text">Estimated reading time:  </span><span class="yoast-reading-time__reading-time">2</span><span class="yoast-reading-time__time-unit"> minutes</span></p>
</div></div>







<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#h-transcript">Transcript</a> ↓</p>



<p>In this episode, Cory Miller talks with <a href="https://twitter.com/pfefferle?lang=en">Matthias Pfefferle</a>, creator of <a href="https://activitypub.rocks/">Activity Pub</a>, about the growing potential for decentralization through innovation within WordPress. Current social networks have stripped creators of agency and power. The threat has been more acutely felt with the recent transitions within Twitter. Recognizing what is at stake and moving towards innovation could not only create needed solutions but could also propel the future of WordPress.</p>



<p><strong>Top Takeaways:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Decentralization:</strong> So much of the power of WordPress is rooted in decentralization. The silos created by social media platforms leave users without agency. The potential and appetite for decentralization is increasing along with the tools to make it a reality via the Fediverse, Activity Pub, and more.</li>



<li><strong>Portable Social Networks:</strong> If you are blocked or banned from a major social network, you lose your content and contacts. The need to create portable social networks so you can move your audience and retain your content if you opt to or are forced to switch platforms or hosts is crucial.</li>



<li><strong>Alternative Walled Gardens:</strong> The need for alternative social platforms where users have agency and ownership continues to increase. The Twitter debacle has been a huge catalyst for users to transition to other platforms like Mastodon, but the potential for WordPress to solve identifier issues and more could create the largest platform overnight. How can we create tools and empower people to be a part of social networks and retain ownership of all they create? How can WordPress build on the current momentum to create future relevance?</li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-34 wp-block-columns has-theme-palette-8-color has-theme-palette-5-background-color has-text-color has-background" id="WP-Engine">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h3 class="has-theme-palette-9-color has-text-color" id="sponsor-wpengine"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/wordpress-vip">WordPress VIP</a></h3>



<p>Founded in 2006, WordPress VIP is <em>the</em> agile <a href="https://wpvip.com/enterprise-content-management-system/">content platform</a> that empowers marketers to build content both faster and smarter so they can drive more growth. We empower content and development teams with the flexibility and ubiquity of WordPress—the agile CMS that powers more than 40% of the web—while ensuring the security and reliability organizations need to operate at scale</p>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center">
<div id="WordPress-VIP" class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><a href="https://poststat.us/wordpress-vip"><img width="300" height="132" src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/WPVIPlogo-1-300x132.webp" alt="WordPress VIP" class="wp-image-99911" title="WordPress VIP" /></a>WordPress VIP</div>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://notiz.blog/">Matthias Pfefferle</a> </li>



<li><a href="https://activitypub.rocks/">Activity Pub</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/">Activity Pub Plugin</a></li>



<li><a href="https://fediverse.info/">Fediverse</a></li>



<li><a href="https://mastodon.social/explore">Mastodon</a></li>



<li><a href="https://pixelfed.org/">Pixelfed</a></li>



<li><a href="https://b2evolution.net/">B2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.w3.org/">W3C</a></li>



<li><a href="https://webfoundation.org/">World Wide Web Foundation</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-you-can-follow-post-status-and-our-guests-on-twitter"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:</h3>



<ul class="eplus-wrapper">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/krissierae">Matthias Pfefferle</a> (Creator, <a href="https://activitypub.rocks/">Activity Pub</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Cory Miller</a> (CEO, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>



<li><a href="https://twitter.com/lemonadecode">Olivia Bisset</a> (Intern, <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Post Status</a>)</li>
</ul>



<p class="eplus-wrapper has-background">The <strong>Post Status Draft</strong> podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4dd.png" alt="📝" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Browse our archives</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Simplecast</a>, or <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h2 class="eplus-wrapper" id="h-transcript">Transcript</h2>



<p></p>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 04 Jan 2023 18:30:32 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Olivia Bisset";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"Post Status: WordPress 6.2 Schedule • 2022 in Core • Block Developer Year in Review • New Incident Response Team";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=146254";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:117:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-6-2-schedule-2022-in-core-block-developer-year-in-review-new-incident-response-team/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15837:"<h2 id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-january-2-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (January 2, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">WordPress 6.2 is set to reach feature freeze on February 7 and final release on March 28. Take a look back at Core contribution stats from 2022. Read the recap of everything that happened last year that developers need to know. Meet the members of the Incident Response Team. </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div id="kt-info-box_adc852-65" class="wp-block-kadence-infobox"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kt-info-svg-icon kt-info-svg-icon-fas_calendar-alt"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WordPress 6.2 release schedule, Block Developer Year in Review, New Incident Response Team</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f5d3.png" alt="🗓" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/27/wordpress-6-2-planning-schedule-proposal/">WordPress 6.2 Planning Schedule Proposal</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f440.png" alt="👀" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/03/a-year-in-core-2022/">A Year in Core – 2022</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/23ea.png" alt="⏪" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/28/2022-the-block-developers-year-in-review/">2022: the block developer’s year in review</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f440.png" alt="👀" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/12/21/announcement-new-wordpress-incident-response-team/">Announcement: New WordPress Incident Response Team</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/23e9.png" alt="⏩" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/06/core-editor-improvement-advancing-the-site-editor-experience/">Core Editor Improvement: Advancing the Site Editor experience</a></p></div></div></div>



<h2 id="h-news">News<a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/10/wordpress-6-1-release-candidate-3/"></a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/episode-46-the-wp-bloopers-podcast/">WP Briefing: Episode 46: The WP Bloopers Podcast</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/episode-45-state-of-the-word-reflections/">WP Briefing: Episode 45: State of the Word Reflections</a></li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_121b9e-cb"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="is-layout-flex wp-container-27 wp-block-columns">
<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-community">Community</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/22/meetup-organizer-newsletter-december-2022/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: December 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/21/updates-across-the-make-community-team-site-and-our-handbooks/">Updates Across the Make/Community Team Site and our Handbooks</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/20/community-team-reps-for-2023/">Community Team Reps for 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/12/20/community-team-2022-goals-recap/">Community Team 2022 Goals Recap</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/20/help-us-test-the-sqlite-implementation/">Help us test the SQLite implementation</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/06/core-editor-improvement-advancing-the-site-editor-experience/">Core Editor Improvement: Advancing the Site Editor experience</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/03/a-year-in-core-2022/">A Year in Core – 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/02/a-week-in-core-january-2-2022/">A Week in Core – January 2, 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/27/wordpress-6-2-planning-schedule-proposal/">WordPress 6.2 Planning Schedule Proposal</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/26/a-week-in-core-december-26-2022/">A Week in Core – December 26, 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-14-8-21-december/">What’s new in Gutenberg 14.8? (21 December)</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/03/editor-chat-agenda-4th-january-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: 4th January 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/12/22/dev-chat-summary-wednesday-december-21-2022/">Dev Chat summary: Wednesday, December 21, 2022</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-dev-blog"><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/">Dev Blog</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2022/12/28/2022-the-block-developers-year-in-review/">2022: the block developer’s year in review</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-design"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design">Design</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/01/02/design-share-dec-19-dec-30/">Design Share: Dec 19–Dec 30</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/12/22/summary-for-docs-team-meeting-december-13-2022/">Summary for Docs Team meeting, December 13, 2022</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-support-articles">Support Articles</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/comments-block/">Comments Block</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-navigation-link-block/">Post Navigation Link Block</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-articles">Developer Articles</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/security/common-vulnerabilities/">Common Vulnerabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/security/user-roles-and-capabilities/">User Roles and Capabilities</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/security/example/">Security Example</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/apis/security/nonces/">Nonces</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-hosting"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting">Hosting</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/12/28/2022-recap/">WordPress Hosting Team 2022 recap</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-marketing"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing">Marketing</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/12/26/notes-global-marketing-team-meeting-december-21-2022/">Notes: Global Marketing Team meeting, December 21, 2022</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-meta"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta">Meta</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/12/22/two-factor-auth-progress-for-wordpress-org/">Two-Factor Auth progress for WordPress.org</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-mobile"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile">Mobile</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/12/20/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-21-4/">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 21.4</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/12/19/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-21-4/">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 21.4</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



