hink of is like a lot of times I won&#8217;t, let&#8217;s say in WordPress, you can write into the editor, you could write a page or a post right into the Gutenberg, the block editor. I choose not to do that. What I do is use a notepad, or not notepad, what is it for a Mac? I forgot.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> TextEdit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:54] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Yes, TextEdit. Thanks. I&#8217;ll use that and I&#8217;ll have the font blown up bigger than normal, and I&#8217;ll just edit in there, and then I&#8217;ll just take that and then I&#8217;ll copy that and paste that into WordPress. It&#8217;s just easier for me to do it that way. So I just like it that way. You know, everybody has their own little thing. That&#8217;s my little thing. And I think it&#8217;s because of my vision.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And in terms of kind of getting the recording software to work and things like that, how do those UIs function for you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:19] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Yeah, pretty good. The problem I have with learning something new and complicated is that, I think it&#8217;s like everybody, quite frankly, I get confused and try to figure out where&#8217;s what. And like I was using, I use Descript, and it just took me quite a while to figure out, how do I do this? How do I do that? But like anything else, once I learn it, it&#8217;s pretty solid and it gets easier.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I do tend to blow things up to make it bigger. And my wife is always telling me, I can&#8217;t use your computer because stuff is too big. Now, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s too big, but she does. And when I look at other people&#8217;s computers, then I realise, no, it&#8217;s bigger than theirs.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so we&#8217;re in the era of Gutenberg. It sounds like you&#8217;ve been using WordPress for a fairly long time, presumably before Gutenberg. What&#8217;s your opinion on whether or not that was a move in the right direction? In other words, is it favorable? Is it more straightforward for you to create a post? I know that you said in the scenario for a podcast, you&#8217;re writing it elsewhere and copying and pasting it in. But with other things like, I don&#8217;t know, laying out content and writing paragraphs and things, do you think it&#8217;s a good experience? Did we go in the right direction there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:18] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> That&#8217;s a very hard question for me to answer. I&#8217;ll answer it in a couple of different ways. One, as far as accessibility goes, I&#8217;m no expert in this. I am not an accessibility expert. Am I a stakeholder? We all are. But I can&#8217;t answer it in that regard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But from a more technical standpoint, because I write technical articles for Kinsta, Hostinger, others, that I find it to be difficult. I know I was told it&#8217;s not supposed to be easy, so it certainly doesn&#8217;t match the easy. Yeah, and that has nothing to do with my vision. It&#8217;s just, I feel it&#8217;s just complicated, even though I&#8217;ve learned quite a bit of the technical side of this stuff. I&#8217;m not trying to be cute here, but I&#8217;m trying to be cute, and I just can&#8217;t answer that question that&#8217;s going to provide any value so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was kind of wondering if there was a thing which, if you could click your fingers and make it appear in the Block Editor or the Gutenberg interface, which you would, and I don&#8217;t know that you&#8217;ve got got an answer to that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:15] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> I, let me think. No, I don&#8217;t think so. No. And I use Elementor too. So I think from a logic standpoint, Elementor seems to be easier for me. What I just don&#8217;t like is a lot of confusion. Too much information built into a UI is a real problem for me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nathan, the funny thing is I feel like I have a special filter on the world that other people don&#8217;t have. This is another one of these blessings, that gives me the ability to understand what works and what doesn&#8217;t work without having to ask somebody because it&#8217;s just built in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, the thing about disability or this field in general, which is huge, it&#8217;s very idiosyncratic. So my setup is good for me, but it may not work for somebody else. And it&#8217;s very hard to, as those who keep accessibility in mind, and hopefully it&#8217;s everybody. It&#8217;s a very difficult subject because how do we design our systems, our content so that the greatest number of people can access this information, or whatever, on the largest number of devices. I mean, that&#8217;s what accessibility to me is about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s curious that you said, I think you said at the beginning that your condition is one which will deteriorate over time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:31] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, macular degeneration, generally, can get worse over time. But fortunately, for reasons that we don&#8217;t need to get into, since 1992 it&#8217;s been very stable, which I&#8217;m really fortunate because trust me, I don&#8217;t want it to get any worse than this. I don&#8217;t need another, that much of a blessing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I was wondering from that, whether or not the accessibility side of WordPress is something that you lean into. Do you attend those kind of, I don&#8217;t know, WP Accessibility Day, those kind of events?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:59] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> No, it just doesn&#8217;t really interest me. You know, back in like 1999, 2000, I was teaching a course at Pratt Institute in New York called Accessible Web Design. And it was way ahead of its time. And the concepts I was teaching were basically concepts because the browsers and technology just wasn&#8217;t there yet. So you&#8217;d have to say, well, one day, and one day did happen in large measure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then I started realising, I just didn&#8217;t want to like make a career out of teaching this or testing or, you know, I started to meet people in the field and I just said, I don&#8217;t really like this. I mean, just because I&#8217;m, I have a disability doesn&#8217;t mean I have to like the field of accessible design, you know, accessibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s interesting. You are wearing a WordCamp Montclair t-shirt, which kind of tells me that not only are you attending this event, WordCamp US, but you&#8217;re also attending other ones as well. Is that a big part of your life? If it is, how accessible are things like this event? Do you come here fully expecting of yourself that you&#8217;ll have a full experience the same way that everybody else does?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:59] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, I have a good experience, but it is not the same way everybody else does. For example, I can&#8217;t see the screens at all. And when they&#8217;re doing stuff, the slides, I&#8217;m just listening, okay. It&#8217;s sort of like, I watch TV a lot that way too. I hear things. Unless I got really close, I&#8217;m not going to be able to see what&#8217;s on the screen. If I took a picture of something that&#8217;s really important, yeah, that&#8217;ll help.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But generally speaking, that doesn&#8217;t work for me. And then it could be kind of a, yes, I&#8217;ve gone to many WordCamps, but they&#8217;re all sort of the same in terms of the issues. And I don&#8217;t even think of them as issues anymore. I just think of it as like, we&#8217;re all different. This is the way I&#8217;m different. And talking about this stuff, quite frankly is like talking about being right-handed. Would you do an interview of me being right-handed?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, fascinating. I guess, from my perspective, because I just don&#8217;t, I can&#8217;t prize that open my own life, it&#8217;s really intriguing to sort of try to have some sort of understanding of how it differs from my experience to your experience. And I guess for you it&#8217;s, this is how I live.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:58] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Yeah. But Nathan, you know, vision is a spectrum. It&#8217;s a continuum. It isn&#8217;t just everybody looks at things the same way. No. So I don&#8217;t think, alright, I&#8217;m like sort of on one end of the spectrum, I get it, but everybody looks at things differently. And I don&#8217;t mean that figuratively, I mean that literally. So I don&#8217;t think of it anymore much as a handicap, you know, other than the fact that, yeah, that&#8217;s a pain in the neck sometimes. And sometimes you find yourself doing some foolish things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think the hardest thing for me at these events is that I won&#8217;t know who I&#8217;m talking to until about five minutes after I&#8217;m talking to them, and I figured out by looking at their shape, stuff like that, that I can, oh, I&#8217;m talking to Nathan Wrigley, or your accent, or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. You&#8217;re obviously quite keen on the sort of education side of things though because you&#8217;re writing tutorials. I&#8217;ll link in the show notes to one that you wrote for Smashing Magazine, which is no mean feat. Getting in there is really rather impressive. So well done for that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you&#8217;re also obviously turning up two events like this. And it sounds from what you said as if this is content that you&#8217;ve done before. So very keen on that, even though it may be talking about, you were describing there, it&#8217;s like talking about whether you&#8217;re right-handed. You&#8217;ve put together this presentation in which you&#8217;re going to share these different bits and pieces about how you make amendments and adjustments to WordPress and the operating system and so on. So do you enjoy the education side of it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:16] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Oh, absolutely. I&#8217;m a teacher at heart. I mean, you know, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been doing for 25 years. And even in the writings that I do, they&#8217;re basically, it&#8217;s a different way of teaching. Now the talk that I&#8217;m giving though here, the funny thing is, as I&#8217;ve said, I&#8217;m sort of like cool to the idea to be honest about it. There are other talks I&#8217;d rather give than this one, but this is the talk that everybody seems to be interested in. And I get that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when you come up with a topic called using low vision is a tool to help me teach WordPress, that&#8217;s a winner because you got two things in there that everybody loves. One, we love disability, and two, we love teaching WordPress. So two weird things got put into one title.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a hit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:58] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> It got to be a hit, right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What would be the presentation that you would do?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:01] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Ah. The one that I&#8217;m threatening to do instead of this one, because I keep saying, I don&#8217;t wanna do this one, let me do another one. There&#8217;s two.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One is, burnt out on web design, what your future career could be, which is my story.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the other one is, show me the money, how to get sponsors to financially help with your podcast, event, whatever. I like that topic, show me the money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Paraphrasing, just a minute, what are the nuggets? Because I&#8217;m curious about that one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:27] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Oh, come on. You could teach me, okay?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What are the nuggets in there though?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:32] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, in my case with my podcast, I&#8217;ve been sort of lucky in that they came to me and said, we&#8217;d like to sponsor you. Which is a shock because when I started the podcast a year and a half ago, or actually the idea was, it&#8217;s now two years old, I said, I didn&#8217;t care if anybody ever listened, I didn&#8217;t care if anybody ever sponsored. And then of course, over time, I did care.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I never thought of my show ever being sponsored. I said, I&#8217;ll just do it. And then I started realising, hey, this takes a lot of time, should get paid for this. And, you know, I feel just, if I have a second or two say how fortunate I am to be a part of all of this because at my advanced age, to be in this community with such smart, brilliant, whatever, people that are friendly. When I talk to people my age who are generally retired or retiring and, their world gets smaller and mine gets bigger.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:25] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> So I&#8217;m really, really lucky about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I don&#8217;t know what your age is, but I am of a certain age, and I&#8217;m kind of feeling at the moment that there&#8217;s this whole thing which everybody wants to talk about, which is AI. And I&#8217;m kind of feeling as if that train has already, you know, that ship has sailed for me. Can&#8217;t invest all of the time and what have you to learn all of the different bits and pieces. It&#8217;s like there&#8217;s another bus coming. I don&#8217;t know what you think about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:47] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, I&#8217;ll tell you what it is, for me, it&#8217;s been a career extender, because I am now writing at a level for Kinsta, technical articles that I could not otherwise write. And because of my use of, and if you will, mastery of AI, I&#8217;ve been able to code things that I could not do before. So I&#8217;ve always had sort of, for the longest time, because I taught great foundation of HTML, CSS, some JavaScript, whatever. So I know this stuff, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But to elevate that knowledge, to create stuff now that is much more complicated, sort of like junior development oriented stuff or maybe a little bit beyond that. That is amazing. And it&#8217;s because of AI.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s fascinating.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:30] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> It&#8217;s extending what I can do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, you feel like you&#8217;ve got a new lease of life there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:34] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Yeah, a bit. So I don&#8217;t have to keep writing the same things over and over about how to create a post. You know, I&#8217;ve done that. I want to be challenged to learn new things, and AI is helping me do that. And we&#8217;re teaching AI, and AI is teaching us. So it&#8217;s really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Your presentation, is it today or tomorrow?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:51] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, it&#8217;s tomorrow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was going to say, you&#8217;re looking very calm for somebody that has a presentation later today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:56] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, you know, I&#8217;ve been around the block. I&#8217;m not going to be nervous. Now what I do have to do is I&#8217;ve got to do some more memorisation. And that&#8217;s what I talked about always being prepared. I just can&#8217;t go in there and read the slides. It&#8217;s not going to happen. So I have to really know what the slides are, what the order is, and what the words are on the screen. I don&#8217;t have to read those words, but I have to know the ideas behind all this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So in some sense, you&#8217;ve memorised it more or less. Oh, that&#8217;s interesting. So you&#8217;ve really applied thought to every, more or less, every sentence that comes out of your mouth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:24] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Basically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But you don&#8217;t get nervous.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:26] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> We&#8217;re with friends.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I would get so nervous.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:29] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> At least I like to think so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. No, I agree. Every time I&#8217;ve been to a presentation, even when the person delivering it has been quite nervous, there&#8217;s always been a very positive sentiment in the room.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:39] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> I&#8217;ll tell you why I don&#8217;t get nervous, I don&#8217;t see their faces.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:42] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> So if you don&#8217;t see their faces. There&#8217;s so many advantages of vision impairment. I know it sounds crazy, but if you don&#8217;t see their faces, then you don&#8217;t see their reactions. Now, of course, that&#8217;s a negative too. But then you don&#8217;t get nervous.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Absolutely fascinating. Well, I wish you the best of luck with it. It will be out on wordpress.tv at some point. Typically now they come out really soon. These flagship events, they turn them around really quickly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:06] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, I don&#8217;t know when this is coming out, but this is going to be live streamed around the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:10] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Yeah. So one person can watch.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The point being, dear listener, that if you&#8217;ve enjoyed this episode and you want to follow on the talk, the presentation that Bud has given at WordCamp US, by the way, maybe the quickest way to do that is to just Google, either WordCamp US 2025. Or Google, using low vision as my tool to help me teach WordPress. That&#8217;s the other short circuit if you like. You&#8217;ll be able to see exactly what it is that Bud delivered.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have no further questions, so unless you&#8217;ve got something to add, I will say thank you very much for chatting to me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:40] <strong>Bud Kraus:</strong> Well, thank you Nathan. And you know I&#8217;m a big fan of what you do and thanks for having me on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much.</p>\n</div></details>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://seriouslybud.com/\">Bud Kraus</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bud was diagnosed with macular degeneration, a condition often associated with old age, when he was 37. Affecting both eyes, this gradually eroded his central vision, making it difficult for him to see straight ahead, recognize faces, drive or read. Despite these challenges, Bud’s peripheral vision remained intact, sparing him the need for a cane or guide dog, and allowing him to continue to navigate daily life. Through perseverance and adaptation, Bud continues to live fully, facing the hurdles of vision loss with resilience and optimism.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bud opens up the podcast by talking about his experience living with legal blindness, how his central vision loss has shaped everything from everyday activities to his professional routines. He explains the practical ways he adapts his devices and workflow, including tweaks to operating system settings, using screen zoom functions, and relying on pattern recognition to teach coding, write tutorials, and even host his Seriously, Bud podcast. His unique perspective sheds light on the often-overlooked nuances of accessibility, reminding us that every user interacts with technology differently.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bud also chats about the broader impact of accessibility in the WordPress space, from frustrations with hard-to-navigate interfaces to the importance of not excluding users who may become your audience or customers. His reflections reveal how living with low vision pushed him beyond mere acceptance, helping him discover new opportunities, hone his teaching skills, and even find humour in daily challenges.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bud’s story serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of designing with empathy, embracing adaptation, and viewing accessibility not just as a technical requirement, but as a source of creativity and connection. It’s full of real-world tips, personal anecdotes, and a dose of inspiration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you’re a designer, developer, educator, or simply passionate about building a more inclusive web, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/session/using-low-vision-as-my-tool-to-help-me-teach-wordpress/\">Using Low Vision As My Tool To Help Me Teach WordPress</a>, Bud&#8217;s presentation at WordCamp US 2025</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/\">JAWS, Job Access With Speech software</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.pratt.edu/\">Pratt Institute</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.descript.com/\">Descript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/05/using-low-vision-teach-wordpress/\">Using Low Vision As My Tool To Help Me Teach WordPress</a>, Bud&#8217;s post on Smashing Magazine</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, 08 Oct 2025 14:00:00 +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:16;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:59:\"Open Channels FM: From Home Kitchen to International Orders\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110428\";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:66:\"https://openchannels.fm/from-home-kitchen-to-international-orders/\";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:163:\"Using WooCommerce and open source to take kitchen baking into an online cake business, embracing cake in a jar and building a vibrant brand with community support.