<div class="is-layout-flow wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-openverse"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse">Openverse</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/01/03/community-meeting-recap-3-january-2023/">Community Meeting Recap (3 January 2023)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-performance"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/">Performance</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/01/03/performance-team-meeting-summary-3-january-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 3 January 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-polyglots">Polyglots</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/01/03/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-january-4-2023-700-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – January 4, 2023 (7:00 UTC)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-plugins">Plugins</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/12/21/plugin-guideline-update-community-code-of-conduct/">Plugin Guideline Update: Community Code of Conduct</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/12/16/plugins-themes-categorization/">Plugins/themes categorization</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/01/plugin-review-team-2-january-2023/">Plugin Review Team: 2 January 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-project">Project</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/12/21/announcement-new-wordpress-incident-response-team/">Announcement: New WordPress Incident Response Team</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/12/22/journal-entry-wordcamp-asia-2020-cancellation-debrief/">Journal Entry: WordCamp Asia 2020 Cancellation Debrief</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-support"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support">Support</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/12/introducing-the-block-editor-in-the-support-forums/">Introducing the Block Editor in the Support Forums</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/12/14/fse-program-testing-call-19-running-through-refinements/">FSE Program Testing Call #19: Running Through Refinements</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/02/test-team-update-2-january-2023/">Test Team Update: 2 January 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-themes"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/12/14/themes-team-meeting-notes-december-13-2022/">Themes Team Meeting Notes –&nbsp;December 13, 2022</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2023/01/04/themes-team-update-january-04-2023/">Themes team update January 04, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/individual-learner-survey/">How did you learn WordPress?</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=lets-code-wordpress-plugin-security">Let’s code: WordPress Plugin Security</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=block-themes-and-wordpress-live-stream">Block Themes and WordPress: Live Stream</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep6-introduction-to-plugins-file-structure-troubleshooting-bangla">EP6: Introduction to Plugins (File Structure, Troubleshooting) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep5-introduction-to-themes-file-structure-troubleshooting-bangla">EP5: Introduction to Themes (File Structure, Troubleshooting) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=ep4-introduction-to-wordpress-dashboard-frontend-bangla">EP4: Introduction to WordPress (Dashboard, Frontend) | Bangla</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=the-wide-world-of-wordpress-events-2">The Wide World of WordPress Events</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 id="h-tutorials"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials">Tutorials</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/creating-a-call-to-action/">Creating a Call To Action</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/displaying-the-post-comments-block-in-block-themes/">Displaying the Comments block in Block Themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wordpress-theme-template-tour/">WordPress Theme Template Tour</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://getcomposer.org/changelog/2.5.0">Composer 2.5 released</a></li>



<li><a href="https://tek.phparch.com/">Registration open for PHP Tek</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status' <a href="https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It's also available in <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter">our newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png" alt="💌" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size" id="h-get-ready-for-remote-work">You — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/#Agency">your whole team</a> can <a href="https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/">LinkedIn</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png" alt="💼" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 04 Jan 2023 15:40:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WPTavern: #57 – Damon Cook on the Future of Website Styling in WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=140664";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/57-damon-cook-on-the-future-of-website-styling-in-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43881:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern, and a Happy New Year to you as well. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>



<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the future of styling your WordPress website.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today we have Damon Cook. He&#8217;s a long time user of WordPress, trying it first in around 2008. He&#8217;s worked for some of the largest WordPress agencies over the years, but his current role is that of Developer Advocate with WP Engine, where he engages with the WordPress community, trying to figure out where WordPress is headed.</p>



<p>Damon is on the podcast today to talk about styling WordPress, and how it&#8217;s changing.</p>



<p>Up until recently, if you wanted to modify your website&#8217;s appearance, you needed to work with the theme. Sometimes this could be done in the theme&#8217;s UI or in the WordPress customizer. But if you really needed fine control, then it&#8217;s likely you edited the themes files or created a theme of your own. It can be quite a complex process.</p>



<p>Block-based themes or revolutionizing websites styling. You&#8217;re going to be able to modify any aspect of your website from the UI that you&#8217;re familiar with. The hope is that it&#8217;ll make styling more accessible to a wider audience.</p>



<p>Damon talks about the fact that we&#8217;re in a period of flux right now. The documentation and tooling needed to work with website styles is maturing, but is by no means complete.</p>



<p>We talk through some of the new concepts which are underpinning all of this. Style variations, style engine, global styles, block themes, block patterns, theme.json. These are perhaps terms that you&#8217;ve heard being used, but might not be familiar with. Damon explains what they are and where they fit into the website styling jigsaw.</p>



<p>Towards the end, we briefly get into the work that Damon has been doing with ACF to make his own blocks, and how it provides a bridge for those people who are not yet familiar with React.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all the links in the show notes by heading over to. WPTavern.com forward slash podcast. And you&#8217;ll find all of the other episodes there as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Damon Cook.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Damon Cook. Hello Damon.</p>



<p>[00:03:42] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Hi Nathan. How you doing?</p>



<p>[00:03:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Very nice. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Damon is going to have a chat with us today all about, well, a whole myriad of things, to be honest. But largely it&#8217;s about the things which are either currently in WordPress, potentially recently put into WordPress, or maybe even some things which are coming down the path.</p>



<p>He works for WP Engine. His role there is a really interesting one actually. It&#8217;s called Developer Advocate. I&#8217;m going to dig into what that role entails in a minute, in more depth. But Damon, will you just give us a little bit of a background of your journey with WordPress Just to orientate the listeners, what have you been up to in the WordPress space? When did you come across WordPress? Go as far back as you like to make it work.</p>



<p>[00:04:26] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Sure. I was thinking about that this morning. I&#8217;m trying to remember what my origin date would be. If I had to guess, because I&#8217;m not clear on it, but I probably started working with WordPress back in around 2008. I remember multi-site was just getting an introduction. Well, it was MU, multi-user, at the time. So, that was where I was introduced. I actually created an internal blogging platform for a state university I was working at at the time.</p>



<p>So it was neat to start working with open source tools. And I left there and went into agency land for about a decade where I worked with solely WordPress focused agencies like TenUp, WebDevStudios, and a few others. And, that is where I really focused my work as a front end developer. That&#8217;s where I&#8217;ve come to WP Engine with, I&#8217;ve been here about four or five months and, I&#8217;ve always found it a passion of mine to give back in to the community and really advocate and try to raise awareness around some of the newer features coming out of WordPress, which is, these days seems to be going at a pretty breakneck speed with Gutenberg. So, there&#8217;s a lot going on.</p>



<p>[00:05:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there really is a lot going on and we we&#8217;ll dig more into that and your interest in it in a moment. But I want to just dwell on your job title if you don&#8217;t mind, a developer advocate at WP Engine. I have heard this muttered a few times by various different people from WP Engine, amongst other companies, and never really that sure what that role entails. So would you mind just spelling it out? I know that you&#8217;re new to the role, so maybe still finding your feet, I don&#8217;t know, but just tell us what the purpose of that job title is.</p>



<p>[00:06:20] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, I am new to it and it is interesting and, I see it as trying to gauge and engage with the community around WordPress. And that is as broad as it can be as in community, because coming from a agency world I tend to definitely focus and have a bias towards developer solutions. But at the end of the day, I&#8217;ve always been passionate about creating experiences for the end user, for builders of any stages of learning whether it&#8217;s a marketer building a site, or you know, somebody who has a background as a developer or an enterprise developer, or a designer.</p>



<p>So trying to engage with that community and see where there are any gaps or barriers to onboarding them, really to any of the latest things coming out of the project, or elevate their experience in creating and building sites with WordPress, I guess. And with that also, giving back to WordPress core make teams. I&#8217;ve been trying to contribute a little bit to the Docs team and the Learn team. And that&#8217;s all sponsored by WP Engine too, as a developer advocate role. So that&#8217;s kind of the lay of the land as I see it.</p>



<p>[00:07:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely fascinating. Can I ask, can I drill deeper into this, because find it really interesting. Where do you go looking for the WordPress community? Because it&#8217;s pretty clear that, well, it&#8217;s as broad as it is deep. You could find WordPress people in almost every walk of life. Every age group, every part of the world.</p>



<p>And also, you can&#8217;t spread yourself throughout the world, so you probably have to do a lot of this online. And, well, there&#8217;s Slack, there&#8217;s Make, there&#8217;s, well there&#8217;s podcasts like this, there&#8217;s news outlets, There&#8217;s all sorts of different places where these people find themselves. And I guess you&#8217;ve got to try and touch as many of those as possible to gauge all of the different opinions. Where do you find yourself, well spending most of your time? Where do you seem to put your endeavors?</p>



<p>[00:08:29] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Twitter.</p>



<p>[00:08:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s the answer.</p>



<p>[00:08:33] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah. That seems to be, it seems to be the most engaging and successful platform for that type of community. Which, with the current state of affairs there is concerning because I feel like there has been such a great buildup and yeah, it&#8217;s a great platform to engage with the community and reach a large audience.</p>



<p>So, I&#8217;ll be curious to see. I know lots of people are migrating to other platforms and there&#8217;s conversations of different experiments and explorations, which I think are great because, really I&#8217;m all for owning your content and however we can expedite that process for anybody is a cool thing.</p>



<p>But yeah, Twitter is the heart of a lot of it. But Slack, WordPress communities, Make communities even. Again, probably my bias is being in Gutenberg pull requests and issues, and trying to give feedback and even sharing some of the higher level issues to see if the community is interested in pursuing or giving feedback on those features, or if they&#8217;re just something that&#8217;s not even warranted to pursue.</p>



<p>I think there tends to be definitely bias of what, you know, a lot of these areas that we&#8217;re focusing on for new features can at times. Yeah. I think the more input we can and the more eyes then the better validation and verification of what we&#8217;re doing in Gutenberg and these new features. It helps at the end of the day.</p>



<p>[00:10:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, we&#8217;ll have to see what happens over on the Twitter side of things. We&#8217;re recording this episode at the ending of 2022 and a lot of flux, shall we say, over there at the moment. Let&#8217;s just see what happens. So it&#8217;s really curious though. Thank you.</p>



<p>So when we decided to have this podcast, we settled on the topic of, I&#8217;m just going to list them frankly. And then we can sort of dip into them one at a time or see where the conversation goes.</p>



<p>But you decided that you wanted to speak to your passions I guess. So things like the new, I&#8217;m going to use that word, I don&#8217;t know for how much longer I&#8217;m going to be using it. But the new block themes. The style engine, which I&#8217;m, I frankly need explaining to me. Global styles, the ability to style everything in the future of WordPress. So styling blocks, themes, patterns, and so on. WordPress 6.1 and all of the fun things that that brought around. And maybe we&#8217;ll get into the new theme of 2023. Which offers some really interesting capabilities.</p>



<p>But let&#8217;s just rewind the clock a little bit. Go back there to block themes and what have you. This is obviously something that you are excited about. They are new. I think for a lot of people, they still have a, beware, there be monsters kind of flag attached to them. You know, they&#8217;re happy with their customizer. They like the ability to change things in the way that they&#8217;ve always changed them.</p>



<p>That menu area where you could fiddle, under appearances menus. That was fine. Can we just keep that please? And of course, WordPress is moving in a different direction where all of this is being handled by blocks. And so I want to know what you think about it all.</p>



<p>[00:12:03] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Sure. Again, my bias is as a front end developer. So, the themes have been the heart of where I spend most of my day for the past decade as a developer. That tends to be where my passions lie. So block themes are definitely the evolution of so many things I&#8217;ve seen in the WordPress project. Like you mentioned, the customizer. I think that it had great potential, but at the end of the day, there was far too much compatibility issues from switching from themes, and how theme developers were implementing custom fields into the customizer, and custom entry points.</p>



<p>So when users were switching, there was an inconsistency. So I see the evolution that is putting the hands back into the users where, that&#8217;s where a lot of the potential lies, or lied, with the customizer because theme developers could add these bells and whistles that end users could customize.</p>



<p>So, the site editor is the evolution and, and in a lot of ways, I think there&#8217;s a revisiting of a lot of the APIs that were in the customizer but rethought in so many different ways, on so many different levels that they&#8217;re being abstracted and pulled apart. And so when they come back together, have so much more potential for developers and end users to extend, and build off of.</p>



<p>And so it is a struggle because a lot of the underlying code base is being produced as we speak. And it&#8217;s going fast, and it&#8217;s hard to understand at times. Even, like you mentioned, and I put on the show notes style engine. That is totally new to me, and something that came on to my radar in the 6.1 release like a month ago. Because I had not even heard of this package that is in Gutenberg called the Style Engine.</p>



<p>And I still don&#8217;t have a clear definition and understanding. But if I were to throw enough definition at it, I think it&#8217;s just a component of global styles, and really site editing to incorporate some of the classes that are used underneath in the code base.</p>



<p>So I know that a lot of feedback has been given about classes changing on certain elements and breaking things. And even the potential for builders to be able to assign custom classes to certain elements and have that spread throughout the whole site editing experience.</p>



<p>So, I think there is that drive in core to have those features, and the feedback is being heard. But it&#8217;s slow with great cause because there&#8217;s a lot of thought going into making sure it&#8217;s done right. So yeah, I think the style engine is a neat concept and I still am getting my head around a lot of it, but I think it&#8217;s got great potential.</p>



<p>[00:15:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. You mentioned a couple of things there, which I want to drill down on a little bit. The first one was the fact that the customizer offered an experience, which, for its day, I think was really ingenious. The ability to modify things and get a real time update. But of course, you are separating the area in which you can edit content from the area in which you interact with the way that the site looks, the styles and so on.</p>



<p>How the fonts will look, and what the background color of your body is, and so on and so forth. But you said that it was being implemented by theme authors in a whole host of different ways. So if I download and use one theme, I may have a very different experience once I dig into the menus. Theme authors were really doing things in ingenious ways, let&#8217;s not deny it. It was also potentially, if you swapped a theme for a different one, you could be, I guess, disorientated because one theme author has done something absolutely differently.</p>



<p>So let&#8217;s speak about that for a minute. Is the intention then you feel to make the whole experience, and I know we&#8217;re not there yet, the experience of the site editor, now called site editor, is still very confusing. But is the intention for it in the end, do you believe, to be one experience? The same experience, no matter what theme you end up using. You&#8217;re going to have a familiarity with the UI.</p>



<p>[00:16:40] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> The simple answer, yes I do. But I think that there will definitely be some rough areas. I see potential and abstraction enough in some of these packages that, there&#8217;s definitely enough thought that if a user were to switch themes in the site editor, you know that there will be a lot less breaking, a lot less confusion.</p>



<p>Like you said, we&#8217;re certainly not there yet, but I think there&#8217;s a great, there&#8217;s enough thought and carefulness that&#8217;s going in consideration into the different packages and areas and features that make up site editing. So that the potential will be there that users can switch. But also users can switch and still maintain their customizations, right, within global styles. That&#8217;s a really complex thing to solve. But I think there&#8217;s definitely great consideration being applied there and making sure that that will happen. And so, yeah, I&#8217;m excited to see the future, that&#8217;s where it is for me.</p>



<p>[00:17:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I have no idea how to square this circle. I really don&#8217;t know how to do it. But the whole problem of putting the site editor into WordPress, and for everybody to go, yay, this is exactly what we wanted. Because we do seem to have an era, right at the minute where, people are adopting it, other people are finding it difficult to adopt.</p>



<p>They&#8217;re holding off because they can see that it&#8217;s not where it needs to be. And I just don&#8217;t know what the solution could have been to make that transition as easy as possible. So we are in a situation right now where if you download a vanilla version of WordPress and put it on a site, you&#8217;re going to have the 2022 theme. But the editing experience for that will still be labeled as beta.</p>



<p>So in a way, it&#8217;s sort of saying, whoa, don&#8217;t go in here. This is likely to break. So the default editing experience is warning us off and be mindful of the fact that things may be damaged if you use this. But the traditional way worked. People that were happy with it are still happy with it.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s no period at which, hopefully, at least anyway, one is going to, the old way of doing things, if you like the classic themes, they&#8217;re not going to be put out to pasture at any point in the near future. So we&#8217;ve got try and swing people over gently. And I don&#8217;t know how that journey could have been achieved successfully, but it does feel as if maybe it&#8217;s put some people&#8217;s noses out of joint.</p>



<p>Of course there&#8217;s this whole other crowd of people that we are not used to talking to because they don&#8217;t yet exist. And what I mean by that is people who&#8217;ve never used WordPress and for them, they&#8217;re going to step into WordPress tomorrow, the day after.</p>



<p>And this will be the way that they&#8217;ve done it. What the heck? The customizer. What? I have no interest in that. That looks very strange. I&#8217;m used to this experience and I guess part of your job and part of everybody&#8217;s job in WordPress is to sort of bridge that gap and see how smooth we can make it.</p>