\";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, 08 Oct 2025 12:41:35 +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:17;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:26:\"Matt: Tim &amp;amp; Pablos\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150138\";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:33:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/tim-pablos/\";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:652:\"<p>Two of my favorite humans, <a href=\"https://tim.blog/\">Tim Ferriss</a> and <a href=\"https://pablosspeaks.com/\">Pablos Holman</a>, had a great interview together.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Pablos has a <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F23CLXZP\">great new book out</a>, and <a href=\"https://audrey.co/\">Audrey Capital</a> is a happy LP in his <a href=\"https://deepfuture.tech/\">Deep Future fund</a>. Of my many hacker friends, Pablos is probably the most public.</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, 07 Oct 2025 13:36:03 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:18;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:94:\"Open Channels FM: How Decentralized Social Platforms Grew from Identica to Modern-Day Mastodon\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110897\";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:101:\"https://openchannels.fm/how-decentralized-social-platforms-grew-from-identica-to-modern-day-mastodon/\";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:188:\"Matthias Pfefferle discusses the Fediverse\'s origins and evolution with Evan Prodromou, highlighting decentralized social networks, protocols, privacy, and the future of federated systems.\";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, 07 Oct 2025 11:12:52 +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:19;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:20:\"Matt: Beeper Updates\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150133\";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:37:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/beeper-updates/\";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:277:\"<p><a href=\"https://blog.beeper.com/2025/10/06/beeper-september/\">Beeper has a fun set of September updates</a>, adding support for Google Voice, LinkedIn now runs on-device, typing indicators for Google Messages and Instagram, full Telegram custom emoji support, and more.</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, 06 Oct 2025 18:22:00 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:20;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:77:\"Open Channels FM: Why Linking and Permalinks Are the Backbone of the Open Web\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110377\";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:84:\"https://openchannels.fm/why-linking-and-permalinks-are-the-backbone-of-the-open-web/\";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:168:\"Dave Winer talks about the open web\'s basics, emphasizing that linking is crucial for real connection. Platforms limiting links miss out on that vibrant web experience.\";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, 06 Oct 2025 12:49:41 +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:21;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:37:\"Tammie Lister: September 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:34:\"https://binatethoughts.com/?p=2455\";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:50:\"https://binatethoughts.com/september-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:5187:\"<p>Another month has turned just like the leaves as autumn settles in. I was lucky enough to get time to focus thanks to sponsors, here is what I did within WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">August reflections</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s worth noting I am aware that August didn’t have a month post, this was due to travelling back from being at WordCamp US. This post is a merged month in many sense as the theme has maintained the same as September saw solidifying of what I was doing.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A new team</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Core Program team was <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/project/2025/09/15/announcing-the-core-program-team/\">announced</a> and I will be the first team rep. This was a huge part of this month as required setting up and focus. I am beyond excited what this means. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am thrilled to say <a href=\"https://www.bigscoots.com/\">BigScoots</a> is sponsoring me to cover some time focusing on the Core Program team and thankful for the opportunity to go to sponsors and highlight where I am needed most.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Focusing on AI and editor</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Relating to the last section a little, <a href=\"https://greyd.io/\">Greyd</a> are now going to be sponsoring me to focus both on Core AI and also on Core Editor. This combination allows me to focus even more my contributions where they can be effective. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>This split focus will add to <a href=\"https://servmask.com/\">ServMask’s</a> sponsorship of me within Core AI already to give me extra time within that area.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Areas of contribution</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My split this month was given a new focus thanks to being a team rep for a new <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/program/2025/09/12/welcome-to-the-core-program-team/\">team announced</a>, Core Program. Beyond that, top areas were:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>&#8216;Needs design&#8217;</strong>: adding design to Core AI experiments.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Triage:</strong> focused on 6.9 design issues, unblocking and also giving feedback.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Program team work</strong>: establishing team and getting goals brewing. Weekly posts <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/program/tag/this-week/\">here</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Core AI:</strong> focusing on roadmaps.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sharing the journey</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I got to share a few things this month, I also got to attend LoopConf and speak about AI at the local WP London meetup the night before:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://binatethoughts.com/the-sparkle-paradox-how-ai-signalling-undermines-adoption/\">The sparkle paradox</a>: specifically fuelled the designs I worked on for Experiments.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Spoke at WPLDN about &#8216;<a href=\"https://www.wpldn.uk/talk/when-the-interface-doesnt-matter-anymore/\">When the Interface doesn’t matter anymore</a>&#8216;.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><br />Upcoming plans for contribution</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>October is already shaping up to be busy with Core Program and the 6.9 release.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Triage: </strong>focus on 6.9, but I don’t want to ignore the <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/ancient\">ancient and inactive</a> trac log. This month triage won’t be my main focus but more about unblocking</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Core AI:</strong> feedback and iterations for experiments and program work on abilities. I would also love to work on the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/ai/discussions/23\">documentation</a> and handbook if time.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>I had some awesome fun working on the issues for experiments. <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/ai/issues/13#issuecomment-3352028955\">#</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/ai/issues/12#issuecomment-3353681251\">#</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/ai/issues/11#issuecomment-3352146880\">#</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/ai/issues/10#issuecomment-3352689787\">#</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Core Program: </strong>shape goals collaboratively, goals will be posted weekly on #core-program in Slack.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sponsors this month</h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p>I now have these sponsors and from this month I am highlighting the areas they are helping me focus on if sponsoring a particular focus. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.bigscoots.com\">BigScoots</a> (Core Program), <a href=\"https://greyd.io\">Greyd</a> (Core AI / Core Editor), <a href=\"https://kinsta.com\">Kinsta</a> (Triage), <a href=\"https://servmask.com\">ServMask</a> (Core AI), <a href=\"https://github.com/aaronjorbin\">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/timnashcouk\">Tim Nash</a>, <a href=\"https://github.com/jeffpaul\">Jeffrey Paul</a> and <a href=\"https://github.com/scotrumery\">Scot Rumery</a> (<a href=\"https://rumspeed.com/about/\">Rumspeed</a>). To everyone who sponsored me and helped me secure sponsorship, thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Want to sponsor me? You can through <a href=\"https://github.com/sponsors/karmatosed\">GitHub</a>.</p>\n</div>\";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, 06 Oct 2025 09:06:18 +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:\"binatethoughts.com\";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:22;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:27:\"Matt: Telegram and Weird Al\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150113\";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:44:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/telegram-and-weird-al/\";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:2529:\"<p>I have two interesting interviews to share with you today, the first is <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjPH9njnaVU\">Lex Fridman interviewing Pavel Durov</a>, the founder of <a href=\"https://telegram.org/\">Telegram</a>. I started using and advocating for Telegram back in 2015, and <a href=\"https://audrey.co/\">Audrey Capital</a> was part of their aborted fundraise in 2018. As a software craftsperson, I&#8217;ve always had tremendous respect for the team and the rate at which they shipped truly novel design and UI. I&#8217;m amazed by the speed at which they ship major features across multiple platforms. The network also has incredibly resiliency, which they get into on the podcast. As I&#8217;m often in poor connectivity situations in planes or remote locations, Telegram has been one of the networks that works most reliably.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve met Pavel only briefly about a decade ago, but have followed his story as he&#8217;s a unique character with an ascetic lifestyle, target of many intelligence agencies, sperm donor father of 100+ children, and many other unique characteristics. I use Telegram like I use X/Twitter, I put things I consider semi-public on it and I think of it like a social network and development platform, and <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2022/08/telegram-channel/\">since 2022 I&#8217;ve cross-posted my blog to a Telegram channel using a Jetpack bot</a>. It&#8217;s probably my favorite community platform. The four hour interview between Lex and Pavel covers a lot of ground, but product builders will probably appreciate most the middle part around the 2-hour mark where they go into their engineering and design philosophies. (BTW I usually watch/listen to these at 2x speed.)</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re looking for something a little lighter on a Sunday I recommend this <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSu2eMkIyZs\">heart-warming conversation between John Mayer and Weird Al Yankovic</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I know this seems like an unusual pairing, but both Pavel and Weird Al are hackers in the sense that they examined the rules of the system and decided to create a new game.</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:\"Sun, 05 Oct 2025 21:08:02 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:23;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:59:\"Tammie Lister: Why Gentle Leadership Builds Better Products\";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:34:\"https://binatethoughts.com/?p=2447\";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:72:\"https://binatethoughts.com/why-gentle-leadership-builds-better-products/\";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:11249:\"<p>We&#8217;ve all seen it. A product launches, a feature ships, a choice gets made. And within hours, the not-so-hot, more grumpy takes arrive. Threads dissecting every misstep. Social media posts stating how they&#8217;d have done x or y better. Statements across the web cataloguing failures. Commentary that positions the critic as the one who would have done it better. This happens even more on Open Source projects, we&#8217;ve all seen it across WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is an increasingly prevalent issue in product circles. Yet, we seldom highlight the human impact of this culture and the more effective alternatives that can truly foster better products and stronger teams. Even more so in open source. It&#8217;s also worth noting that those who can drive change, those called and looked to as product leaders, are often the ones who contribute most to the problem. By inspiring others and adopting more positive practices, we can foster a more collaborative and thriving environment for everyone involved.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Changing Position of the Role of Product</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>My experience in product is a journey many of us share as we grew alongside the practice. We often had to fight for our place at the table, sometimes moving gently and other times more forcefully to ensure our voices were heard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Times have changed, and now the product is at the centre of much of our work. It no longer needs to prove its worth or challenge existing components; instead, it should avoid adopting harmful practices seen in longer traditions, such as design, which have led to dangerous and destructive patterns of critique. It&#8217;s possible to disagree without resorting to tearing others down or stripping away their contributions. In fact, taking a more constructive approach is a sign of greater skill, as many of us have come to learn.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout my career, I have learned a great deal through trial and error, thanks to the incredible mentors who guided me and the space they provided for me to understand. Their compassion and calmness shaped my understanding of leadership; it&#8217;s not just about being in the spotlight, which was a breath of fresh air for someone like me who thrives behind the scenes.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Psychology of What We&#8217;re Really Doing</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When we share our thoughts on products and the teams behind them, we&#8217;re doing more than just providing feedback; we&#8217;re meant to encourage accountability and nurture growth. The impact of our words can ripple far beyond the initial conversation, creating a meaningful dialogue.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Studies in self-determination theory reveal that environments filled with criticism, rather than constructive support, can lead to loss of motivation. This is especially true over time. In open-source and collaborative spaces, the consequences are even more significant. Unhelpful criticism can generate conflicts and discourage participation, particularly for those from underrepresented backgrounds. Our language truly matters, and it becomes even more powerful when coming from influential voices.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/785876-leadership-is-about-making-others-better-as-a-result-of\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sheryl Sandber</a>g</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The evidence suggests that public criticism, especially when not accompanied by constructive input, doesn&#8217;t enhance products. Instead, it risks stifling the very voices we should be championing to drive improvement and innovation. Let&#8217;s strive to uplift one another and create positive pathways for making. I know I want to create in a space like that, and I&#8217;m reasonably sure those who often critique the loudest do.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Leadership Actually Looks Like</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t about being soft or avoiding critical conversations, far from it. But if harsh criticism is all you&#8217;re known for, people eventually stop listening. By taking this approach, you are showing an understanding that great products emerge from empowered teams, not demoralised ones.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;To me, leadership is about encouraging people. It&#8217;s about stimulating them. It&#8217;s about enabling them to achieve what they can achieve — and to do that with a purpose.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-leadership/lagarde-on-leadership-its-about-encouraging-people/2014/07/11/4696f284-06b5-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Christine Lagarde</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The difference between critique and leadership is simple. Leaders focus on building capability, not broadcasting judgment. They build up whilst also setting on a path for that building. It&#8217;s certainly a harder thing to do, but in the long term, far more rewarding for both the leader and those involved. Being the critic, even if you have been elevated to a lead, eventually casts you as the villain of the piece, and that&#8217;s not good for anyone&#8217;s heart. Most leads got there through being incredible makers in the first place; somewhere along the way, they shifted from making to criticising, from building to broadcasting judgment.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Alternative: Being Part of the Solution</h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;I raise my own voice—not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6628892-i-raise-up-my-voice-not-so-that-i-can\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Malala Yousafzai</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>If you see a product or team struggling, you have choices beyond posting about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Mentor someone on the team.</strong> Reach out privately. Offer your experience. It is often more impactful to say it privately. Share what you&#8217;ve learned from similar challenges. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Contribute directly.</strong> If it&#8217;s open source, submit a thoughtful pull request. If it&#8217;s not, offer specific, actionable feedback through proper channels. Build the bridge instead of pointing out it&#8217;s incomplete.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Support publicly, guide privately.</strong> Public spaces should be for celebrating attempts, acknowledging effort, and showing solidarity. Save detailed feedback for contexts where it can actually be heard and acted upon.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Balance your critiques with equal praise. </strong>When was the last time you praised a feature? Do that as much as you also critique and balance.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Build knowledge, not status.</strong> Research shows that when team members feel their psychological needs met, such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness, they&#8217;re far more likely to develop intrinsic motivation and engage meaningfully with their work. Your role as a leader isn&#8217;t to prove you could have done better. It&#8217;s to help others actually do better. </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Myth of &#8220;Necessary Toughness&#8221;</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a belief in some communities that toxicity is &#8220;a naturally occurring if not necessary facet of culture.&#8221; This is demonstrably false. Toxic behaviour causes contributors to leave projects and creates barriers to participation, particularly for newcomers and those from underrepresented communities. It causes burnout not just in those receiving but also in those giving. It eats at you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gentle leadership isn&#8217;t weak leadership. It&#8217;s strategic leadership. It&#8217;s essential to understand that the long-term health of products and communities depends on creating environments where people want to contribute their best work, not environments where they&#8217;re afraid to take risks and fail.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Evaluating Your Leadership</h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;You can evaluate the quality of your authority by looking deeply to see if compassion is the foundation of your leadership.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://laidlawscholars.network/posts/see-if-compassion-is-the-foundation-of-your-leadership\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zen Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh</a> </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t just an abstract philosophy. You can apply a practical lens for examining how we show up as leaders. The next time you&#8217;re tempted to post about what&#8217;s wrong with someone else&#8217;s or your own product, ask yourself:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Will this help the team, the product improve, or position me as knowledgeable?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Who does this harm and who does this serve?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Could I offer this insight in a way that builds rather than breaks?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Am I solving a problem or performing expertise?</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The products that endure, the teams that innovate, they don&#8217;t come from cultures of constant public criticism. They come from environments where people feel safe to experiment, supported when they stumble, and mentored toward excellence.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your influence as a product leader isn&#8217;t measured by how effectively you can identify flaws; it&#8217;s also about how effectively you can address them. It&#8217;s measured by how many people do better work because you were there.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building Better, Together</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Every product you see represents countless hours of human effort, difficult trade-offs, and people doing their best with the information and resources available to them. Before you critique, consider how you might contribute. Before pointing out failures, consider how you can prevent them in the future by teaching, mentoring, and supporting.</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticised.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/62183586-dare-to-lead-brave-work-tough-conversations-whole-hearts\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brené Brown</a></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The industry doesn&#8217;t need more critics. It needs more builders. It requires leaders who understand that gentle doesn&#8217;t mean permissive, and that the strongest teams are built on foundations of trust, growth, and mutual support.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I can leave one thought at the end of this, it would be to consider: &#8220;What impact will your leadership have?&#8221; Great products are built by great teams. Great teams are built by leaders who lift others. Choose to be that leader.</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:\"Sun, 05 Oct 2025 11:03:52 +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:\"binatethoughts.com\";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:24;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:18:\"Matt: Greenwashing\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150105\";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:35:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/greenwashing/\";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:3909:\"<p>Tonight there was a lovely event at <a href=\"https://tinkertendo.com/\">TinkerTendo</a> by Raman Frey and Karin Johnson of <a href=\"https://www.gpdinners.com/\">Good People Dinners</a>, this one honoring <a href=\"https://davidgelles.com/\">David Gelles&#8217;</a> new book, <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Dirtbag-Billionaire-Chouinard-Patagonia-Fortune/dp/1668032260?tag=photomatt08-20\">Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away</a>. I&#8217;m a huge fan of Yvon Chouinard and really enjoyed his book <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education-Businessman/dp/1594200726/?tag=photomatt08-20\">Let My People Go Surfing</a> which I read back in 2018. It was the first time hosting such a large 60-person dinner in the TinkerTendo warehouse, and thanks to <a href=\"https://copperhome.com/\">this Copper battery-operated induction stovetop</a> and an amazing local chef, <a href=\"https://www.komaaj.com/\">Hanif Sadr</a>, the food turned out amazing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve only started the new book, but I&#8217;m interested to see what&#8217;s happened in the 20 years between Yvon&#8217;s book and David&#8217;s, especially the story of <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html\">how Yvon gave away all his equity and control in the company</a> to ensure a focus on his lifelong goal of environmentalism and conservation. Patagonia is one of the better corporate entities fighting for good, but it reminded me of how companies can put on a jacket of doing good while actually being evil underneath.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like I talked about the <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/externalities/\">economic concept of Externalties a few weeks ago</a>, I think it&#8217;s imperative that the WordPress community understands the history of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing\">Greenwashing</a>, which the <a href=\"https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/greenwashing\">United Nations defines as follows</a>:</p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Claiming that the company will achieve future environment milestones while not putting sufficient plans in place to do so.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Being intentionally vague about operations or using vague claims that cannot be specifically proven (like saying they are &#8220;environmentally friendly&#8221; or &#8220;green&#8221;).</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Saying that a product does not contain harmful materials or use harmful practices that they would not use anyway.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Highlighting one thing the company does well regarding the environment while not doing anything else.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Promoting products that meet regulatory minimums as if peer products do not.</li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<p>In <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/\">WordPress</a> and open source our environmental crisis comes from companies that frack the open source software and brands, which shows up as lack of investment in the code which falls fallow <a href=\"https://tech.eu/2025/07/25/chronic-underfunding-of-open-source-software-poses-strategic-risk-to-europes-digital-sovereignty/\">especially in the security sense</a>, or by attaching themselves to a brand or trademark and tricking people into thinking they&#8217;re associated with the Good Open thing, when they&#8217;re really a parasitic cancer on it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is happening right now in WordPress, so when you see a company hire a good person or sponsor an event that seems on its own a good thing, and probably represents hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment, weigh that against the tens of millions they&#8217;re spending with their other hand to destroy the source of everything they&#8217;ve benefited from, and if they were to win, endanger every open source project. It&#8217;s an open source form of greenwashing, perhaps call it <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openwashing\">openwashing</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:\"Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:44:42 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:25;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:113:\"Gutenberg Times: Blocks galore, test template management, Woo product collections, and more—Weekend Edition 343\";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:35:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=42093\";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:119:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/\";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:20342:\"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>And just like that, the last quarter of 2025 has begun. It&#8217;s been an interesting year again, and now we are on the home stretch, heading into a Holiday season. It&#8217;s become my favorite time of the year when Autumn make nature paint trees and bushes in so many colors. After a life near evergreen Everglades of Florida, the middle European changing colors of the fall seems magical.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soon it&#8217;s time to plan for 2026. Speaking of which, in case you missed it, WordCamp Asia <a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/call-for-speakers-is-now-open/\">Call for Speakers</a> has been out for a couple of week, and the deadline is quite early: October 31, 2025. If you were thinking about going to WordCamp Asia, what would be a talk you would be interested in seeing in April of 2026? </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, the present is pretty amazing right now, too. So without further ado, the news. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, <img alt=\"💕\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f495.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: This weekend, on October 3rd, Germany celebrates the <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Unity_Day\">35th anniversary of the Reunion</a> after the Iron Curtain was lifted. </p>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-group\" style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents\"><ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/#0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/#0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/#blocks-galore-with-telex\">Blocks Galore with Telex </a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/blocks-galore-test-template-management-woo-product-collections-and-more-weekend-edition-343/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li></ol></nav>\n</div></div>\n</section>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block\" width=\"100%\"></div>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-word-press-release-information\">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>.<strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong>, WordPress 6.9 release co-lead for testing, is asking for your <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/test/2025/10/03/help-test-changes-to-template-management/\"><strong>help to test changes to the template management</strong></a>. The new feature is a great enhancement to the way templates are handled in the Site Editor. More eyes are needed to make sure it&#8217;s the best it can be in the short amount of time until the first Beta version is released. The instructions are detailed, and Bossenger added a video to show how the various sections of this test should work.</p>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined is-color-set\" style=\"color: #4c38c1; border-color: #eeeeee; border-radius: 26px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f3efe9;\">\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/\">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now also available via <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json\">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">Email me </a>with your experience</p>\n</section>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\" style=\"height: 39px;\"></div>\n\n\n\n<p>The security and maintenance release, <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/09/wordpress-6-8-3-release/\"><strong>WordPress 6.8.3 </strong></a>is now available. John Blackbourn led the release and shares the details in his release post. Update as soon as you can, as it plugs a few security holes.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Carlos Bravo</strong> issues the <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v21.8.0-rc.1\"><strong>release candidate for Gutenberg 21.8</strong></a> and it&#8217;s available for testing. The final release is scheduled for October 8. </p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p><img alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f399.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /> The latest episode is <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-122-gutenberg-21-8-and-wordpress-6-9/\">Gutenberg Changelog #122 – Gutenberg 21.8 and WordPress 6.9</a> with Beth Soderberg of <a href=\"https://bethink.studio/\">Bethink Studio</a></p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin\"><img alt=\"Gutenberg Changelog 122 with Beth Soderberg\" class=\"wp-image-42236\" height=\"193\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-11-at-12.32.48.png?resize=652%2C193&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><em>If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It&#8217;ll help with the distribution.</em></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the WordPress VIP blog post and video, <a href=\"https://wpvip.com/case-studies/pew-research-center/\"><strong>Pew Research Center Builds Interactive Content at Scale</strong></a>, the Seth Rubenstein and his team share how they rebuilt their website using WordPress VIP to tackle challenges in a world where people seldom visit original sources. Their old method took weeks of custom coding for interactive content, which delayed publishing. By adopting a block-first strategy in 2022, they cut production time from weeks to minutes, enabling editors and designers to create quizzes and maps on their own. This shift allowed developers to focus on innovation while increasing publishing frequency and lowering costs with evergreen interactive content that engages audiences directly.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>In his video <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7GRSnSd7SM\"><strong>Level up your Product Collections</strong></a>, <strong>Brian Coords</strong> demonstrates the new features in WooCommerce 10.2. He covered carousel layouts, taxonomy filters (Category/Brand/Tag), and an improved Cross-Sells collection for displaying products.</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block\" width=\"100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Joanne Courtright</strong> of Groundworx released a new <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/groundworx-testimonial/\"><strong>Testimonials plugin</strong></a> in the WordPress repository. Get the skinny from her blog post:   <a href=\"https://groundworx.dev/blog/introducing-groundworx-testimonial-modern-testimonials-for-wordpress-block-themes/\">Introducing Groundworx Testimonial: Modern Testimonials for WordPress Block Themes</a>. &#8220;Most testimonial plugins are still stuck in the classic era. This one is designed for developers and site builders who want testimonials that “just work” with Gutenberg, she wrote. It aims to be Gutenberg-native, theme.json aware, and accessibility-first. It includes a dedicated Testimonial post type + flexible blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> released the first version of an <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/x3p0-authors/\">Authors List Block</a></strong> for multi-author sites. &#8220;This is especially useful if you’re coming over from using a classic WordPress theme and need a block that’s similar to the old <code>wp_list_authors()</code> template tag,&#8221; he wrote. The plugin comes with a full array of block design tools. It also sports options to display number of posts, various order filters, and feed links. </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42113\" height=\"354\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-02-at-16.34.38-2.png?resize=652%2C354&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mike McAlister</strong> released his <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/ollie-menu-designer/\"><strong>Ollie Menu Designer</strong></a> for free in the WordPress repository. It is a powerful way to build  mobile and dropdown menus in the WordPress block editor—no coding required. For more details, watch <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96lghXWhiI\">his announcement video on YouTube. </a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"blocks-galore-with-telex\">Blocks Galore with Telex </h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In his post, <a href=\"https://www.pootlepress.com/2025/10/if-automattics-telex-builds-this-you-might-not-need-that-page-builder/\"><strong>If Automattic’s Telex Builds This, You Might Not Need That Page Builder</strong></a>, <strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> explores how Automattic&#8217;s Telex AI tool could transform WordPress by enabling users to extend existing core blocks rather than just creating new ones. Currently, Telex generates custom blocks like video effects and timelines, but extending core blocks like paragraphs, tables, or buttons requires complex developer skills. If Telex could extend core blocks and offer a public directory for sharing these extensions, it could replace traditional page builders by unlocking the full potential of WordPress&#8217;s native blocks without adding technical debt or duplication.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tammie Lister </strong>started her personal <a href=\"https://blocktober.fun/\"><strong>Blocktober</strong></a>, posting a block a day on the newly created site. Every day at noon, she uses Automattic&#8217;s Telex and builds a new block. Spanning the arc of history back to the 1980s, Lister started with an <a href=\"https://blocktober.fun/ascii-tetris/\">ASCII Tetris</a> block. Here goes my Thursday morning&#8230;. </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42099\" height=\"377\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-02-at-11.22.33.png?resize=652%2C377&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In his latest blog post, <strong>Marko Ivanovic</strong> made a set of <strong><a href=\"https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/25/telex-for-designers/\">blocks for designers</a></strong> with the help of Automattic&#8217;s Telex. Earlier he also created <a href=\"https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/20/interactive-icons/\">animated icon blocks</a>. Ivanovic is a designer working for Automattic, and since 2022. His post on <a href=\"https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/10/01/wordpress-and-design/\"><strong>how he rediscovered WordPress</strong></a> and why any designer should embrace WordPress is worth a read, too. And I love those sticky notes.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/25/telex-for-designers/\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42101\" height=\"331\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-02-at-11.30.51.png?resize=652%2C331&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></a></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In preparation for the WordPress 6.9 release on December 2,  <strong>Justin Tadlock </strong>published a new tutorial on the WordPress Developer Blog: You  on how to implement <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/09/border-radius-size-presets-in-wordpress-6-9/\"><strong>Border radius size presets in WordPress 6.9</strong></a>. &#8220;You define an array of sizes that users can apply to blocks that support border radius. You can also reuse them within your own theme stylesheets and <code>theme.json</code> file.&#8221;, he wrote.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"border radius presets coming to WordPress 6.9 \" class=\"wp-image-42118\" height=\"337\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/border-radius-on-gradient.webp?resize=652%2C337&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At WordCamp Gdynia I shared how to <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/30/streamlined-block-theme-development-using-wordpress-playground-and-github-for-no-code-version-contr/\">use WordPress Playground and GitHub for No-Code Version Control of Site Editor Changes</a></strong> The recording of my talk is now on WordPress TV. You will learn how theme developers can leverage WordPress Playground alongside the Create Block Theme plugin to create a seamless, browser-based development environment that integrates directly with GitHub for version control—all without writing a single line of code. <a href=\"https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ffMAVMjFxm1Ai7p2JWWwZAK5vQN5ryCbh-VXOqDjRiQ/edit?usp=drive_web&amp;ouid=101776844630674138344\">The slides are available on Google Drive. </a></p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/30/streamlined-block-theme-development-using-wordpress-playground-and-github-for-no-code-version-contr/\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42115\" height=\"408\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/WCGdynia_-Block-Theme-Development-Playground-CBT-GitHub.jpg?resize=652%2C408&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></a></figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\" style=\"height: 19px;\"></div>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set\" style=\"border-color: #f9f9e5; border-radius: 22px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f9f9e5;\">\n<p><strong> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/\">2020</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/\">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/\">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023\">2023</a></strong> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/\"><strong>2024</strong></a></p>\n</section>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Long-time block developer <strong>Kevin Batdorf</strong> at <em>Extendify</em> just updated his <a href=\"https://github.com/KevinBatdorf/block-starter\"><strong>Block Starter plugin</strong> </a>repo—an &#8220;opinionated starter template for crafting WordPress block plugins,&#8221; as he calls it. It uses Tailwind v4 with output for the editor and frontend, TypeScript and Biome.js for code quality and type safety, and runs Playwright tests on PR using the Playground CLI. It also includes a Plugin Check on commits to main and before a release.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">For questions to be answered on the <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-group\" style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">\n<p>Featured Image: &#8220;Building blocks&#8221; by jgbarah is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 and found on WordPress.org/openverse.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n<form action=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/\" autocomplete=\"on\" class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait\" method=\"post\"><div class=\"ngl-form-container\"><div class=\"ngl-form-field\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px;\"><label class=\"ngl-form-label\" for=\"ngl_email\"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class=\"ngl-form-input\"><input autocomplete=\"email\" class=\"ngl-form-input-text\" id=\"ngl_email\" name=\"ngl_email\" required=\"required\" style=\"border-radius: 21px;\" type=\"email\" /></div></div><button class=\"ngl-form-button\" style=\"background-color: #005075; border-color: #005075; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 21px;\" type=\"submit\">Subscribe</button><p class=\"ngl-form-text\">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone <br />except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay\"><div class=\"ngl-message-svg-wrap\"><svg fill=\"none\" height=\"24\" stroke=\"#fff\" stroke-width=\"2\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><polyline points=\"20 6 9 17 4 12\"></polyline></svg></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay-text\">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input id=\"ngl_list_id\" name=\"ngl_list_id\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"26f81bd8ae\" /><input id=\"ngl_double_optin\" name=\"ngl_double_optin\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"yes\" /></form>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n</section>\";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, 04 Oct 2025 07:41:54 +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:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";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:26;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:13:\"Matt: Linkrot\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150093\";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:30:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/linkrot/\";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:2861:\"<p>One of the things I hate most on the internet, and part of the reason I started <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/\">WordPress</a>, was to fight linkrot. Ever since 1998, when <a href=\"https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/\">Tim Berners-Lee</a> wrote &#8220;<a href=\"https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI\">Cool URIs Don&#8217;t Change</a>,&#8221; I&#8217;ve been obsessed with content management and ensuring that links don&#8217;t break. (BTW, TBL, a pioneer of creating the World Wide Web, <a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/06/tim-berners-lee-invented-the-world-wide-web-now-he-wants-to-save-it\">has a great new profile out in the New Yorker</a>.)