<p>[00:19:48] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, and I think that what excites me the most is the experimentation and exploration for even existing users. I mean, I think that some people are transitioning and exploring even new ways that even if they have the Gutenberg plugin installed and activated and are testing out things that aren&#8217;t ready for a production site necessarily, but really pushing the boundaries of what can be done.</p>



<p>And then, I think that can come back to influence the project and direction. So those edge cases and experimentations are definitely where things that get me excited. One thing I just saw that, it&#8217;s kind of a tangent I guess, but I saw that there&#8217;s a color randomizer that was introduced in Gutenberg, and I think that&#8217;s being, featured on, is it Anne McCarthy&#8217;s new call for full site editing outreach experiment.</p>



<p>[00:20:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, she does our outreach program. That&#8217;s right, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:20:46] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> So that is a really neat exploration to have in the global styles. A little button you can randomize the colors and see that being applied. You&#8217;ll see the different colors applied to the theme, and so I think that type of exploration shows some of the excitement and some of the neat things that there is potential for.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also the people, I mean, and I am totally like, how many people are going to use that? I don&#8217;t know, maybe two. But I think that that type of exploration can give great value if done carefully and considered what the outcomes are, and what the potential is. Whether that feature gets pulled into a final solution and product of WordPress core, I don&#8217;t know, that may not. But I&#8217;m sure that the outcomes will be documented, whether it&#8217;s in Gutenberg and whether that comes back up in two or three years as another exploration, you know. That&#8217;s something to learn from and build off of. So that stuff is, I think, super valuable.</p>



<p>[00:21:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s a really interesting position you&#8217;ve taken there. I really hadn&#8217;t framed it in my head in that way too often, because when something like that comes along, it would seem that those people who aren&#8217;t going to make any use of it, the common clarion call is, well, who&#8217;s going to make use of it? What&#8217;s the point of this? Why have we got this, I don&#8217;t know, style randomizer that you&#8217;ve just mentioned? And, maybe the same could be true of things like the duotone option that was available. I haven&#8217;t really seen too much of the duotone out there in the wild.</p>



<p>So what I&#8217;m taking from that is that it was an interesting experiment. Nobody, well, not nobody, very few people made use of it. But the way that you just framed it was fascinating. It was more about, well let&#8217;s just try things. Throw spaghetti at the wall, and see what sticks. And maybe some of it is going to be the exact thing first time, but maybe not.</p>



<p>Maybe it&#8217;ll be a case of, what we&#8217;ve shown you here is what is possible, not how it will end up. Look, there is an option here. By clicking a button, you can dramatically change the style of your site, you can randomize it. But what if we didn&#8217;t want to randomize it completely? What if we could apply constraints to that randomization, so that it was broadly the same as it was before, but just a tiny bit different.</p>



<p>In other words, we varied your website, not completely randomized it. And so it can be iterated on. The goal isn&#8217;t to arrive at the end point, first time. It&#8217;s just, here&#8217;s an idea. Anybody going to make use of it? No, okay. We&#8217;ll move on. Or, yes, but not how it is. We&#8217;re going to iterate on it, so, yeah interesting.</p>



<p>[00:23:25] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, they&#8217;re experiments. I mean, it&#8217;s like good old science class. You do an experiment, document the outcomes. And I think that&#8217;s a really great way to look at it. Not everything is going to be a success. Experiments fail all the time. But, just as long as you can kinda learn and get the key takeaways and maybe revisit and iterate on a different type of that experiment. So yeah, I think it&#8217;s a great thing,</p>



<p>[00:23:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Showing the boundaries of what might be possible, not necessarily what will be. Here&#8217;s the sort of thing that you can do. Here&#8217;s the direction that you could go in and what have you.</p>



<p>I feel like styles, you were mentioning there the ability to randomize them. I feel like styles is a real area of success in WordPress at the minute. Because we&#8217;ve got things like global styles in the latest iteration of the default theme, 2023. We&#8217;ve got this fabulous new thing, which certainly I think is fabulous, I think you do too, called style variations. Other things perhaps less successful. You know, the navigation block, I think still is broadly speaking too unfamiliar for many people to use it as a default. But yeah, styles. Styling everything, blocks, themes, patterns, and what have you, and style variations. Do you just want to tell us, because you wrote that in the show notes, you must have some, insight and excitement around it?</p>



<p>[00:24:49] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, style variations, I think that came out in 5.9 or maybe 6.0. With 6.1 that just came out, the core theme 2023 had a series of style variations within it. That was showing the potential of that new API. And again it&#8217;s a great exploration and I don&#8217;t think that every theme that&#8217;s going to be developed, or need to be developed, is going to need a style variation. But, the fact that those APIs are there and you can have that UI, that a user can just browse through and pick different styles and appearances, and get different looks to their site. I think is always something that&#8217;s going to land with developers and end users. Because yeah, the web is a big visual experience for a lot of us. So just seeing those changes in real life is always a great thing. And, there was about 10 style variations.</p>



<p>And so yeah, if you open up the 2023 theme and go into the global styles area, you can just browse different appearances and even save, if you like one, and start using it today.</p>



<p>[00:26:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It really is remarkably clever and very, very interesting to look at. So, as you&#8217;ve just said, you download, start using the 2023 theme, and you&#8217;ve got these 10 contributed style variations. And really, in a sense, it&#8217;s almost like a theme within a theme. It&#8217;s almost like the 2023 theme is 10 themes. I&#8217;m over exaggerating it.</p>



<p>It really is just changing the styling. So the text is the same. The images, they remain the same. But it plays very nicely, like I said, these 10 contributed styles that were selected as the ones to go into the theme, they&#8217;re really, really different to each other. So in some of them the images, they have different border radiuss, you know, really startlingly, different border radiuss.</p>



<p>The typography&#8217;s changed, the background has changed. And for an end user, you are basically looking at a different website. And the ability to change that, I can&#8217;t see any people, well any clients, not at least thinking, well that&#8217;s a nice option to have. Nobody&#8217;s going to say, well, no, no. I don&#8217;t wish to ever be able to change the style of my website with the click of a button. That&#8217;s just such a great idea.</p>



<p>[00:27:15] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah. And I think it, that even reinforces a lot of, I know that the introduction of the theme.json, right, using json file to right. A lot of people say, and it is if you&#8217;re essentially writing kind of a CSS abstraction, right, of styling your site in theme.json files. But I think that&#8217;s where, again I see the potential is. Yeah, you&#8217;re saving these styles as json objects, but you know, at the end of the day there&#8217;s so much more potential that, you know, you can take different json objects.</p>



<p>Maybe it&#8217;s styling the same exact thing. Maybe the theme is saying style buttons this way with this border, and then there&#8217;s a UI for the user to modify that border, and then take those json objects and synthesize them together. That is the potential of, again, going back to the customizer, if a user just switched themes and some of those stylings weren&#8217;t there, then they had a bad experience.</p>



<p>So I think the value of the theme.json file is hard for a lot of people to grasp, because especially if you&#8217;re familiar with writing CSS, you&#8217;re like, oh, I&#8217;m just writing CSS in a json file. But, yes you are. But, the way that data is being exchanged and can be exchanged in the future will have great potential and, really enable a lot of clever things, I think.</p>



<p>[00:28:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just to give some more context to that. Does the theme json file, for those people who are listening who don&#8217;t know what that is and don&#8217;t really want to get into that. Fear not, it&#8217;s not tremendously difficult, but also I think there&#8217;s a lot of tooling coming out, which is online platforms if you like, which will help you get through that.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s a lot of tutorials around now to help with that, much more so than there was a little while ago. But there are tools which are coming out which will enable you to create these files in a much more straightforward way than typing it into your IDE. But do you see that as a really nice bridge between swapping out themes, because it will provide consistency over time.</p>



<p>Things in the theme.json file will be immutable, if you like. And if you swap your theme for a completely different theme, hopefully, you won&#8217;t just be looking at a complete horror show where everything is completely different. We&#8217;re looking for a more consistent experience with these new adoptions.</p>



<p>[00:29:39] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, I think my mind definitely goes to the edge cases, well not the edge cases, but like AI. I mean you kind of have to make some inferences of if you&#8217;re going to take what the theme, it might be telling you, and trying to allow the user to override some of the things the theme might be setting.</p>



<p>First of all, you want, you want to make that optional, right? You want to be able to allow theme developers to even surface the UI. So, do they want the potential for somebody to change a button border? That should be an option. And if it&#8217;s enabled, how do we infer what the user has customized versus what the theme originally was doing?</p>



<p>I think you can kind of make some inferences there, but at the end of the day, there&#8217;ll probably be some rough edges that will break in changing themes. But I think that it has a greater potential in the current iteration of it, like the APIs with theme.json ,to make things easier to work with, and how they&#8217;re saved and exchanged. So, I&#8217;m not sure if that answered your question, but.</p>



<p>[00:30:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s not the silver bullet, but it hopefully will provide a little bit of stability over time. And be less of a, of an experience that you described earlier with the customizer where swap themes and you really are left with a black hole that is hard to get out of.</p>



<p>Okay, so we&#8217;re recording this end of November, 2022. WordPress 6.1. Actually 6.1.1 as of a few hours ago. But, broadly speaking, WordPress 6.1 is the latest and greatest. You put in the show notes, the future of WordPress including 6.1 and beyond. What has got you excited in 6.1? What are some of the, the fun bells and whistles that you&#8217;ve enjoyed seeing?</p>



<p>[00:31:34] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> I think some of the global styles work, like saving and importing and exporting for themes to allow end users and builders to create their own variations on a theme. That is currently being worked on, and I think has great potential and excites me. So that, again, it goes back to enabling a good theme switching experience for the end user and for builders and for developers.</p>



<p>Then I think there&#8217;s also more, I mean, in 6.1 there was a good deal of work in allowing the bridge between classic themes and block themes with allowing classic template parts to pull in patterns. And, even now I think there&#8217;s work for replacing a template part from patterns. Those types of things speak to the backwards compatibility of the project.</p>



<p>That stuff excites me the most is bridging that gap, because I think a lot of people are, it&#8217;s either a classic theme world or a block theme world. And so, if we can slowly onboard users and developers from classic theme to block theme development, then I think that&#8217;s always going to be a success for everyone.</p>



<p>[00:32:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You, uh, you mentioned also in the show notes. One of the things that people listening to this may or may not know, is, they may have come across a plugin before called ACF. ACF stands for Advanced Custom Fields. I forget when, it was certainly before your time at WP Engine, but WP Engine acquired ACF. And, I can&#8217;t remember the route that it went. I think it went through Delicious Brains first, and then it ended up with WP Engine. It&#8217;s now under WP Engine&#8217;s stewardship. It&#8217;s a very popular plugin.</p>



<p>One of the fun things that you can do with ACF is to create blocks in, let&#8217;s just call it a simpler way. There&#8217;s less of a curve. You can stick with some of the things that you&#8217;ve known for years. You mentioned in the show notes you thought this was quite an interesting thing that you&#8217;ve been playing with lately. Tell us a little bit about ACF blocks and what you&#8217;ve been doing.</p>



<p>[00:33:40] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, I recently was able to revisit because I&#8217;ve used, I&#8217;ve been an ACF Pro user throughout my years as a developer and I&#8217;ve used it on projects and, it had been a while and the 6.0 release just came out. And so I was able to dig in and experiment with the current iteration of ACF blocks, which has great potential, I think, and is really useful.</p>



<p>And again, I think it bridges a gap for a lot of builders in creating custom blocks. I think it&#8217;s become a less of a need, because I think WordPress core has enough great blocks out of the box to use. But there&#8217;s always going to be potential for different accordions, tabs, those good old sliders, stuff like that.</p>



<p>And ACF definitely makes a great argument for using PHP and not even having to dabble in kind of the Gutenberg React, JavaScript world. So I think that makes sense for a lot of developers. Why start learning all this React stuff when I can just stick with PHP, and that makes sense to me. And I think that whatever gets you an end project done quicker than that, whatever works, that works.</p>



<p>[00:35:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So is the idea of ACF blocks then that with an understanding of PHP, CSS and what have you? You can combine custom field groups, say, or a selection of custom fields. And you can have those be output in a block? So you&#8217;re in the Gutenberg editor, you drag in the ACF block that you&#8217;ve created, and whatever you&#8217;ve given it a name for. And then you can style it in Gutenberg based upon what you&#8217;ve set up. You can obviously, depending on what you&#8217;ve done, you can add in text or multiline text or date pickers or whatever it may be. Is that the promise of it?</p>



<p>[00:35:43] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, and I think for any ACF users that are already working with the field&#8217;s UI, registering and creating those fields in ACF and then assigning them to a custom block that you can just drag and drop into the editor, is quick and easy with ACF. And it makes sense in a lot of ways, because yeah, those fields are available in your block and you get the output that you expect.</p>



<p>I think there&#8217;s a little bit of a deviation in kind of the editor experience, because the way the fields, but that&#8217;s really on the developer and implementation really. I mean, you can go all out and try to make it a native feeling experience. And I think that there&#8217;s a lot of work even in ACF to give it that native experience. But yeah, I think having those fields available right on your block in the editor makes things easy to work with and makes sense at the end of the day.</p>



<p>[00:36:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s a nice bridge isn&#8217;t it, for people who don&#8217;t wish to commit the time or the energy to learning those fairly difficult skills. You can stick with the skills that you&#8217;ve already got and use perhaps a tool that you&#8217;ve had lying around for a while in a new and interesting way.</p>



<p>And I also feel that the idea of being able to drop in custom blocks for your clients, whatever industry they&#8217;re in. I don&#8217;t know, you build a site for a real estate agent and managed to throw together a real estate block, which, you know, if you fill out the fields, there&#8217;s a house, that you can have on your website and all you had to do was drag in a block and complete the necessary fields.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s really great. Really interesting. Do you actually dabble in the, the React side of things? Do you build your own custom blocks? Is that something you have experimented with? And if the answer&#8217;s yes, how have you found that challenge?</p>



<p>[00:37:31] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yes I do. And it is a challenge. I think that I tend to bounce between trying to learn React fundamentals, but mostly I think that I spend most of my time learning Gutenberg&#8217;s flavour of React, which makes more sense to me.</p>



<p>And makes more sense in that, it&#8217;s in WordPress and that&#8217;s the APIs that they&#8217;re spinning off is going to always, it&#8217;s going to mature and change a little bit, but that&#8217;s where I&#8217;d rather spend my time learning. But I think there are some key concepts in React fundamentals that it&#8217;s always good to go back and revisit. But, I do that sporadically. That&#8217;s even, uh, as a front end developer of 10 years, I still, you know, I&#8217;m still looking up HTML elements in MDN Mozilla.</p>



<p>But yeah, developing custom blocks I think has become a lot easier because I&#8217;ve developed them throughout the years in agency land and just the tooling has become a lot better and consistent. Still a ways to go in the documentation. And I think there&#8217;s a, a lot of great feedback on how to extend some of the tools to help enable custom block development.</p>



<p>Yeah, I think it&#8217;s come a long way and, there is the barrier to creating your first block is pretty low these days. And if anything, the biggest barriers are probably spinning up and setting up Node and NPM, which is understandably a pretty significant technical barrier. But, I think there&#8217;s a lot of great tutorials out there on that stuff as well.</p>



<p>[00:39:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Given that your developer advocate role is your job, and you&#8217;re trying to bridge the gap, I guess, you&#8217;re trying to find ways to promote the community and help the community and so on. Are there any resources that you have found particularly useful? You mentioned that there&#8217;s more now than there ever has been, which is great, but are there any resources that you have personally found to be very useful about anything that we&#8217;ve talked about today? Whether that&#8217;s blocks, style variations, block themes, block patterns, whatever, just stuff that you&#8217;ve found to be useful, resources that we can mention.</p>



<p>[00:39:54] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Yeah, I think the Learn Team and learn.wordpress.org has been putting out some great material. Courses, video tutorials. So I think that has been a really great resource lately. Also, Carolina&#8217;s fullsiteediting.com. I think a lot of people find that very useful. She does a great job of keeping that up to date and so much, so much great resources there.</p>



<p>The only other, and I know this isn&#8217;t probably what everybody does with their free time, but, I actually find it interesting to open up GitHub and go into the Gutenberg project and just pick a package and start looking at code. But not everybody is a coder and not everybody&#8217;s a developer.</p>



<p>And, along those lines, I think if you are even on an early journey and have any interest in being a developer, I would focus more on just learning HTML and CSS. Then if you do someday want to open up Gutenberg and start looking at the code, I think that to have that background is, is far more important to get you into the larger stuff that goes on there.</p>