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I learned today from the <a href=\"https://newspack.com/\">Newspack</a> newsletter that the <a href=\"https://www.houstonpress.com/\">Houston Press</a> is now on WordPress. Newspack is a distribution or bundle of WordPress designed for journalism, and it is led by <a href=\"https://kinsey.nyc/\">Kinsey Wilson</a>, who began his career as a night-shift journalist covering cops for a newspaper in Chicago, went on to have top editorial and business positions at The New York Times, NPR, and USA TODAY, and ran WordPress.com for a few years, which gives him a very unique position to help craft WordPress for journalists and publishers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Houston Press is an alt-weekly that wrote the very first profile of me in the world, <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2004/10/press-and-cnet/\">which I blogged about here</a>. There&#8217;s a funny quote in there:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>He recently considered taking a job with a San Francisco search-engine start-up, but ended up turning them down. “They have a ton of money…But it would be 50- or 60- or 70-hour weeks, a lot of work, and I wouldn’t have time” to do WordPress. </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>That &#8220;search-engine start-up&#8221; was <a href=\"https://www.google.com/\">Google</a>! How the internet might have turned out differently if I had taken that job, as my Mom wanted me to (because they offered free food). I still think Google is one of the most interesting companies in the world, one of the few places I&#8217;d consider working if I weren&#8217;t running <a href=\"https://automattic.com/\">Automattic</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to linkrot, the original link to the profile in that article was <code>http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2004-10-28/feature2.html</code>, which this morning didn&#8217;t work, but thanks to the Houston Press being on Newspack/WordPress I was able to ping Kinsey and his colleague Jason Lee was able to fix it so it redirects to the new canonical URL for that content in minutes. A little corner of the internet tidied up! I love the <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/\">Wayback Machine</a>, but not needing it is even better.</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, 04 Oct 2025 00:24:40 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:27;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:16:\"Matt: Blocktober\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150063\";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:33:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/blocktober/\";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:406:\"<p>It&#8217;s so exciting to see what the creative minds like <a href=\"https://iconick.io/\">Nick Hamze</a> or <a href=\"https://tammielister.com/\">Tammie Lister</a> are doing with Automattic&#8217;s AI vibe coding tool, <a href=\"https://telex.automattic.ai/\">Telex</a>. Tammie is doing a Blocktober, <a href=\"https://blocktober.fun/\">a block every day this month of October, you should follow along</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:\"Thu, 02 Oct 2025 22:15:34 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:28;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:20:\"Matt: Fight For Open\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150050\";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:37:\"https://ma.tt/2025/10/fight-for-open/\";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:2067:\"<p>Sometimes the battle for open source and freedom can take on very prosaic and practical terms, but the wins can benefit everybody. To give an example: In <a href=\"https://www.beeper.com/\">Beeper</a> we need more memory for showing notifications, because we support end-to-end encryption for networks like Signal, but Apple&#8217;s default was to only give 15 megabytes — barely enough to do anything. The previous CEO of Beeper, Eric Migicovsky, started a lobbying effort with the <a href=\"https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en\">EU’s Digital Markets Act</a> on behalf of the team to give third-party apps the same memory limits that Apple provides for their own apps, which is 50MB instead of 15MB. (And up to 250MB on their higher end devices.)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we’ve gotten a notification that as part of iOS 26 update Apple has shipped to 2.3B devices around the world, our memory limits issue has been addressed globally, for every application developer, and some interoperability requests we had for <a href=\"https://developer.apple.com/documentation/telephonymessagingkit\">SMS/RCS</a> have been addressed for EU users. Kudos and huge thank you to Apple for giving us all new capabilities to build amazing experiences for users on par with what they seek to deliver themselves. If you want to geek out on this, <a href=\"https://blog.beeper.com/2025/10/01/how-beeper-ios-implements-notifications/\">check out the technical deep dive that Beeper just posted</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BTW, if you haven&#8217;t heard of it yet, <a href=\"https://www.beeper.com/\">Beeper</a> is an Automattic product which aims to democratize messaging, just like WordPress democratized publishing for the world, by allowing you to get all your messages from friends across 11 different networks, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter/X, Signal, Discord, in one single inbox. The new version we launched in July does this in a completely secure way that&#8217;s local to your device, so the same encryption, privacy, and security each network provides is maintained.</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, 01 Oct 2025 20:29:45 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:29;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:114:\"WPTavern: #187 – June Liu and David Denedo on Making the Web Accessible: The Mission Behind WP Accessibility Day\";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=199767\";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:127:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/187-june-liu-and-david-denedo-on-making-the-web-accessible-the-mission-behind-wp-accessibility-day\";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:48317:\"<details>Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<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, making the web accessible, and the mission behind WP Accessibility Day.</p>\n\n\n\n<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/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today, we have June Liu and David Denedo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both June and David are key members of the WP Accessibility Day organizing team, a global, volunteer driven, event focused on improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>June serves as the marketing team co-lead, and works with sponsors, bringing her background in project management to keep the events efforts on track.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>David, a web designer and content creator based in London, contributes to the marketing and post-event teams, with his interest in web accessibility stemming from his personal experience as a visually impaired user.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WP Accessibility Day has grown significantly in the past few years, uniting a large international group of volunteers, and organizers, to drive awareness and practical change in web accessibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The event is powered by a host of teams, marketing, sponsors, tech and vendor, post-event, translation, speakers, and more, ensuring that everything from live captioning to sign language interpretation is in place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We begin by learning about June and David&#8217;s unique paths to accessibility advocacy. One through direct lived experience, and the other through supporting a loved one with cognitive challenges. Their stories highlight why accessibility can&#8217;t be an afterthought, and how events like WP Accessibility Day are raising awareness in this important area.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We discuss what attendees can expect at this year&#8217;s event happening from the 15th of October, 2025. It&#8217;s free, fully virtual, and runs for 24 hours, making space for a diverse range of speakers and topics.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you&#8217;re interested in the moral, legal or technical cases for accessibility, there&#8217;s something for you here, including sessions on accessible design, risk management for agencies, legal compliance, and demonstrations of assistive technologies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>June and David share how the event format, a combination of prerecorded talks and live chat, mixes polished content with real time engagement. Plus how translation and community involvement are key to its growing impact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to learn more about how you can make your WordPress sites, and the web in general, more inclusive, or if you&#8217;re motivated by global collaboration or personal stories, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you June Liu and David Denedo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast by two fabulous guests. I&#8217;ve got June Liu and David Denedo. Hello both. How are you both doing?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:58] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Hi there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:59] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Hello. I&#8217;m doing all right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, it&#8217;s very nice to have you both with us. The intention of today&#8217;s podcast is to draw attention to something which well, I&#8217;m sure many of you will know about. If you don&#8217;t know about it, I certainly hope that by the end of this, not only do you know about it, but you are highly engaged, and hopefully going to attend and all of those kind of things, maybe even contribute some of your time, you never know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s called WP Accessibility Day, and we&#8217;re going to get into that in a moment. Before we do that, I just want to get the little bio, the introduction from both of you, one at a time, just telling us who you are, what your interest is in WordPress and accessibility, I guess.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;ll keep it nice and short and sweet. So I&#8217;ll go to June first. Just let us know who you are, June.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:39] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Thank you, Nathan. I&#8217;m June, I serve on the organising team for WP Accessibility Day as the marketing team co-lead, and I also work on the sponsors team.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My background is mostly project management, so my forte right now is helping the team coordinate tasks, and keeping the initiatives on track. Yeah, I coordinate between the sponsors and the marketing team to get the sponsor page prepared. So that&#8217;s basically my work with WPAD.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. That&#8217;s great. And David, let&#8217;s go to you next. Same question really.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:11] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Hi, I&#8217;m David. I&#8217;m visually impaired, so that&#8217;s why I love accessibility. I work in London as a web designer and a content creator, and I&#8217;m part of the WP Accessibility Day organising team, as part of the post-event people. But I&#8217;m also in the marketing team, just jumping around, and at least trying to put as much as I can into web accessibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I got into web accessibility mainly because of some talks I had two years ago from the WP Accessibility Day, and that just encouraged me. And then here we are two years later.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much. So, WP Accessibility Day, one thing that just jumped out at me straight away from what you were both talking about there, you both talked about, I&#8217;m on the, and then you mentioned a team. That implies that there&#8217;s quite a lot of you in the background.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So just to give credit where credit&#8217;s due, I think it&#8217;s always important to make sure that we credit not just the two of you, because there&#8217;s probably a lot of people behind this as well. I don&#8217;t want to go down the route of missing anybody out. So I wonder if it&#8217;s possible for us to just mention the kind of teams and things like that. And if there are any people in particular that you&#8217;ve been working with that you do wish to name, caveat emptor, dear listener, I apologise on behalf of everybody on this panel. If we miss anybody&#8217;s name out, sorry about that. But let&#8217;s go for the, how many teams there are and how big an enterprise is this these days?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:39] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve ever counted how many teams there are, but I&#8217;ll list some of them. And David, add yours if I miss any, please.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a volunteer team that&#8217;s, right now, pivotal. That&#8217;s their work right now in preparing the event. The event is on October 15th, so we&#8217;re just about a month away. So the volunteer team is very active right now in onboarding the volunteers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then we have the tech and vendors. And those are also very active. They work closely with the volunteer team to prepare the day of. So they&#8217;re the ones that prepare the Zoom platform for us. So making sure that it all runs well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then we have website, APAC, post event, translation, sponsors, marketing. What else? I feel like there&#8217;s a few others that I&#8217;m missing. But there is a huge team behind Amber, Bet and Joe, working and making sure that we can make the event as smooth as possible, and take some of the load off of them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The Amber, the Bet and the Joe that you just mentioned, we have got Amber Hinds, Bet Hannon and Joe Dolson. So there&#8217;s three names. Do you have any recollection whether they were the people that kind of kickstarted the event, whenever that was? Because if that was the case, it sounds like it&#8217;s gone gangbusters since then with lots of people joining on, and you two being some examples.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:56] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> We do have a pretty big team this year. And yes, you&#8217;re right, the history is that Joe Dolson did start WP Accessibility Day. I don&#8217;t recall all of the specifics, but I think the second year, Bet, I think it might&#8217;ve started with Bet and Joe, and then Amber also came on soon after that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But we&#8217;re in our fifth year. It&#8217;s very exciting. I joined last year as an organiser and it was a point in my time where I was returning to work. So finding WPAD was kind of a sweet spot for me to test out my skill sets again, get used to being out in the public, so I have a soft spot for them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Okay, so there&#8217;s a few that we&#8217;ve rattled off. David, I don&#8217;t know if you can fill in any gaps that might have been left there. If so, go now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:42] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, I think those are the main ones that were involved. And I would say Amber Hinds, when she came on board, she brought in a lot of organisation because, you know, with Joe, Joe understands the technical bits of things, but he&#8217;s not really so organised. So when she came in, that&#8217;s why the team grew exponentially from 2022, I believe when she joined. And then the year after, things just kept spiraling. And then now we have a massive team with lots of volunteers, everybody&#8217;s happy to help.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing that is quite nice is that there was a nice spread of people who are volunteering. So it&#8217;s not just maybe from one region or one country. We are a very nice spread of people, so that&#8217;s really nice. So from different parts, from Asia, from Africa, from the Americas and all of that, they&#8217;re all wide base.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s amazing. Everybody from all over the place. That&#8217;s really lovely.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>David, in your introduction, in your bio, you described that you are kind of eating your own dog food a little bit here in that, I can&#8217;t remember the exact phrasing that you had around your eyes. How did you describe the condition that you have, if that&#8217;s the right word?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:50] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Okay, yeah. So I am visually impaired, so I have very high myopia and high astigmatism. I also struggle to see myself, so that&#8217;s one reason why I got really interested when I saw how people are able to make the web more accessible. Because I grew up in a background where we had to adapt to so many stressful things, like there wasn&#8217;t really much help for people with accessibility needs.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I didn&#8217;t really know there were ways to help people out. Until I came into the whole system and I realised that, oh wow, so you can actually do this to help somebody else. Because I was always struggling, most times I couldn&#8217;t see the screen. So I&#8217;m always like relying on other people to tell me what&#8217;s in front of me, what&#8217;s on the screen, and all of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then when you start to see that, oh yeah, we can use a screen reader, you can use screen magnifier, you can do this, you can do that, you can just improve a little bit on your website, or even on the reality, makes things more accessible. I was like, wow, I&#8217;ve been living under the rock basically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely fascinating. I&#8217;m just wondering, June, if you have a similar story to tell in that, is there anything that you would like to share in that regard?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:01] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I do. My mother had a stroke, and from that she had vascular dementia. And being her caregiver for that many years, and seeing the decline in her loss of independence, because she wasn&#8217;t able to navigate the medical system by herself anymore. It was kind of, I learned everything in hindsight. I wish I had the knowledge that I have today to have helped her like 8, 10 years ago. But that drew me in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was telling you how I came back into the workforce, and one of the things that somebody said to me was, hey, there&#8217;s this free event. It&#8217;s online, you don&#8217;t have to leave your house, just try it out. And it was WPAD. And when I was listening to the talks, I was like, yeah, wait a second, you mean that websites can be laid out differently so that it would be easier for somebody to navigate it, even with a mental decline?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s those simple, to us, it initially could be simple, but in the back end it might not be so simple. But just having her read through an online PDF, you know, it was difficult for her to hit the right area, because the PDF lines were so tiny. And her eye, hand coordination was reduced, so she&#8217;s not able to hit those lines to fill in the PDF.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for me it was the acknowledgement of, oh my gosh, it doesn&#8217;t have to be this way going forward. So it&#8217;s me trying to learn as much as I can to direct my future clients into a direction that gives better accessibility to all, and not just their one demographic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s so curious that you&#8217;ve both got two stories where the end of it, the target, if you like, is the same, but how you&#8217;ve arrived at the things are entirely different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>David, a very personal story about your own life. And June, well, another personal story, but viewed through the prism of somebody else. Almost like standing over somebody&#8217;s shoulder and being able to ascertain, well, this person&#8217;s not getting what they could out of the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it strikes me that if you rewound the clock, I don&#8217;t know, let&#8217;s say 30 years ago before the internet was in any way, shape, or form common, but you could describe what would be available in 30 years time. And you could say, well, so many people, they&#8217;d have this little device in their hand, and there&#8217;d be these machines where there&#8217;d be screens on desktops and things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At that moment, you would be thinking to yourself, this is literally the perfect technology to help people who, let&#8217;s say for example, are struggling to see. Are unable to get out of the house. There may be an aspect of their body which doesn&#8217;t function in the way that your body or my body might function.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You would describe that and you&#8217;d think, oh, this is like manna from heaven. This is the perfect thing. But it never turned out that way. The internet went in a way entirely leaving those people behind, I think, which was such a lost opportunity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;re kind of 25 years or whatever it is into the internet, and we&#8217;re now going back and filling in all of the gaps that probably, with the benefit of hindsight, should never have been left.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, I don&#8217;t know that there&#8217;s any question in there, but it&#8217;s curious that that one technology which could have made the lives of so many people so much more straightforward, really hasn&#8217;t serviced those people particularly well until events like this come along and educate the rest of us in how to do it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:23] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I think, Nathan, you hit two big points. Everyone&#8217;s journey with accessibility is very personal, and unless you experienced it firsthand, or even secondhand in my case, you don&#8217;t really see that impact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the second part is that the second nail that you hit is that a lot of times it becomes an afterthought. Accessibility becomes the afterthought. I think that with an event like WPAD, we want it to become the foundational, so we&#8217;re hoping to make that change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> For example, I&#8217;m imagining, again harking back to how the internet could have been, we&#8217;ve now got a technology where a small rectangle held in your hand, with a few clicks of a few buttons can enable you to more or less have anything delivered to your front door, in a very short space of time. Which is like, how incredible is that, that that is even possible?