<p>[00:41:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Damon, I am wondering if people have listened to this episode and they&#8217;ve thought, I would like to talk to Damon about this. Where could we find you? What social platforms do you use, or email address do you want to disclose? Entirely up to you. As much or as little as you like?</p>



<p>[00:41:24] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Hopefully Twitter is still very active. But that&#8217;s where I do spend a lot of my time still. So I am dcook on Twitter. So definitely reach out to me there. And I think I&#8217;m always in the WordPress Slack. Definitely lots of great content coming out of wpengine.com builders site in the future. We&#8217;re actually just starting to do some workshops as well. So look for announcements on Twitter through wpenginebuilders. That&#8217;s where mostly where I can be reached.</p>



<p>[00:41:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Damon Cook, appreciate you chatting to us on the podcast today. Thank you very much.</p>



<p>[00:42:03] <strong>Damon Cook:</strong> Thank you.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today, we have <a href="https://twitter.com/dcook">Damon Cook</a>.</p>



<p>He’s a longtime user of WordPress, trying it first in around 2008. He’s worked for some of the largest WordPress agencies over the years, but his current role is that of Developer Advocate with WP Engine, where he engages with the WordPress community, trying to figure out where WordPress is headed.</p>



<p>Damon is on the podcast to talk about styling WordPress, and how it’s changing.</p>



<p>Until recently, if you wanted to modify your website’s appearance, you needed to work with the theme. Sometimes this could be done in the theme’s UI or in the WordPress Customizer, but if you really needed fine control, then it’s likely you edited the theme’s files or created a theme of your own. It can be quite a complex process.</p>



<p>Block-based themes are revolutionising website styling. You’re going to be able to change any aspect of your website from the UI that you’re familiar with. The hope is that it’ll make styling more accessible to a wider audience.</p>



<p>Damon talks about the fact that we’re in a period of flux right now. The documentation and tooling needed to work with website styles is maturing, but is by no means complete.</p>



<p>We talk through some new concepts which are underpinning all of this. Style variations, style engine, global styles, block themes, block patterns, theme.json. These are perhaps terms that you’ve heard being used, but might not be familiar with. Damon explains what they are and where they fit into the website styling jigsaw.</p>



<p>Towards the end we briefly get into work that Damon has been doing with ACF to make his own blocks, and how it provides a bridge for those people who are not yet familiar with React.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://wpengine.com/">WP Engine</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wpengine.com/builders/">WP Engine Builders</a></p>



<p><a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/">Delicious Brains</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/">Advanced Custom Fields</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/blocks/">ACF Blocks</a></p>



<p><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">Full site editing website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg">Gutenberg Project on GitHub</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 04 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:88:"Do The Woo Community: The Process for Applying to the WooCommerce Agency Partner Program";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74212";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://dothewoo.io/the-process-for-applying-to-the-woocommerce-agency-partner-program/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:394:"<p>A simple explanation of the process for applying as a WooExpert </p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/the-process-for-applying-to-the-woocommerce-agency-partner-program/">The Process for Applying to the WooCommerce Agency Partner Program</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 04 Jan 2023 10:32:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"WPTavern: Icon Block 1.4.0 Adds Height Control, Improves Color Handling to Better Support Global Styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=140670";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:113:"https://wptavern.com/icon-block-1-4-0-adds-height-control-improves-color-handling-to-better-support-global-styles";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5873:"<p>Nick Diego, developer advocate at WP Engine, has released <a href="https://nickdiego.com/the-icon-block-1-4-0-release-whats-new-and-how-i-built-it/">version 1.4.0</a> of his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/icon-block/">Icon Block</a> plugin. Diego launched it in October 2021, after struggling to find an efficient way to add SVG icons to the block editor. He is aiming for this small but useful plugin to become &#8220;the definitive SVG icon and graphic block.&#8221; In the past year, it has grown 1300%  to more than 7,000 active installs, while staying focused on a tight set of features. </p>



<p>WordPress contributors have been <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/24251">discussing adding SVG support</a> to core for more than a decade, but have not yet found a clear path forward that properly addresses security concerns. In July 2022, the Performance team began <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-performance-team-is-working-on-a-module-for-svg-uploads">working on a module for SVG uploads</a> but it&#8217;s still in progress. In the meantime, since the SVG format has <a href="https://caniuse.com/?search=svg">nearly universal support across the web</a>, users have relied on plugins like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/svg-support/">SVG Support</a> (1M+ installs) or <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/safe-svg/">Safe SVG</a> (700k+ installs) to upload SVG files to the media library and use them like any other image file.</p>



<p>Diego&#8217;s plugin is different in that it was made for use with the block and site editors. The Icon Block registers a single block that allows users to add custom SVG icons and graphics. It also enables access to the WordPress icon library, which contains 270+ SVG icons. </p>



<p>One advantage of the plugin is that users don&#8217;t need to install a whole block library if they just need SVG icons. In version 1.2.0, Icon Block added the ability for developers to <a href="https://nickdiego.com/adding-custom-icons-to-the-icon-block/">register their own custom icon libraries</a>.</p>



<p>The latest release expands width control beyond what is offered in the core Image block to support <code>%</code>, <code>px</code>, <code>em</code>, <code>rem</code>, <code>vh</code>, <code>vw</code>, or whatever units are defined in theme.json. These units are also available in Global Styles, so users can control width based on how the theme author intended. Diego, who said he prefers to use native WordPress components wherever possible, updated width controls using Gutenberg&#8217;s <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/trunk/packages/block-editor/src/components/height-control/index.js" target="_blank">HeightControl</a>, which isn&#8217;t yet available in core. </p>



<p>&#8220;Luckily, it is built out of components that have been in WordPress since 6.0. I ported the code from the <code>HeightControl</code> over to a custom <code><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://github.com/ndiego/icon-block/blob/main/src/components/dimension-control.js" target="_blank">DimensionControl</a></code> in the Icon Block and made a few modifications to meet my specific needs,&#8221; Diego said.</p>



<p>Icon height support is a new feature in the latest 1.4.0 release, another feature request from the plugin&#8217;s community of users.</p>



<img />image source: <a href="https://nickdiego.com/the-icon-block-1-4-0-release-whats-new-and-how-i-built-it/">Icon Block 1.4.0 release post</a>



<p>&#8220;One thing to note is that I choose to exclude&nbsp;<code>%</code>&nbsp;from the height unit options,&#8221; Diego said in the release post. &#8220;Using&nbsp;<code>%</code>&nbsp;can have unexpected results based on the icon’s container height and is quite unintuitive.&#8221;</p>



<p>Version 1.4.0 also improves color support to better support Global Styles. When themes define a <code><code>primary</code> and <code>secondary</code></code> colors in theme.json, icons set to use these will work seamlessly with style variation switching. This is a beautiful demonstration of how block developers can make their plugins work harmoniously with Global Styles to improve the experience of full-site editing.</p>



<img />image source: <a href="https://nickdiego.com/the-icon-block-1-4-0-release-whats-new-and-how-i-built-it/">Icon Block 1.4.0 release post</a>



<p>In future releases, Diego said he plans to work on a way to allow users to insert custom SVG icons from an &#8220;uploaded&#8221; SVG file, as well as explore ways to integrate with third-party icon libraries. Access to Font Awesome, Boostrap icons, Ionicons, and other SVG libraries would give users a much wider selection beyond the WordPress icon library when designing their sites.</p>



<p>Users can submit feature requests via the <a href="https://github.com/ndiego/icon-block/issues">issues</a> queue in the plugin&#8217;s GitHub repository. Since Diego is developing the plugin using native WordPress components as much as possible, users can also expect additional functionality to become available as it is added to WordPress core.</p>



<p>&#8220;There are tons of great icon plugins in the WordPress ecosystem, free and premium,&#8221; Diego said. &#8220;Most have more features and functionality than the Icon Block. However, what makes this block different is its strong commitment to WordPress&#8217; core design principles.</p>



<p>&#8220;The goal was always to make the block feel like it belonged in WordPress itself. I have strived to use as many core <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/block-api/block-supports/" target="_blank">block supports</a> and components as possible. Version 1.4.0 stays true to this effort with much-needed enhancements.&#8221;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 03 Jan 2023 21:36:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63:"Do The Woo Community: Knowing What Your Sites Performance Means";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=74171";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"https://dothewoo.io/knowing-what-your-sites-performance-means/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:439:"<p>You may find a tool that gives you a good indication of what your site does in a browser, but it's just a metric. It's not the metric, not the end all, be all.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/knowing-what-your-sites-performance-means/">Knowing What Your Sites Performance Means</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:49:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:44:"Donncha: The Mastodon Onslaught on your blog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://odd.blog/?p=89589420";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://odd.blog/2023/01/02/the-mastodon-onslaught-on-your-blog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7169:"<p>You might not be on Mastodon yet, but your blog could get a torrent of traffic from Mastodon, or other Fediverse network if it&#8217;s shared there.</p>



<p>If your website is mentioned there, it might be the “victim” of an inadvertent denial of service attack, as hundreds or thousands of servers request the URL in the 60 seconds or so afterwards. That is precisely what <a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/mastodon-stampede/">JWZ blogged about</a> last month when his site was taken down by Mastodon servers.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Every time I do a new blog post, within a second I have over a thousand simultaneous hits of that URL on my web server from unique IPs. Load goes over 100, and mariadb stops responding.</p>
<cite>JWZ on <a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/mastodon-stampede/">Mastodon Stampede</a>.</cite></blockquote>



<p></p>



<p>JWZ has over <a href="https://mastodon.social/@jwz">8,000 followers.</a> Every time he shares a post on Mastodon, the instances (servers) where those followers live will send a request to his blog to generate a preview. Actually, two requests will be sent:</p>



<ul>
<li>A request for the wp-json embed for the page.</li>



<li>A request for the page that was shared.</li>
</ul>



<p>Eventually, he blocked the Mastodon user agent. That stops previews of his website showing up on Mastodon posts, but resolves the problem for his website.</p>



<p>Yesterday morning, I <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109614145566437712">decided to see what effect</a> sharing a link on my Mastodon account would have on my server. My Mastodon account has 1.8K followers. A far cry from the number of followers JWZ has, but still enough to test my server.</p>



<p>I wanted to test several scenarios:</p>



<ul>
<li>Caching the post before sharing.</li>



<li>Changing Apache configuration.</li>



<li>Sharing without caching on my server.</li>
</ul>



<p>My server is at Linode. I pay an average of $24/month to run this site and my photoblog is on it too where I share a daily photo + link on Mastodon. It&#8217;s not a heavy-duty server that can withstand a huge amount of traffic.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to skip the details, my server coped fine with sharing a URL from here to Mastodon. The load average went up for about 20 seconds, topping out at the max for about 5 seconds before things calmed down. It was responsive the whole time. Install a full-page caching plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache</a>, <a href="https://jetpack.com/boost/">Jetpack Boost</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-rest-cache/">WP Rest Cache</a> and your site will probably be fine. Jetpack Boost and the <a href="https://jetpack.com/">Jetpack</a> Image Accelerator will help when human visitors arrive.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default">
<a href="https://i0.wp.com/odd.blog/files/2023/01/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-10.03.17.png?ssl=1"><img /></a></div>


<p>The <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109614168671378154">first test</a> resulted in:</p>



<ul>
<li>261 requests for the page embed.</li>



<li>359 requests for the page itself.</li>



<li>1 minute load average topped out at 1.34 for 5 seconds.</li>
</ul>



<p>The page was cached by WP Super Cache, but I had set the garbage collection TTL to 60 seconds and I believe it expired halfway through the test, so it had to generate the cache again. Once I adjusted that, and set the TTL to 600 seconds, <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109614227575646081">the second test</a> performed better. The page remained cached throughout:</p>



<ul>
<li>273 requests for the page embed.</li>



<li>289 requests for the page itself.</li>



<li>1 minute load average topped out at 0.71 for 5 seconds.</li>
</ul>



<p>The main points of my Apache configuration:</p>



<ul>
<li>Keep alives are disabled.</li>



<li>5 start servers</li>



<li>Minimum 10 spare servers</li>
</ul>



<p>When I reduced the start and minimum spare servers to 1, <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109614274892094213">the next test</a> took longer to complete, and the load average rose to 1.24, even on a fully cached page. This was expected as the server didn&#8217;t have the spare capacity to deal with the sudden traffic.</p>



<p>After reverting the changes to Apache, I disabled caching on my blog and shared another URL. The <a href="https://mastodon.ie/@donncha/109614344675460069">load average</a> only rose to 1.12 for a very short time. I was pleased with that. While caching does help, my server could cope with that traffic.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default">
<a href="https://i0.wp.com/odd.blog/files/2023/01/Screenshot-2023-01-02-at-09.57.25.png?ssl=1"><img /></a>A sample of the user agents used by Mastodon instances hitting my blog for previews</div>


<p>I suspected that there was one hit per Mastodon instance on my site. I checked my logs and was proved right. For all the accounts that follow me on mastodon.social, only one request was made. That does mean the onslaught of requests isn&#8217;t as bad as it might be. Instead of 1,800 requests for a page, there were far fewer. I did notice that a Friendica instance requested one of my test URLs several times.</p>



<p>Mastodon and other Fediverse servers will start requesting a preview within a second of you sharing your post on the network. It helps if your server is running some sort of caching.</p>



<p>If you have many Mastodon followers or if you&#8217;re worried about a DDoS from Mastodon, the following will help:</p>



<ul>
<li>Make sure Apache/Nginx has the spare capacity to grow quickly and respond to a sudden torrent of requests.</li>



<li>Install a caching plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache</a>.</li>



<li>Use “expert caching” in WP Super Cache which serves the cached page using mod_rewrite. That will mean your blog post is served almost as fast as requesting a text file from the server. No PHP is executed at all.</li>



<li>Install <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-rest-cache/">WP Rest Cache</a> as it will <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/get-wp-json-oembed-not-cached-can-it-be/">soon cache the embed page request</a>.</li>



<li>Install <a href="https://jetpack.com/">Jetpack</a> and enable the Image Accelerator and Jetpack Boost for human visitors who come later.</li>
</ul>



<p>This problem has existed for a long time. Popular blogs had the same issue when they published new content and people following their blogs (through RSS feed readers, remember them?) hit the server looking for the new post. At least with Mastodon, you can load the post in a private browser window and cache it before sharing it. I want to write a WP Super Cache add-on plugin that allows the site owner to preload a new post as it&#8217;s published. That will ensure the new content is ready for sharing. I haven&#8217;t started work on that yet, so don&#8217;t ask when it&#8217;ll be done. Maybe someone else will beat me to it and claim all the credit!</p>



<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 02 Jan 2023 09:31:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Donncha";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 46: The WP Bloopers Podcast";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=14123";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/12/episode-46-the-wp-bloopers-podcast/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:9573:"<p>This episode of the WP Briefing features all the Josepha bloopers our little elves have stored away over the year. </p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



<p>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/">Santana Inniss</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-14123"></span>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can normally catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project with the hope that deeper understanding creates deeper appreciation.</p>



<p>But on today&#8217;s bonus episode, instead of catching quick explanations, you&#8217;ll catch some quick bloopers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The end of the year is a time when many people and many cultures gather together, and whether you observe traditions of light or faith, compassion, or celebration from everyone here at the WordPress Briefing Podcast, we&#8217;re wishing you a happy, festive season and a very happy New Year.</p>



<p>Sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the laughs and outtakes from recording the WP Briefing over the year.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress. This is the thing I&#8217;ve done 25 times, and I know how to do it for reals.</p>



<p>Welcome to WordPress Briefing, episode 20. Oh no, 7? 27? 26? Episode 27. I know how many things I&#8217;ve done.</p>



<p>Ooh, neat. This is Josepha recording episode 46 of the WP Bonus Briefings. Not because we&#8217;ve had 46 bonus Briefings, but because this is the 46th one and it is a bonus, it will also have a fancy name. But right now, I&#8217;m just calling it the bonus. It&#8217;s gonna be quick. Here I go.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Group them into two big buckets, themes, uh, themes and tools. Mmm, I&#8217;m gonna have to redo the whole thing! No! I thought I could save it, and I didn&#8217;t save it. I had a typo in my script, and then I messed it up. I, it said into you big buckets instead of into two big buckets.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I&#8217;m gonna start over from the target release date because I kind of smeared it all together, um, despite what I intended to do.</p>



<p>And gives everyone, no. What is this ringing of phones? Oh, I was doing so well. Where was I? Let&#8217;s see if I can just pick it up.</p>