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so this is the perfect answer to people, let&#8217;s say for example, who struggle to get out of the front door, and navigate the shops and what have you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet we&#8217;re faced with a situation where that sublimely cool technology is impenetrable, and unavailable, to many people because it never got baked in as a requirement, and we can come to that later. David, I&#8217;m sorry, I think I interrupted.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:36] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Oh no. Yeah, what you said is quite right. There is an imbalance in the way things are getting better, but it&#8217;s getting better for a certain set of people, but leaving some other people behind. So that is the problem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the web, it was improving at a very fast rate in terms of how to build the web, but somewhere along the line, people forgot that the whole essence of worldwide web, the man who created the W3C consortium, who basically created the web, the father of the web, his whole idea was that the web should be accessible to all. That was his vision, his goal from the very start.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as people are trying to push the boundaries, sometimes they forget, well, it is quite normal that sometimes unless you are experiencing a certain problem, you will not find a solution to it. So now that we are bringing the awareness to people, then they&#8217;re now finding out, okay, we forgot this certain set of people, let&#8217;s now incorporate them into our thinking, into our design, into everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that is one nice thing about having a conference like WPAD, to help spread awareness to people. Because if you&#8217;ve never experienced a certain problem, for example, you&#8217;ve never been blind or you&#8217;ve never had something with your mobility. You may not really appreciate the struggles of those people. But when they&#8217;re able to express it out and explain to you in these conferences, then you can now get that third party understanding, and at least you can incorporate accessibility into your own lifestyle.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I have a question around that, because I am in the position where my eyes, despite the fact I wear glasses, once the glasses are on my nose, my eyes, functionally, I think you would describe them as normal, and I have good ish hearing, and my body functions. And so, David, you&#8217;ve basically just described me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can be, it has been hard to imagine, what is the lived experience of people who are not in the same boat as I am?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I did wonder if a part of WPAD, I did wonder if a part of that was that educational piece? Whether it was explaining to people, web developers, people who may not be accustomed to what the conference is about, and what the summit will, you know, the educational pieces. I wondered if there was a piece where you explained, okay, this is the setup that somebody using a screen reader, this is what it feels like to them when they&#8217;re on the internet. This is what it would feel like, for example, I don&#8217;t know, if you are using a puff and sip system or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I don&#8217;t know if you are providing content like that, but I&#8217;d be curious to know whether you explain what the lived experience would be for people who may benefit as a result of the tech talks in the conference.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:34] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, so from what we have planned, there are a few of the conference talks that will reflect about accessibility. I think one of them is by Dennis, he&#8217;s going to show how a screen reader user will access a website. And then there are also talks about post-production of videos. So some people will incorporate the talks in, or at least talk about the experiences, but it may not be like a full on description.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But yeah, I&#8217;ve seen a few of the talks that will be happening and they will be incorporating some of the disabilities that we know, like colorblindness, and then like audio and other things. So that will help people to get an awareness of what disabilities are out there, and how to incorporate that into building a more accessible system.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, that&#8217;s really interesting. I suppose the old adage is, you know, a picture says the same as a thousand words or something like that. And being able to perceive what&#8217;s going on. I&#8217;ve always found that incredibly motivating, because immediately I can see how the internet is a more difficult place than a thousand words could describe and what have you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, okay, so that&#8217;s interesting. And then moving on to the conference itself, I&#8217;m presuming that this is aimed squarely at people already using WordPress as their content management system, their website builder. But it is curious because, I don&#8217;t know exactly where you land on this, maybe what I&#8217;m about to say doesn&#8217;t fit at all, but I&#8217;m presuming the conference is designed to enable everybody to get some way along the road of producing an accessible website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But presumably also the audience is a little bit of, trying to do what I&#8217;ve just described, make the case, the moral case, the legal case for needing to do it as well. So it&#8217;s the tech side of how to do it, as well as the sort of the moral and the legal obligations that might sort of follow that in train.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:32] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yeah, there is one session that I think you might find interesting along that line, is that it&#8217;s talking about accessibility as a risk management for agencies and for business owners. So I think that in particular, I have found it most interesting. With a background in project management, I&#8217;ve often had conversations where somebody will say to me, but why do I need to have it assessable? And then you&#8217;d have to take that pause and go, okay. But I think that to have the angle of risk management is certainly something that business owners will be able to relate to a little bit better.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have another one that is talking about what features you should be on a lookout for so that you can kind of mitigate the legal portion of it. I&#8217;m not saying that you can avoid it completely, but at least you&#8217;re more aware of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there&#8217;s that one and, of course, our keynote speaker is Vitaly Friedman, from Smashing Magazine. He&#8217;s going to come at it from the UI, UX portion of it. So it&#8217;s not just all on the development, but it&#8217;s also on different aspects of website building and different viewpoints on business and ownership of a website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of interesting because there are many threads there aren&#8217;t there. If you were just to take the technical side, you could probably do a conference that lasted many, many weeks about the technicalities of how to do it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s curious that you&#8217;ve also leaned into the things like, well, the compulsion, the kind of maybe the advent of the ambulance chasing lawyer, dare I say it, who has realised, latched onto the fact that the European Accessibility Act over this side of the Atlantic is now a thing. There is no longer just a moral component to doing the accessibility work on your website. There is now increasingly a big legal hammer, which could be deployed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so that alone, I presume will draw a certain audience who, you know, if the only thing that they want to hear about is how to mitigate that problem, well, maybe that&#8217;s not the ideal motivation for it, but nevertheless, it is a bit of a carrot and stick, and it will bring some people into the arena, which is good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:41] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> And here&#8217;s why I&#8217;d like to give a shout out to a team that I forgot, the speaker team. They&#8217;re the ones that put together the application, and they vetted through all the applications to see what would be more interesting for everybody.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rating system is, when they go through the rating system, they kind of make it anonymous of who the presenter would be. So it makes it, you are really looking at what the topic is being talked about, rather than who might be presenting. And that gives us an edge in finding topics that might not be as well known and from areas that are less featured.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we do have a couple of speakers that are coming from the continent of Africa, and those are always very interesting to hear. In the past, because of the location and the technical availability, there had been technical issues. But this year we&#8217;re having it so that the sessions are all prerecorded. So that will kind of help with the presentation of it, the clarity. But each of the speakers will be in the chat and they&#8217;ll be available to answer questions in the chat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think that&#8217;s an interesting fold into this year&#8217;s event, to have that feature in there so that the speaker is not just presenting, but they&#8217;re in the chat room answering questions. I think that adds another layer to the event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think what&#8217;s really nice about that as well is that if everything&#8217;s prerecorded, the speaker will get the chance to create and then re-edit, and then adapt and modify. And what you end up with hopefully is the best version of that talk.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>With the best will in the world, some people are not as great as others at doing live things. You know, they go down rabbit holes, and they lose their train of thought or what have you. This completely gets rid of that problem. They can do it as many times as they like and give you the best version.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But also that lovely aspect of, they suddenly become available to have a conversation in the chat, whereas before, they was presenting, you know, and presumably needed to go and have a bit of a lie down afterwards. Whereas in this situation, much more relaxed, you can ask them the questions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really appreciate that format. I think that&#8217;s actually, that&#8217;s my preferred way of a summit, kind of like this, the Accessibility Day in this case, being put together. I think that&#8217;s very forward thinking. And I hope that you continue doing it that way because I think the presenters probably appreciate it. Your audience will appreciate it, because it will be polished, and also you get to chat with the person involved. Anything on that, David?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:11] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah. Another thing we forgot to talk about is the translation team. So as the talks are being presented, there are also some nice volunteers who are translating it into other languages to have as much diversity as possible. Because some people, English is not their first language, so we have a team trying to convert to like French. We have the one for Spanish. There are also some other ones, even like Hebrew and so many other ones. So it&#8217;s a very nice feeling to have so many translations and everybody is doing their bit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is one thing I love about WP Accessibility, the entire organising team is the fact that everybody&#8217;s skill level, it doesn&#8217;t matter your skill level, you can always put in something. So that is something great. Whether you are a web designer, you are just a business owner, you can sponsor the event. If you are good with multilingual, you can be part of the translation. You can apply to speak.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The whole talks is not all technical, like you already mentioned. The talks are varied, so we talk about risk management, we talk about designers can give their own bits. People who are in business can give the business case for accessibility. So it&#8217;s all, it&#8217;s a lovely spread and I really love it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> There really is a lovely spread. I mean, firstly, one thing that I should have done right top of the show, which I didn&#8217;t, and I will mention it because I record a preamble before we actually start talking, one thing I will do is I&#8217;ll read into the record the URL. But I&#8217;ll do that now as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the URL is fabulous, by the way. It&#8217;s just ideal. If you are returning customer, if you like, it&#8217;s wpaccessibility.day. Just one more time, wpaccessibility, the regular spelling, no underscores, no hyphens or anything like that, dot day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then as a subdomain you are going to put in the year. So in this case it&#8217;s going to be 2 0 2 5, 2025.wpaccessibility.day. And you&#8217;re going to find all the different bits and pieces over there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of the things that I noticed about the getting involved side of things is, yeah, there&#8217;s the whole sponsorship thing. So you can become a sponsor if you&#8217;d like to do that. But also you can volunteer, you can become a media partner. If you feel philanthropic and you just want to donate some of your money into the project, that is also an option. And then there&#8217;s a whole tab for the attendees as well. It&#8217;s under community. There&#8217;s an attendee section as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it sounds like it&#8217;s not just this little event which flicks on for a couple of days and then turns off again. I mean, certainly from your side, it sounds like there&#8217;s a whole fun community of things happening in the background.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And really that&#8217;s the glue that binds a successful project together. If it was all very uninteresting and dry and a bit boring and you were all feeling under pressure, it wouldn&#8217;t have so many legs, it wouldn&#8217;t be able to run for this many years. But I&#8217;m guessing that you&#8217;ve had nice experiences, right, in the background?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:04] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Oh, yes. Yes. We have a lot of fun. But thank you for mentioning those links.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No, I think that&#8217;s wonderful. So again, go and check that out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing to say though is, let&#8217;s talk about how it&#8217;s actually happening. Obviously you&#8217;ve described that it&#8217;s going to be prerecorded videos. How are you making that content available? What&#8217;s going to be the platform of choice, or how are you going to get it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is there a way that you can, I don&#8217;t know, for example, download all of the bits and pieces so you can watch them in your own time? Is it an event which is spanning a single day, you know, a 24 hour time?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:35] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yeah, we do say that it is 24 hours, but all the content and the videos, they&#8217;re going to be available for replay after we go through the post-event production. Either from each subdomain, as you mentioned, the 2025 will be available on the 2025.wpaccessibility.day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last year&#8217;s event is available on the 2024.wpaccessibility.day. So you can rewatch them. It&#8217;s also available through YouTube. So if you need some background noise, I often do it. I just turn on that and let it roll.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have to say, it is a lot of information to absorb, but I do find it to be very resourceful. I know that one of David&#8217;s work this year is to put in chapters for these past event videos. So that has been very helpful to me when I find the relevant video from the past. And I said, I remember somebody saying something about that. Now with the chapters there, it&#8217;s much easier to navigate and find it. So good work, David. Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, indeed. Good work. But what&#8217;s this, in the show notes that were shared before we actually joined the call, it describes, it says here, and I don&#8217;t know which one of you wrote it, but it says, the event will be hosted through Zoom events. And Zoom is capitalised, so I presume it&#8217;s the platform Zoom that we&#8217;re all familiar with. I don&#8217;t know what a Zoom event is. Does that differ from a regular Zoom call? Is there some key difference?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:59] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yes. It&#8217;s different from like a Zoom webinar or a Zoom call. It&#8217;s a platform that has a lobby. You&#8217;re registering on our site, but then on event day you&#8217;ll be able to go into the Zoom event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;ll be a lobby and there&#8217;ll be a chat room, that&#8217;s where you can find all the information for the event. So, it&#8217;s not like a traditional webinar where there&#8217;s just one link in order to go and join it, to join that session, or that sector of sections. So now you can go in and when that hour pops up, that session would pop up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, I see. Right. So you go to this one central place, and everything&#8217;s kind of bound in this one, so as soon as you&#8217;re in, you&#8217;re in, basically, and you don&#8217;t have to keep clicking links in emails to find the latest session, which is going live.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:44] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. That&#8217;s really nice. Dave, anything to add to that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:47] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah. And you also have access to like swag. Everything will be in the event, so you can get some of the sponsor swag, you can chat with the speakers, you can chat with other event members, all within the same platform. So not having to jump from one platform to another platform to chat and then come back. You can lose people that way, but now everything all packaged together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:12] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> I wanted to give a shout out to the platform itself. It allows us to do live captioning. A lot of times with webinars, it is just automated caption. We actually do have live captioners typing into Zoom. That is another layer to WP Accessibility Day that is not a feature in other events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No kidding, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:33] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Yes. And the other big one, expense for us is the American Sign Language interpreters. So they will be also on hand on event day, and there&#8217;s a team of them that will be available to us, and they do the ASL.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year one of our speakers is from Australia and he will be bringing in Australian Sign Language, which is different from American Sign Language. So there&#8217;s another layer to the accessibility. We understand either British Sign Language or American Sign Language but, yeah, there&#8217;s Australian Sign Language too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You drop this as if it&#8217;s really straightforward, but when my head starts spinning on the technicalities there, the idea of injecting real time, typed transcriptions, somehow overlaying that into the video, there&#8217;s a whole technical piece there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you&#8217;ve got a sign language person. That&#8217;s a whole nother layer as well. That all needs, presumably, I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s going to be done live or filmed. Maybe there&#8217;s an opportunity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:33] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> It&#8217;s live.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, okay. So all of that, there are lots and lots of moving parts here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:37] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> That&#8217;s why we have the technical and vendor team, and the volunteer team. They&#8217;re pivotal on event day to have those two teams in place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Can I just ask, because I know there&#8217;ll be some people that are curious about the, how to describe it, the business status, let&#8217;s put it that way. And maybe this is not something that either of you can answer, I don&#8217;t know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s the structure of WP Accessibility Day? So, for example, if I was to donate, in the UK we call these things charities. I think in the US the correct term is non-profit. So if I was to donate, do I have some sort of assurance that the money isn&#8217;t going to end up in some, I don&#8217;t even want to say the words because I know that nobody&#8217;s ethics are this poorly thought through, but I&#8217;m going to say it anyway. Just want to make sure that the money doesn&#8217;t end in somebody&#8217;s back pocket.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where did the donations end up? How is the structure of this organisation ensuring that everything is out in the open and clear and easy to understand?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:28] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Well, this year WordPress Accessibility Day was recognised by IRS as the 501 C3 public charity. So based upon that, a hundred percent of our income that comes in goes right back into the event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Organisers and volunteers are not paid. Every one of us who are working on this is out of the goodness of our heart, and what time availability that we have.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The one caveat I will say, some of our translators are paid because translation is an income based business. And this is a recent development. In the past we&#8217;ve had to ask them to please donate their time to do the translation. But now we have a little bit more security to be able to pay them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>People who have the ability to speak multiple languages, look into the translation because if you aren&#8217;t able to participate as an organiser or a volunteer, donating your time to translate or being paid for be translators for us is a huge difference for us to bring all these sessions available to a greater audience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think everybody would understand that there&#8217;s, that is how that industry works, isn&#8217;t it? When you go to a WordCamp, for example, and you see the people doing the live captioning, or you see the people standing on the stage and they&#8217;re doing the sign language, I think it&#8217;s understood that that is what they do for a living.