<p>All righty, live from my closet. It&#8217;s episode 20, the WordPress Briefing, WP Briefing. So I have a title for this, and when I started writing it, I really had every intention of writing it to the title. And then what I wrote doesn&#8217;t fit the title at all, but does really hang together well. And so we&#8217;re gonna have to come up with a new title, but at the moment, it&#8217;s called So Many Ways to WordPress.</p>



<p>Here in a minute, you will see why it doesn&#8217;t fit. Also, at the end, I feel like I get very, like, angry nerd leader.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00]&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And so I may, I may at the end, give that a second go and see if there&#8217;s a way that I can soften it a little bit, but, I, I don&#8217;t know that I can soften it. I feel very strongly about it. So, maybe I am just an angry nerd leader.</p>



<p>Oh, okay. I&#8217;ll get us started now that I apparently have filled the room with apologies, not the room, the closet.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We&#8217;ll figure out something very catchy as a title or as an alternative. Very descriptive, and people will click on it because they must know, but we&#8217;ll figure out the title later.</p>



<p>@wordpress.org. However, I don&#8217;t know why I decided to do an invitation to email me in the middle of that. I&#8217;m gonna start from the top of that paragraph. I just got too excited by the opportunity to get mail.</p>



<p>I gotta slow it down. I&#8217;m like the fastest talker, had too much coffee. Okay, slowing it down now.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Huh? What am I saying? No, no, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m saying. It&#8217;s fine. I, I can do this.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]</strong></p>



<p>Hold on. Oww. Sorry. I was adjusting my microphone, and then it fell down. I happened to be holding it at the time, so it didn&#8217;t, like, slam down, I think, and hurt your ears and so I apologize. Good thing I stopped so it didn&#8217;t just, like, slam down in the middle of a recording.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s all right. I&#8217;m gonna give myself that win, even though it&#8217;s a hollow one. All right. Trying again. Starting right there, at now since.</p>



<p>This year, it starts on October 18th, 2001. That&#8217;s the year? No, 2021. That&#8217;s the year. Oh man. I&#8217;m doing such a great job of this.</p>



<p>Um, I&#8217;m recording this slightly before, um, you&#8217;re hearing it? What, how am I gonna start this? Hold on. I don&#8217;t know how to start this. All right. I&#8217;m, I can do it.</p>



<p>Oh, I&#8217;m so glad I remembered. We had guests that could have been so embarrassing.</p>



<p>Now for me, the trade-offs work well. How many times can I say now?</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Do I just start every sentence with now now? Is this just how I do things? Uh, now, now, now, now. I&#8217;m gonna start all over again because I&#8217;m in my head about the words in my mouth now. So.</p>



<p>In some near timeframe, some near timeframe. This is not a thing that people say, Dustin, I&#8217;m sorry. That&#8217;s not a thing people say. I&#8217;m just gonna retry that one sentence to sound like I speak with other human beings sometimes.</p>



<p>Today is the start of… I can do these things.</p>



<p>This was a terrible ending. I need to just finish that last part. I&#8217;m gonna redo the part where I started with my name and not the name of the podcast. Um, and we&#8217;ll do that.</p>



<p>And if you&#8217;re supporting or building anything to hand off to clients, you know that timely, easy to ship changes on a site are considered a vital part of any overarching brand and marketing strategy. Wow. It&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t know what words are right there.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I tripped over my own tongue a lot. I&#8217;m gonna sit, I&#8217;m gonna do that paragraph again because I didn&#8217;t do a very good job of it.</p>



<p>I&#8217;ll do a better job.</p>



<p>I literally digress, and now I don&#8217;t know. I am in my thing. What was I saying? Oh, there we go.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Topher DeRosia, who founded Word not WordPress. Holy moly. That was a, I knew I was gonna say that, and I was like, don&#8217;t say that when you actually get around to saying this, but here I am, and I did it. Even though I knew I was gonna do it and I told myself not to. Doing it again. Right from there.</p>



<p>Not which audiench segment. Oh man. Audiench is not a word, folks. I was on a roll. I&#8217;m gonna start right from the primary thing.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t even remember how I started this podcast. What is the last thing I said? I said, here we go. All right.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Kind of covered some interesting ground, and so, oh no, this is not where I&#8217;m gonna start it. I know exactly where I&#8217;m gonna start it. Okay. I&#8217;m really ready now. Here we go.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I suddenly, I&#8217;m gonna pause right here because I suddenly got really worried that I didn&#8217;t actually hit record. Oh my gosh. I did. Woo. I&#8217;m all over the place. Okay. We&#8217;ll now continue. Wait, did I? Oh my goodness. I did, super sorry.</p>



<p>Of the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m gonna do some singing in the middle of some talking, but I keep trying to talk myself out of the singing, so I&#8217;m gonna go ahead and do the singing, and then I&#8217;ll do the talking before I talk myself out of the singing. Here I go, probably.</p>



<p>I added a word. That was so good. I&#8217;m gonna start again. I&#8217;m gonna get some water, and then I&#8217;m gonna start again. Not again. Again. Just from the ‘and finally.’</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know how I finish my show. Y&#8217;all, I do this literally every week. I never know how to finish my show. Here we go.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know why I shouted at you from the other side of the tiny closet. I apologize. I&#8217;m gonna start again from ‘and finally.’</p>



<p>Tada we did it.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Ha. I hate it. I hate the whole podcast. It&#8217;s gonna be fine.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Done. Nailed it.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>With that, I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Merry Christmas from me. Happy holidays to you, and we&#8217;ll see you again in the new year.</p>



<p>Done.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 31 Dec 2022 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Santana Inniss";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"Post Status: New Year, Same Me";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=146196";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"https://poststatus.com/new-year-same-me/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3111:"<p>As I reflect on 2022, I think back over a year of mixed blessings, and I’m so grateful for the WordPress Community who supported me through family loss, new ventures, and the things I’m always doing both in and outside of WordPress.</p>



<p>This year I:</p>



<ul>
<li>I completed my first year on the Post Status team! I love working in the community this way, helping tell your stories, helping post jobs, and being able to help you all make connections.&nbsp;</li>



<li>I completed my first year on the StellarWP team! Again, working in our community is amazing. I get to post on different social accounts, connect people with support, and help users find the products that work for them (and they make it possible for me to contribute to the community in big ways.</li>



<li>I served on the WCUS org team. You read my post <a href="https://poststatus.com/5-days-without-a-shower/">5 Days Without a Shower</a>, so you know it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it was amazing, and the efforts within WordPress that have come from that post (and my experiences) will help the community going forward.</li>



<li>I lost my dad this year, and the community (at StellarWP, Post Status, and the community as a whole) rallied around me with cards, DM’s, packages, phone calls, and more. If I could hug you all, I would!</li>



<li>We had a Post Status member retreat in OKC. Meeting some of our agency owners was so amazing. What a huge braintrust we have in Post Status.</li>



<li>We had an in-person huddle at WCUS and it was a blast! I loved getting to know you better.</li>



<li>I started a <a href="https://wpmotivate.com">podcast</a> with the amazing, <a href="https://twitter.com/kathyzant">Kathy Zant</a>, and together we hope to bring some sunshine and positivity into your week.</li>
</ul>



<p>My wish for you in 2023 is continued health, happiness and prosperity. Connect with me on <a href="https://poststatus.slack.com">Post Status slack</a> if there’s any way I can help you moving forward.</p>



<h2 id="h-in-the-spotlight">In the Spotlight</h2>



<p>Post Status professional member, <a href="https://poststatus.com/member-spotlight-seth-goldstein/">Seth Goldstein</a>. Seth has been in the digital marketing and WordPress space for more than 15 years.</p>



<h2 id="h-weekly-member-huddles">Weekly Member Huddles</h2>



<p>We’re restructuring in 2023, so keep an eye out for news of upcoming Post Status events.</p>



<h2 id="h-quick-links">Quick Links:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Asia</a> February 17-19, 2023</li>



<li><a href="https://yoast.com/yoastcon/">YoastCon</a> is back May 10 & 11</li>



<li>Podcast: WP Motivate <a href="https://wpmotivate.com/podcast/gratitude-for-the-conveniences-of-the-internet-at-christmastime/">Gratitude for the Conveniences of the Internet at Christmastime</a></li>



<li>WordCamps are back. <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/">Check the schedule online</a>!</li>
</ul>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Dec 2022 17:00:10 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Michelle Frechette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:11:47 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Wed, 18 Jan 2023 20:45:33 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 2";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20221108164705";}