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:51] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> And I would be remiss not to give credit to our sponsors too. We have many sponsors who are repeat sponsors year after year, and they support us with their sponsorship. We are very appreciative of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year we have some new ones and a lot of repeating ones from every range. Our higher level are of course now closed, but we still have the bronze level, which is at a $500, or a micro sponsor which is at $150. And the difference between that is the Bronze has a webpage, a dedicated webpage for their company, and the micro sponsor has a logo on our sponsor page.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:35:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So as of recording, and maybe that will keep going right up to the deadline, I don&#8217;t know, so if what you&#8217;ve heard has made you feel that you&#8217;d like to be involved on a sponsorship level, bronze is available, that one is $500, and there&#8217;s a micro one. And obviously you can go onto the 2025 Accessibility Day website and discover for yourself what&#8217;s available in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we found out what&#8217;s happening. We found out why it&#8217;s being done. We found out some of the people that are being involved. I suppose what we ought to do at this point is drive people toward the schedule.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, you&#8217;ve announced it already, but let&#8217;s just make sure we&#8217;re doing it again. The date for this event is when?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:03] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> So it&#8217;ll be happening on October 15th to the 16th, and it&#8217;ll be 24 hour long event. So it&#8217;s going to go right up for 24 hours. We have the speakers all in the schedule, so you can go ahead and check it out. The link will be in the shownotes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It will. Yeah, that&#8217;s absolutely right. So the 15th of October, it&#8217;s a 24 hour event. So I don&#8217;t know if you start in the sort of Pacific neck of the woods, that seems to be the traditional way that things are done. So Australia, they&#8217;re the sort of first people to receive the content, and then it just goes around the globe. And maybe the people in, on the west coast of the US and Hawaii and what have you, they get the content more towards the end of the day. I assume that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s working.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you go to the URL that we mentioned earlier and just add forward slash schedule to it, you will be able to see through opening remarks from Joe Dolson right at the beginning of the day, right through the keynotes and everything, to the closing remarks, or at least the last presentation, which is happening some 23 or so hours later.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that&#8217;s all the questions that I had. Is there anything that you feel it would&#8217;ve been important to say that we didn&#8217;t say? If that&#8217;s the case, please feel free to use this platform now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:09] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> The event is free, but we do ask that you register, so that we do have a good count of how many people are coming. So please sign up at 2025.wpaccessibility.day and you&#8217;ll find the registration link there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Is that a mere request or is that a requirement? In order to gain access, do you need to have, yeah, okay. So I&#8217;m getting a nod of the head there from June. So go and register in order to access the content as well. David, anything we missed?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:38] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Yeah, the only thing is that I&#8217;m excited for Vitaly Friedman, because he has a very wide following, so he will bring more people into our event, hopefully. And he is going to be talking about accessible designs, which is something quite powerful. Because in this day and age, people always associate accessibility with very boring designs. But he&#8217;s coming to show you that you can have very beautiful designs in 2025 and still be accessible. So that&#8217;s a very important topic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, the WP Accessibility Day website is an example of that. It&#8217;s actually a really tasteful, beautiful design. I&#8217;m going to guess that it&#8217;s, you know, the accessibility credentials of it are fairly strong. Let&#8217;s just, make that assumption, but it&#8217;s beautifully designed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, we didn&#8217;t really touch on the names of the speakers or what have you. But yeah, I&#8217;ll just go through a few just as I scroll through, just to give you some ideas.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So accessible design patterns is Vitaly. Being a colorblind designer, typography, readability, digital accessibility, building accessibility that works in the global south, hyper accessible web design for the blind, audio accessibility, accessibility lawsuits, gosh, we&#8217;re only like six or seven in, and we&#8217;ve run the full gamut already. So here we go. Why accessibility matters, video and media your post-production, guide making WordPress events accessible, gosh, that&#8217;s fascinating. Auditing WordPress plugin accessibility, demystifying screen readers, technical checklists. That means testing WordPress themes and plugins for accessibility. The future is automated, will it be accessible? Making Gutenberg blocks accessible. I&#8217;m going to stop there, but you get the idea. There&#8217;s absolutely loads of breadth and depth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s very much the case that if you were to show up, I would guarantee more or less that there&#8217;s going to be something which will pique your interest and keep you engaged. The schedule, like I said, is at forward slash schedule.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, if that&#8217;s the case, I will just say thank you so much for being one of many cogs in this very important wheel. Thank you for doing what is incredibly important work, making the web accessible to far more people. Thank you. That&#8217;s quite amazing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So June and David, thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:46] <strong>June Jiu:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:48] <strong>David Denedo:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>\n</div></details>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/people/june-liu/\">June Liu</a> and <a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/people/david-denedo/\">David Denedo</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both June and David are key members of the <a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/\">WP Accessibility Day</a> organising team, a global, volunteer-driven event focused on improving accessibility in the WordPress ecosystem. June serves as the marketing team co-lead and works with sponsors, bringing her background in project management to keep the event’s efforts on track. David, a web designer and content creator based in London, contributes to the marketing and post-event teams, with his interest in web accessibility stemming from his personal experience as a visually impaired user.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WP Accessibility Day has grown significantly in the past few years, uniting a large, international group of volunteers and organisers to drive awareness and practical change in web accessibility. The event is powered by a host of teams, marketing, sponsors, tech and vendor, post-event, translation, speakers, and more, ensuring that everything from live captioning to sign language interpretation is in place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We begin by learning about June and David’s unique paths to accessibility advocacy, one through direct lived experience, and the other through supporting a loved one with cognitive challenges. Their stories highlight why accessibility can&#8217;t be an afterthought and how events like WP Accessibility Day are raising awareness in this important area.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We discuss what attendees can expect at this year’s event, happening from October 15th, 2025. It’s free, fully virtual, and runs for 24 hours, making space for a diverse range of speakers and topics. Whether you’re interested in the moral, legal, or technical cases for accessibility, there’s something for you here, including sessions on accessible design, risk management for agencies, legal compliance, and demonstrations of assistive technologies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>June and David share how the event format, a combination of pre-recorded talks and live chat, mixes polished content with real-time engagement, plus how translation and community involvement are key to its growing impact.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to learn more about how you can make your WordPress sites, and the web in general, more inclusive, or if you’re motivated by global collaboration and personal stories, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/\">WP Accessibility Website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/about/organizers/\">The WP Accessibility Day Team</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://2025.wpaccessibility.day/schedule/\">The WP Accessibility Day Schedule</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCes9XCUZd51CAigbBEGlfNg\">WP Accessibility Day YouTube Channel</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, 01 Oct 2025 14:00:00 +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:30;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:43:\"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.8.3 Release\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=19204\";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:59:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/09/wordpress-6-8-3-release/\";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:4937:\"<p><strong>WordPress 6.8.3 is now available!</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a security release that features two fixes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because this is a security release,<strong> it is recommended that you update your sites immediately</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.8.3.zip\">download WordPress 6.8.3 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next major release will be <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-9/\">version 6.9</a>, which is planned for December 2nd, 2025.<br />For more information on WordPress 6.8.3, please visit the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/documentation/wordpress-version/version-6-8-3/\">version page on the HelpHub site</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Security updates included in this release</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The security team would like to thank the following people for <a href=\"https://hackerone.com/wordpress?type=team\">responsibly reporting vulnerabilities</a>, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A data exposure issue where authenticated users could access some restricted content. Independently reported by <a href=\"https://hackerone.com/mnelson4\">Mike Nelson</a>, <a href=\"https://hackerone.com/hurayraiit\">Abu Hurayra</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/timothyblynjacobs/\">Timothy Jacobs</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/\">Peter Wilson</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability requiring an authenticated user role that affects the nav menus. Reported by <a href=\"https://x.com/Savphill\">Phill Savage</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As a courtesy, these fixes have also been made available to all branches eligible to receive security fixes (currently through 4.7). As a reminder, <strong>only the most recent version of WordPress is actively supported</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This release was led by <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/\">John Blackbourn</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, WordPress 6.8.3 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people:</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin\">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/hurayraiit\">Abu Hurayra</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zieladam\">Adam Zieliński</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/xknown\">Alex Concha</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/andraganescu%20\">Andrei Draganescu</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/\">David Baumwald</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis\">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/iandunn\">Ian Dunn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/whyisjake\">Jake Spurlock</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb\">Jb Audras</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/joehoyle\">Joe Hoyle</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion\">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jonsurrell\">Jon Surrell</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj\">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mnelson4\">Michael Nelson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc\">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/phillsav\">Phill</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/noisysocks\">Robert Anderson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmccue\">Ryan McCue</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/coffee2code/\">Scott Reilly</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/timothyblynjacobs\">Timothy Jacobs</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/vortfu\">vortfu</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter\">Weston Ruter</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to contribute</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6\">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation in the <a href=\"https://app.slack.com/client/T024MFP4J/C02RQBWTW\">#core</a> Slack channel. Need help? Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/tutorials/faq-for-new-contributors/\">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Props to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis/\">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/\">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/paulkevan/\">Paul Kevan</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/\">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/\">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter\">Weston Ruter</a> for reviewing.</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, 30 Sep 2025 19:31:04 +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:15:\"John Blackbourn\";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:31;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:25:\"Matt: What’s Your Time?\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150037\";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:32:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/tick-tock/\";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:908:\"<p>I think some of the best writing about technology PR is this ten-year-old article by <a href=\"https://www.onbackground.com/\">Aaron Zamost</a>: <a href=\"https://medium.com/backchannel/how-the-tech-press-forces-a-narrative-on-companies-it-covers-5f89fdb7793e\">What’s Your Hour in ‘Silicon Valley Time’?</a> It describes the cycles that companies go through in public perception, and the beauty of revisiting it ten years later is that you can see which of the examples are still relevant, or the domains that 404. As someone who has been around this clock probably a dozen times now, I highly suggest this for anyone &#8220;going through it.&#8221; Some of the most powerful words in the English language: <em>This too shall pass</em>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>See also: The Zen fable or old Chinese poem of <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse\">the old man who loses his horse</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, 30 Sep 2025 17:30:25 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:32;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:95:\"Open Channels FM: Surviving the WordPress Plugin Grind Growth, Marketing and Overcoming Burnout\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110777\";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:101:\"https://openchannels.fm/surviving-the-wordpress-plugin-grind-growth-marketing-and-overcoming-burnout/\";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:237:\"In this WP Behind the Builds episode, guest Devin Walker discusses his transition from corporate IT to successful WordPress plugin development, focusing on GiveWP, WP Rollback, and lessons learned about business and community engagement.\";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, 30 Sep 2025 11:34:00 +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:33;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:11:\"Matt: Om 59\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150022\";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:28:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/om-59/\";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:3905:\"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-150030\" height=\"340\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/ma.tt/files/2025/09/IMG_0803-1-edited-scaled.jpeg?resize=604%2C340&#038;quality=89&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"604\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to dedicate my blog post today to my dear friend and brother, <a href=\"https://om.co/\">Om Malik</a>, whose birthday it is. Om is a multi-hyphenate, but at his core, he&#8217;s a writer, someone who looks at the world and parses it down for others, a seeker who appreciates the spark of creation before most others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Om was one of the earliest users of WordPress and he was one of <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2005/01/meetup-aftermath/\">8 people who came to the very first WordPress meetups at Chaat Cafe on 3<sup>rd</sup> street in San Francisco in 2005</a>. (You can tell what an early adopter he is because he has the username &#8220;Om&#8221; <a href=\"https://x.com/om\">on Twitter/X</a> and <a href=\"https://www.instagram.com/om/\">Instagram</a> and WordPress and probably more.) We had connected on the WordPress support forums when I helped him get set up around the 1.0 days. After I moved to San Francisco to take the job at CNET he connected me to people like Phil Black, Tony Conrad, and Toni Schneider who would become, respectively, an investor, board member, and CEO of Automattic. These are folks I still work with and consider close friends today. As a journalist, he had a keen nose for BS and made sure as a naïve 20-something in SF I was connecting with quality people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since we met we&#8217;ve both had a shared love for photography, and I&#8217;ve seen Om blossom into an amazing photographer with a really unique style and approach, <a href=\"https://www.photosbyom.com/\">in fact you can even buy some of his photography prints</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the years, we&#8217;ve dipped in and out of shared obsessions with cameras, watches, shoes, fashion, and design. We have a fair number of matching things in each. In photography we&#8217;ve shivered in minus thirty weather in Antarctica and Jackson Hole at odd hours to catch a special shot. We&#8217;ve traveled to Europe and Japan dozens of times, being very early (pre John Mayer and Kanye) to brands like <a href=\"https://www.visvim.tv/\">Visvim</a>. <span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">When I wear something like a bespoke<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">, hand-made piece from <a href=\"https://45rglobal.com/\" target=\"_blank\">45R</a> to <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45HRzzc0waU\" target=\"_blank\">speak at WordCamp US</a>, he recognizes it off the cuff </span>and even knows the one store on Crosby Street in New York where you can buy it.</span> He is a tastemaker and an aesthetic connoisseur in every area he&#8217;s interested in, from food to coffee to pens, and everything in between. Sometimes we&#8217;ll start a journey together, for example, trying nice pens, and years later, I&#8217;ve moved on and he&#8217;s gone deep into collecting dozens of them, being in obscure forums and Reddits, or attending events like the <a href=\"https://sanfranciscopenshow.com/\">SF Pen Show last month</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you walk into a coffee shop with Om he doesn&#8217;t just know the barista&#8217;s name, he knows their dog&#8217;s name and the story of every person working there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m 500 words in, and I still haven&#8217;t even scratched the surface of describing Om&#8217;s journey, from growing up in Delhi to becoming a journalist for a Japanese publication in New York, a book author, party promoter, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, photographer, and explorer. If you want to understand the AI bubble we&#8217;re in right now, you should <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471660612?tag=photomatt08-20\">read his book Broadbandits on the crazy telecom / Enron bubble</a>. This is a long way to say, happy birthday Om!</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, 29 Sep 2025 15:50:56 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:34;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:19:\"Matt: Craft vs Slop\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150017\";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:33:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/craft-slop/\";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:1964:\"<p>In an age where AI can generate an infinite amount of stuff, what matters? Some of the most interesting writing I&#8217;ve read on this comes from <a href=\"https://willmanidis.com/\">Will Manidis</a>, who makes it biblical and says that Craft is the Antidote to Slop:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>From Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden<em> &#8220;to dress it and to keep it&#8221;</em> (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The serpent&#8217;s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history<em>.&#8221;Ye shall be as gods&#8221; </em>(Genesis 3:5) was not an invitation to deeper engagement with creation, but a way to get out of the work required to tend to it. The consequence wasn&#8217;t the introduction of work itself, but its corruption into burdensome toil: <em>&#8220;In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread&#8221; </em>(Genesis 3:19). Humanity&#8217;s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process – preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read the rest as <a href=\"https://x.com/WillManidis/status/1971920155996574168\">screenshots on X</a> or <a href=\"https://minutes.substack.com/p/craft-is-the-antidote-to-slop\">on his Substack</a>, but I hope he gets a real website soon. This also makes me think you should watch the <a href=\"https://www.weareasgods.film/\">We Are As Gods documentary on Stewart Brand</a>, supported by the amazing folks at <a href=\"https://press.stripe.com/\">Stripe Press</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:\"Mon, 29 Sep 2025 06:41:36 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:35;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:111:\"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog 121—Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7,  Block Theme Development, and Block Themes\";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://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=42062\";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:124:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/\";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:81565:\"<p>In Episode 121 of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, Birgit Pauli-Haack and Anne Katzeff dive into Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, touching on theme development, block themes, Figma workflows, Playground blueprints, and upcoming WordPress 6.9 features. They discuss enhancements to data views, grid layouts, the new accordion block, command palette improvements, block-level commenting for collaboration, accessibility updates, and the ongoing evolution of global styles and admin redesign, offering insights for both theme builders and developers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/#shownotes\">Show Notes</a> / <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-121-gutenberg-21-6-and-21-7-block-theme-development-and-block-themes/#transcript\">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Editor: <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/\">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo: <a href=\"https://markuraine.com/\">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production: <a href=\"https://icodeforapurpose.com\">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-larger-font-size\" id=\"shownotes\"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Special guest: Anne Katzeff</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-social-links is-layout-flex wp-block-social-links-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-linkedin  wp-block-social-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\" href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/annekatzeff/\"><svg height=\"24\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path d=\"M19.7,3H4.3C3.582,3,3,3.582,3,4.3v15.4C3,20.418,3.582,21,4.3,21h15.4c0.718,0,1.3-0.582,1.3-1.3V4.3 C21,3.582,20.418,3,19.7,3z M8.339,18.338H5.667v-8.59h2.672V18.338z M7.004,8.574c-0.857,0-1.549-0.694-1.549-1.548 c0-0.855,0.691-1.548,1.549-1.548c0.854,0,1.547,0.694,1.547,1.548C8.551,7.881,7.858,8.574,7.004,8.574z M18.339,18.338h-2.669 v-4.177c0-0.996-0.017-2.278-1.387-2.278c-1.389,0-1.601,1.086-1.601,2.206v4.249h-2.667v-8.59h2.559v1.174h0.037 c0.356-0.675,1.227-1.387,2.526-1.387c2.703,0,3.203,1.779,3.203,4.092V18.338z\"></path></svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">LinkedIn</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-x  wp-block-social-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\" href=\"https://x.com/ASKDesign2\"><svg height=\"24\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path d=\"M13.982 10.622 20.54 3h-1.554l-5.693 6.618L8.745 3H3.5l6.876 10.007L3.5 21h1.554l6.012-6.989L15.868 21h5.245l-7.131-10.378Zm-2.128 2.474-.697-.997-5.543-7.93H8l4.474 6.4.697.996 5.815 8.318h-2.387l-4.745-6.787Z\"></svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">X</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-wordpress  wp-block-social-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\" href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/askdesign/\"><svg height=\"24\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path d=\"M12.158,12.786L9.46,20.625c0.806,0.237,1.657,0.366,2.54,0.366c1.047,0,2.051-0.181,2.986-0.51 c-0.024-0.038-0.046-0.079-0.065-0.124L12.158,12.786z M3.009,12c0,3.559,2.068,6.634,5.067,8.092L3.788,8.341 C3.289,9.459,3.009,10.696,3.009,12z M18.069,11.546c0-1.112-0.399-1.881-0.741-2.48c-0.456-0.741-0.883-1.368-0.883-2.109 c0-0.826,0.627-1.596,1.51-1.596c0.04,0,0.078,0.005,0.116,0.007C16.472,3.904,14.34,3.009,12,3.009 c-3.141,0-5.904,1.612-7.512,4.052c0.211,0.007,0.41,0.011,0.579,0.011c0.94,0,2.396-0.114,2.396-0.114 C7.947,6.93,8.004,7.642,7.52,7.699c0,0-0.487,0.057-1.029,0.085l3.274,9.739l1.968-5.901l-1.401-3.838 C9.848,7.756,9.389,7.699,9.389,7.699C8.904,7.67,8.961,6.93,9.446,6.958c0,0,1.484,0.114,2.368,0.114 c0.94,0,2.397-0.114,2.397-0.114c0.485-0.028,0.542,0.684,0.057,0.741c0,0-0.488,0.057-1.029,0.085l3.249,9.665l0.897-2.996 C17.841,13.284,18.069,12.316,18.069,11.546z M19.889,7.686c0.039,0.286,0.06,0.593,0.06,0.924c0,0.912-0.171,1.938-0.684,3.22 l-2.746,7.94c2.673-1.558,4.47-4.454,4.47-7.771C20.991,10.436,20.591,8.967,19.889,7.686z M12,22C6.486,22,2,17.514,2,12 C2,6.486,6.486,2,12,2c5.514,0,10,4.486,10,10C22,17.514,17.514,22,12,22z\"></path></svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">WordPress</span></a></li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-instagram  wp-block-social-link\"><a class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\" href=\"https://www.instagram.com/annekatzeff_askdesign/\"><svg height=\"24\" version=\"1.1\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path d=\"M12,4.622c2.403,0,2.688,0.009,3.637,0.052c0.877,0.04,1.354,0.187,1.671,0.31c0.42,0.163,0.72,0.358,1.035,0.673 c0.315,0.315,0.51,0.615,0.673,1.035c0.123,0.317,0.27,0.794,0.31,1.671c0.043,0.949,0.052,1.234,0.052,3.637 s-0.009,2.688-0.052,3.637c-0.04,0.877-0.187,1.354-0.31,1.671c-0.163,0.42-0.358,0.72-0.673,1.035 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c0.592-0.23,1.094-0.538,1.594-1.038c0.5-0.5,0.808-1.002,1.038-1.594c0.222-0.572,0.375-1.227,0.418-2.185 C20.99,14.751,21,14.444,21,12s-0.01-2.751-0.054-3.711c-0.044-0.958-0.196-1.612-0.418-2.185c-0.23-0.592-0.538-1.094-1.038-1.594 c-0.5-0.5-1.002-0.808-1.594-1.038c-0.572-0.222-1.227-0.375-2.185-0.418C14.751,3.01,14.444,3,12,3L12,3z M12,7.378 c-2.552,0-4.622,2.069-4.622,4.622S9.448,16.622,12,16.622s4.622-2.069,4.622-4.622S14.552,7.378,12,7.378z M12,15 c-1.657,0-3-1.343-3-3s1.343-3,3-3s3,1.343,3,3S13.657,15,12,15z M16.804,6.116c-0.596,0-1.08,0.484-1.08,1.08 s0.484,1.08,1.08,1.08c0.596,0,1.08-0.484,1.08-1.08S17.401,6.116,16.804,6.116z\"></path></svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Instagram</span></a></li></ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-design-systems-and-theme-json/\">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: Design Systems and Theme.json</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/06/05/hallway-hangout-theme-building-with-playground-create-block-theme-plugin-and-github/\">Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg plugin releases</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/09/10/whats-new-in-gutenberg-21-6-10-september/\">What’s new in Gutenberg 21.6? (10 September)</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v21.7.0\">Changelog 21.7</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href=\"https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog\"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on X (formerly known as Twitter) or send DMs with questions. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes\">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bph\">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/\">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\" id=\"transcript\"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Hello, and welcome to our 121st episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 21.6 and 21.7, as well as about theme development, block themes, and all this good, good stuff. And I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times, developer advocate, and core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. And with me is Anne Katzeff, a dear friend of mine. She joins me in this episode. She was here before on the show, and she&#8217;s a longtime WordPress theme builder, educator and artist, and a longtime friend of mine. He previously connected on WordPress Meetup Co-organizers in Southwest Florida, but that&#8217;s ages ago. Anne has been on a podcast before, and it was episode 109 almost a year ago. So glad you&#8217;re here, Anne. How are you today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I&#8217;m good, Birgit. Thanks for inviting me. It&#8217;s great to see you and reunite. I hope you&#8217;re well. I was just thinking, I can&#8217;t wait to catch up on all the WordCamp stuff that you and others have been posting. I&#8217;ve been immersed in two things recently. Redesigning a client&#8217;s very old website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>When you say very old.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, it was using. It&#8217;s still live, although it barely displays correctly because the code is so old. It uses custom templates from a custom theme that has some of the content baked into the code.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh. Oh, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So it&#8217;s really hard to edit. The client has a real hard time doing that, as I do as well. And now I&#8217;m rebuilding the site. I&#8217;m using a cadence theme, and it&#8217;s a whole new area for me. I&#8217;m seeing the pros and cons of that system. And I&#8217;m also redesigning my own website. I don&#8217;t even want to tell you how long that&#8217;s been since I designed it. It&#8217;s built on Bootstrap. I do have a WordPress blog, so I have to update the bootstrap part and the WordPress part.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay. So you have the design and the styling is in Bootstrap, and you kind of massage it into the WordPress, so.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Seamless. Okay. Yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And, you know, people ask me, why don&#8217;t you do the whole thing in WordPress for me? I do occasionally build bootstrap sites, so this is a way. It&#8217;s kind of an excuse for me to keep current in what&#8217;s happening in Bootstrap. So I&#8217;m using new tools like figma for my prototyping, and once I get that finished and we&#8217;re nearing that point I&#8217;ll start rebuilding and bootstrap, and probably I&#8217;ll use the 2025 WordPress default theme for the blog part. So with both of these projects I&#8217;m using these new tools and riding a learning curve and it&#8217;s all good. It&#8217;s challenging and stimulating and integrating the new with the familiar. So it&#8217;s like my mind is like uhh.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, but it could be. It&#8217;s a great exercise. You have to kind of see okay, how far can I still rely on what I&#8217;m doing? And oh this cool new stuff is also good. So I know that Jonathan Bosinger, he&#8217;s a co-worker of mine and he was one of the educators on the Learn team and he has started live streaming and this last livestream he&#8217;s trying to. He got a Figma design from a designer and now wants to create a block theme about it and finds that there are no like you know in the old days where you had a Photoshop to WordPress kind of. Yeah, yeah. He kind of had hope that there is a from figma to WordPress kind of thing and there is but you need to be very deliberate on how you set up Figma exactly to make this work. So.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> God, I was just thinking about all that. That&#8217;s so interesting. Yeah. You have to have they call it auto layout and of course I don&#8217;t, and I&#8217;m not going to redo all my stuff in Figma just to pray that whatever plugin I use will work. But that&#8217;s what they recommend the so. Oh well it wasn&#8217;t what I had planned. I wasn&#8217;t going to do an automated thing but. But now this kind of validates a reason why I can&#8217;t. It&#8217;s not quite there yet. Yeah, there are curious things in Figma and there are amazing things in Figma.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So it&#8217;s like any new tool. Yeah, yeah. It has your tradeoffs and you need to kind of unlearn a lot of things before you can learn. Yeah. So the VIP theme builders or designers, they actually have a process where they go from Figma to theme JSON because they&#8217;ll have websites where they like you do. There&#8217;s a component that&#8217;s not WordPress and there&#8217;s a component that&#8217;s WordPress, or they have customers that have multiple different brandings for different things but they&#8217;re also, they&#8217;re all in Figma but then you can do themes and then that theme, you can use a plugin that you can then export your design decisions on the, on fonts and on colors and other things to migrate to theme JSON and then immediately kind of start up a block theme. I&#8217;m going to find that, dear listeners, I&#8217;m also going to find the link for you, not only for Anne. Thank you. We had David Bowman on the live Q and A maybe two years ago where he kind of demonstrated that all. So we will share those in the show notes and kind of see how that, I don&#8217;t know how that kind of works with you and how you approach figma, but it might be a good way to see if that works for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> That would be fascinating as well. I mean, I am using variables for some of my styles. I&#8217;m limiting it because again, of the learning curve. But I&#8217;ve got so far the color palette and very basic typography assigned to, you know, text in the six head levels to match up with a bootstrap scenario. And I&#8217;m thinking ahead even beyond that. Well, how will I translate that into a WordPress theme? So it&#8217;s. I like the complication. I don&#8217;t mind it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, yeah, no, the complexity is really intriguing because all of a sudden you kind of have these, all these pieces that fit together very well and you feel like, oh, this is genius.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, I actually, I wish I could remember the guy&#8217;s name, but I saw, I watched a YouTube video. Maybe I&#8217;ll find it and I&#8217;ll send you a note about it. But he explained the Figma variables really well, and he has maybe an hour and a half tutorial that I&#8217;ve yet to just scratch the surface.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, I know that Justin Tadlock, who is our theme guru, I would call him, he is working on a design system where he combines the color palette and the fonts with semantic kind of. So he&#8217;s not saying, okay, this is the main color, this is the background color, foreground color. But he&#8217;s saying, okay, this is a text color and has a separate design system that&#8217;s built into theme that he builds into theme JSON. So he can actually switch out a theme if the theme actually follows the same standards in there. He just can change colors and then the theme looks totally different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly. That&#8217;s kind of the idea behind the variables.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Definitely try to be semantic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Michelle Hunt did a good funnel from Atomic Design to the Design system at WordCamp US and the video is online. And she also had a similar custom color setting design system in Theme JSON actually built into. Yeah, so I&#8217;m, of course I&#8217;m going to share all that, but with you and our listeners.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah. We can&#8217;t anticipate everything that comes up in these conversations, can we? No, we don&#8217;t have all the links right here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But at least I know where I can look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I&#8217;m writing a blog post and I&#8217;m still a little bit stuck in that. But on how to use Playground to build a theme demo where you can have content, like to showcase your theme and then create a Playground blueprint to share with your clients or your customers so they can test WordPress with the theme and some content in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So great idea.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So they know how the patterns look or the color scheme or how the front page can look. And because sometimes you have this problem that you have a theme and you see that there was a front page, but when you install the theme, it doesn&#8217;t look like that. Yeah, so, yeah, so that&#8217;s kind of part where theme builders or even agencies can really make some great showcase for their product. And I&#8217;m using Playground, but there is actually importer. So you can put all the content into your local site and then export it and then import it into Playground with the blueprint. Kind of have the XML file on GitHub and it kind of puts it in and you can do all the settings here. What&#8217;s the front page like? A blog post or a block theme? Or is it a page? Or is it. Which one is the news page then? And so you can build that all out. And now I&#8217;m kind of. The missing piece is still navigation. So the navigation, if you just build the pages, it automatically builds the page layout or the page list layout. But if you do a custom navigation work, it doesn&#8217;t get imported yet because somehow the parser doesn&#8217;t know that those links need to be transferred to the new site. So it didn&#8217;t work. Right. But I&#8217;m working on it and I know that the Playground people are really busy on doing stuff, doing this and fixing things. So that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m working on. And I&#8217;m.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So it sounds like you&#8217;re using it also as a prototyping tool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> You could, you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Is it like the concept, like a live link that you can share with a client and they can view it? Yeah, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. You could also do the prototype thing with. Well, you can share. You can. Yeah, you can share it with a client and every client who kept the link gets the same site. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So is it stored in GitHub?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>No, it&#8217;s stored in memory on browser. On the browser, it&#8217;s Playground is a tool that runs WordPress. In the browser. You don&#8217;t need a server, you don&#8217;t need a database. You just need the playground.WordPress.net and then you have a WordPress site. And then with blueprints that are configuration files in JSON written in JSON, you can say, okay, which plugin do I want to install? Which. What&#8217;s the landing page? Which theme do I want to have in there? And do I want to have additional content in there? Yeah. So you can use it to showcase your plugin or your theme. And we use it for. For all kinds of different things as well. And on the team, we use it to test PRs from a good look and track that are not merged yet, that are not yet in a. In a version of that. So you can just kind of isolate the whole thing and just test this particular thing. That&#8217;s really cool. And I&#8217;m going to have a talk at a WordCamp about using Playground, GitHub and the great block theme. Okay. To change themes without touching code. So making changes to the themes through the editor. So if you need a new template or need to change a template, change or add colors and all this kind of things, but then at the end you export it to GitHub and it creates the PR that then one of your developer is going to merge with the theme where all the other developing things are happening.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>That sounds really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Well, clearly I haven&#8217;t used Blueprint very much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or Playground.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Or Playground. Sorry.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, but I get what you said before. Yeah. I like the complexity. So. Okay, let&#8217;s see how complicated and easy we can make it. Yeah. Well, I think we could now head into Gutenberg 21.6. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 6.9</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So WordPress 6.9 is coming. Let&#8217;s talk a little bit about WordPress 6.9. We will have other shows about that, of course, but just to get the timing right, we are about four weeks away from Beta 1, and Beta 1 is pretty much feature freeze, and it will all have in there 15 Gutenberg releases from 20.5 when WordPress 6.8 came out, 20.4 was the last one. So 20.5 until 21.9, it&#8217;s pretty much 15. But there was a period of Gutenberg releases for about four, four months when not a whole lot of features came in. But that is going to be offset that in the last two or three releases. There will be a ton of things in there. So we will change our cadence from having two Gutenberg plugins in a show to one and do another. I hope we can go back to every other week instead of every month recording. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg 21.6</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>What we are talking about today is about Gutenberg 21.6 before I go in there. So release is going to be December 2nd, so everything you need and beta one is October 21st and in between are release candidates and release candidate one, I think is November 2nd or something like that. So by that time we hopefully have all the developer notes in there and Source of Truth will come out there at the same time or a week later. So just so you can prepare a plan or not. I&#8217;m a planning person, so I always need to know the dates. I always have. Most of the time I have a plan. So when something changes, I know what to change. Yeah. So. Well, let&#8217;s head into the Gutenberg 21.6. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Enhancements</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>It has a few enhancements and we start with the Data Views enhancement. And one of them is. Seems to be a minor thing, but there is a card layout in the components for the Data Forms where you can support combined fields and show the description in there. And that&#8217;s fairly new. So there&#8217;s also a storybook documentation out for those plugin developers who all kind of want to try out the new Data Views and the Data Forms. Data form is really where people then can enter stuff, filtering and all that. That&#8217;s all in Data Forms. And then there&#8217;s also in the Data Views we have the grid layout is now a little bit more flexible. You can have it without a title and then you have the actions are available on Hover, which is quite nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> But yeah, I like that. That&#8217;s a wonderful enhancement. And of course it got me into another path of both grids and thinking about using the grid layout for the post template. So I started to play around with that. Got lost in that for about an hour. So far I don&#8217;t really see an advantage for using the grid over the default grouping with columns, but I&#8217;ll play around with it a bit more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, there is actually a more interactive way of using the grid layout in the Gutenberg experiments. So that might be. So when you use the Gutenberg plugin, there&#8217;s one menu item under Gutenberg that says Experiments, and there are probably 10 different experiments, amongst them the new blocks that are in there, but they will come out of experiments hopefully soon. There&#8217;s also the data view usage for posts. Because right now it&#8217;s only a site editor with pages where you can use the data views but also use them for posts. And there are a ton of experiments and one of them is interactive grid layout where you can drag and drop things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh really?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Use it. Yeah. For different kind of content as well. So you have pictures in there, you can have a cover in there and you can have just text in there and each grid and then you can also stretch it out over two rows.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or two columns or two rows kind of thing. And. And it. Oh, cool. Kind of merges all that. So it&#8217;s really cool. But it hasn&#8217;t gotten any updates for a while. It&#8217;s still an experiment because of our other priorities. But it&#8217;s definitely. You see what&#8217;s coming. That&#8217;s one thing. Also to kind of okay, how can we. How can this be improved? Yeah, and kind of. Yeah, let the developers know. That&#8217;s the. Yeah, I like the grid layout too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Do some interesting things with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Definitely.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah. There were updates to the core data packages but they are so developer oriented and so technical that if you&#8217;re interested that just check out the changelog of 21.6. But 21.6 has one new thing and that&#8217;s. Well, it was actually in 21.5, but that&#8217;s the accordion block and I cannot talk often about it. Often enough about it. I&#8217;m really happy that the accordion block made it into Gutenberg. Now it&#8217;s still under experiments, so you need to switch it on. I think it&#8217;s the second. The second from the top on that page. I had a plan to create a post about all the experiments that I Gutenberg. But yeah, that kind of fell to the website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Well, it&#8217;s constantly changing I would think.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s one thing, but it&#8217;s also kind of. Oh yeah, well, let&#8217;s do the other cool stuff too. Yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I&#8217;ve seen a lot of discussion about the new accordion features and I checked about. Of course, you know, I had to look at that. I still think the UI needs some tweaks. Although of course I. I think the add button is a no brainer. That&#8217;s a really good addition. So I was looking at the accordion from a user point of view. Not on the front end, but the back end. And those pan. What do they call them? Panes. They&#8217;re tucked right next to each other. I think just from a UI point of view it would be nice to add a little bit of space between them. Because I had trouble acclimating to how does this actually work and what&#8217;s going on. I hit this plus sign and then it opens up. So just a little bit more tweaking on that, I think would be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I think that&#8217;s also something to think about with block style variations, where you can actually put that in a style.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff</em>: Sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And then I did some discovery on that because I wanted to figure out how many different designs can I come up with? My AI can come up with that. I can put a variation. How many did you discover? Right now, I did it all by hand and kind of do the discovery because I had the whole same thing. But I had too much white space. I did a background into the panel.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>That&#8217;s a good idea. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And then I had a white space there. And so I needed to reduce the margin to get rid of that white space. But, yeah, I think that&#8217;s the design decisions. It&#8217;s so new that you&#8217;re. There are not all the supports are there. I think you can have some dimension support there with spacing and margins. So you can definitely see that in the side. In the inspector controls and the sidebar of the block. You just need to make sure that you select the right block, because there are four blocks. One is the accordion, that&#8217;s the wrapper, and then you have the header, and then you have the panel, and then you have the content. Yeah, there&#8217;s a. A lot of moving parts that if you create a style variation for that, people can just, with one click.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, okay. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Change the design of things. Yeah. Kind of make it either an FAQ or pricing or whatever to do that. So style variations are really a cool feature. Yeah. So the next thing is. Well, the query loop block had a. Had a broken placeholder and it&#8217;s fixed now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And that&#8217;s on small screens, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, that&#8217;s from plus on mobile, pretty much the next one is. Or Core Commands. So Commands is the command palette where you do Control K and then you get a little. Like on a Mac, you get little things and you can say Open Site Editor or add a page or something like that. And now you can now return to the dashboard. Yeah. Because you&#8217;re five levels deep in the Site Editor and now you want to go back to your post. You just open up Control K and say return to Dashboard or just type in Dashboard. And then it kind of gets you to. To that place. It also has some permission checks, so if you are not allowed to go there, you&#8217;re not you&#8217;re not going to go there. So that was kind of missing before. It was kind of. Yeah. Wherever you go, you go.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, so it was like a back door.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Access to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Wow. But it&#8217;s all, all in the admin. There&#8217;s nothing on the front end, but it&#8217;s. I think it will. So the command palette has those in. In 28. So in the next one there will be additional commands. So command palette, you can register commands with code. So plugin can say, okay, if, if that&#8217;s a team, a team plugin with team members, you could say add a team or yeah. Update theme or something like that. And then because it&#8217;s just a one liner kind of thing, you could also then tap it into the Abilities API. That&#8217;s kind of the next step. It&#8217;s not going to be in 6.9 for sure, but it is something that you can kind of daisy chain some workflows or tab into an AI ability kind of API that then lets you also do some AI stuff there. So it&#8217;s kind of that interface that you will be in in the future more often if you so choose to. But I think that&#8217;s a really interesting development there because now, right now you always have to remember, okay, which menu is it in and where do I go and what&#8217;s the name of it? Yeah, is it template parts? Is it pattern? Is it templates? Is it pages? Yeah, what&#8217;s.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I tend to click on my little picture icon to get back to the previous screens.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s what I tend to do because I don&#8217;t know how often.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, how often do you do it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And now you can just do Control K and I like that. Then you&#8217;re back there and you don&#8217;t have to do 15 plus things. Yeah. So no, I really am quite. I like the command palette anyway. But now it has so much perspective in the future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New APIs</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>The next thing is about global styles and we talked about. No, we didn&#8217;t talk about it. So you can now, in the theme JSON file, you can now have support for form elements like the inputs, all the inputs on your site, or the dropdowns and selects. So if you create forms and you can style them through the theme JSON file, you don&#8217;t have to do custom CSS for that anymore. Many, many theme builders ask for this too because it&#8217;s, well, what&#8217;s a website without a contact form? Yeah, what&#8217;s a website without a get me your quote or something like that? You need some forms and then you want to style it. You don&#8217;t want to kind of have another CSS file in there. If you have those tools for theme JSON and oh yeah, the developer blog, what&#8217;s New for Developers in September Edition that came out about two weeks ago had some code examples on how you can put that in your theme JSON. Yeah, how. How you phase it and all that. Yeah. So it&#8217;s okay. It&#8217;s really cool. It shows you how to. So you get into the elements section of your theme JSON and then you have text input and then you can do borders, colors, typography, or select and have the different colors for text and background, for instance. That&#8217;s the example in the developer blog.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So more and more we can do things in theme JSON that will allow us to use additional CSS or custom CSS less and less.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes, that&#8217;s one thing. And you could actually write CSS in a custom.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>That&#8217;s true.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s such a habit to go to additional CSS and just fix something. Yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Or I have very little. Well, actually this comes up later in the changelog, so I won&#8217;t get too deep into it, but I have very little in my additional CSS these days.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That&#8217;s good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>It&#8217;s just those few instances where I just can&#8217;t do it in theme JSON.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s still not particularly all covered there. Yeah. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bug Fixes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So now we come to the bug fixes. And one was the randomization of the gallery block doesn&#8217;t work when the lightbox is enabled. But you had a question there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah, I wasn&#8217;t thinking about that randomization. I didn&#8217;t know about that bug. But in the projects that I&#8217;ve been working on, I noticed the lack of navigation in the. The light box. So I know that that&#8217;s deep in the works now. And look, I. I just recently went to the PR and it looks like a lot of progress has been made. I think they&#8217;re about to say this is a done deal, or maybe they already have. So that&#8217;s really good because otherwise you would do all the things you needed to do to enlarge the image, but you couldn&#8217;t get to the next image in the gallery. Well, that&#8217;s not really a light box, is it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, well, everybody Lightbox, I think they&#8217;re around for 15 years now, so everybody has a different idea. But yeah, it was.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It was definitely missing navigation to. To just kind of use it as a slider that you can Slide exactly. Forward and backwards without having to. You click on the X and then you&#8217;re at the gallery and then you have to click on the next pictures and then go it up. So it was a little tedious. After the third one, everybody escaped. Yeah, that. Yeah. And PR that Anne is talking about is the 62906. If you want to go on. On the GitHub and check it out. 62906. And yeah, they&#8217;re pretty far with it. It&#8217;s some nice previous and next. And you get some. Yeah, I tested it too. Yeah. With Playground you cannot do Gutenberg and then the PR and then you can play around with it. And that was quite nicely done. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people have given input not only from the developers or from the contributor, but also from other developers and from the accessibility. Because that was. I think the first part was the accessibility part was. It didn&#8217;t kind of pan out. So they. They did some interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, were the arrows too small or something?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Errors too small? No area label, no announcement. Yeah, there&#8217;s a lot of things that need to happen for accessibility there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I&#8217;m deep into accessibility these days. I mean, with this client&#8217;s site being redesigned, her brand colors don&#8217;t cut it for accessibility. And I don&#8217;t know how, but I somehow convinced her to tweak the web colors to meet the accessibility requirements. I think I was so happy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh, my God. Yeah, so it&#8217;s.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>It&#8217;s a big thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. You don&#8217;t want to get them. Get them into trouble or. Yeah. Have a. The user less optimal experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So I think we talked about it. A plated science and classes to the experimental form block. That&#8217;s part of the getting the element section into the theme JSON part. There is an experimental form block though. So if you have the Gutenberg plugin installed and go to experiments, One of the 15 choices there is form block. So you can actually create a form from those blocks in your editor. But most people actually have a separate plugin for their forms. I&#8217;m not sure how expanded that&#8217;s going to be used. Yeah, that&#8217;s pretty much. We are through the bug fixes and then there&#8217;s one fix. So much. So the zoom out. We had this in 6.8. There was a problem that when you have the show template, you couldn&#8217;t show the template when you were in zoom out, and now they actually put it out. It didn&#8217;t work. You just didn&#8217;t get it to it. And now they actually took the. They now fixed it that the zoom out is disabled when the show template is toggled off. You need both. You need to in zoom out because when the show template is off, the renderer doesn&#8217;t see the main section of the page because that&#8217;s all the content anyway. But zoom out needs to have that main section. So it&#8217;s all kind of. Wasn&#8217;t consistently kind of working. So now they finally fixed it. Anything else? No, I think we&#8217;re through with 21.6. Except there&#8217;s some block library. Image block.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Code Quality</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, yeah. And that got me thinking how useful it would be to have live updating with the alt text. Because if I change the alt text in the media library for an image, it doesn&#8217;t automatically sync to where it&#8217;s being used in a page or a post. Oh, I have to. I have to click on the image and the page or the post and replace it with the same image with the revised alt text. So I was thinking, wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if that was all synced together? And then that got me down another path. So maybe you have the answer to this question. So I noticed for, well, quite a long time, I&#8217;ve been noticing that when you&#8217;re in the image library and you click on an image, the fields differ depending on your media library mode. If it&#8217;s list and you click on an image, you get a different set of metadata or fields versus a grid. And I think it&#8217;s. With the grid. Yeah. There&#8217;s no alt text option from a list mode, but there is from a grid mode. And so why. Do you know why those fields differ?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>No, I have no idea.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I don&#8217;t know either. Ladies and gentlemen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yes. Well, it&#8217;s interesting that you actually notice that. Yeah, I. Yeah, I always have my media library on grid, so I&#8217;m not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, me too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I don&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t see the difference, but you&#8217;re right. Yeah. I know that the contributors are working on the media library for the admin redesign and I think it would be good to talk to them about it because they also will have a grid view and a list view, because the data views actually support that. Yeah. So to make sure that definitely needs to be consistent, you know that all.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>The fields are available here, maybe in the outreach channel. I&#8217;ll put it out there and see if anyone.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah. Or we wait until 6.9. After 6.9. Yeah. Because I think. Yeah, that&#8217;s where it&#8217;s not. 4619. We are. We are all hoping for. For the data views coming into 6.9. But I&#8217;m. The data views will be in there, but I don&#8217;t think that the admin design will come in for 6.9. That&#8217;s just not enough time. Right. It&#8217;s now only four weeks. Okay, so you have question. Oh, you have another question in there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Do I know?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Create Block Theme</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> About the Create Block theme and style editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Create block theme. Oh, right. Create block theme. So it&#8217;s interesting. I haven&#8217;t looked at it in a month or so. It&#8217;s good to sometimes look at it with fresh eyes. And it looks like there used to be two paths to editing the styles and it looks like those have been eliminated. You were once able to edit via this path, Appearance editor, Design styles. When you get to design and you click on styles, there&#8217;s no longer the option to edit them from that point. And then the other way would be from a page or a post. I no longer see the cbt, the Create Block theme wrench. I see it only when on the side. Templates, template parts, sync patterns. And another interesting thing, I mean this is all. It&#8217;s a lot of information here, but let me try to slow down. So both of those previous paths gave access to that full featured. What I call the full featured Create Block Theme panel. It had all the things that you can do with the Create Block theme plugin. Now the other thing I noticed is if you click on a page as if you&#8217;re editing it like a normal person would edit. You know, regular person, not normal, but regular person, the wrench is no longer there. However, if I go through the full site editor path and click on a page, the wrench appears that way. So it&#8217;s just this inconsistency, and I&#8217;m a pretty well versed user and it was a little confusing. It&#8217;s like, well, why can I get to the full feature panel this way and not that way?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So one is that the page post editor, when you go from WP admin posts and pages goes in a slightly different editor mode than go into the appearance and editor. When I first listened to you, I thought you might. It wouldn&#8217;t be related to the create block theme because with the site editor we also have two different path to access styles. Yeah. One is through editor and then styles. There&#8217;s no design anymore. It only says styles. It&#8217;s with the navigation styles, templates and patterns. When you click on styles there, you have access to the same thing that comes if you are in the edit mode on a. On A template or on a page. You also on the right hand side there&#8217;s a styles interface. Both are now kind of pretty much on par with the features. So before a couple of months ago or maybe even longer, there was a discrepancy between what you could do on the right hand side in the styles and if you come from the left hand side. But that is pretty much eliminated. The only difference now is only how the style book looks, but it&#8217;s really marginally. Yeah, but we have one thing that comes with the next plugin release that we&#8217;re going to talk about is the additional CSS you will only access on the right hand sidebar and not on the left hand side. And that has been fixed now. So you get to the additional CSS from both sides. But the Create block theme has changed. So the great Block theme theme plugin only works in the site editor. So if you come from the pages or from the posts on the WP admin, you don&#8217;t have access to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> So you only have it in the Site editor. And I think that makes sense because that&#8217;s. It does what you do with that. Yeah, because that&#8217;s the place where you actually would edit a theme component. So it also had changed the right hand side sidebar. When you click on save the changes to the theme, you get additional checkboxes. What exactly do you want in your theme? So that definitely was an improvement there because it also included some localization from text and you could also kind of eliminate the navigation IDs and all that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And I brought another issue up with the team several months ago, which is the cbt, which I&#8217;m calling it CBT Create Block Theme Plugin. That&#8217;s my shorthand, the page for it from the administration sidebar. When you go to it directly from the sidebar, those options differ from the full site editor pathway to it. In my mind, all of that should be the same. You should have the same access to the same features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, on that settings page, the only thing that you get from there is actually what you want to do. Do you want a greater theme? Do you want to create a from scratch, do you want to clone it? Or do you want a child theme? All the other features are actually in the site editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Need to be connected with the site editor. So I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a whole lot of benefit from it to put it in a settings page that you. That has no connection to any of the other features that are in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, I, I hear you. I understand that I just like consistency.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I think it&#8217;s less confusing when you have the same. That&#8217;s a full page devoted to it. Why don&#8217;t I have access to everything that I can do with it? That&#8217;s my logic.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Because you need the editor too. The settings page doesn&#8217;t have access to the editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah, yeah, I totally understand that. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It&#8217;s like when. Why, why don&#8217;t you have the font or dimensions in a settings page? Yeah. Because it&#8217;s not the editor that has that sidebar. Yeah. Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Fair enough. All right. This is why it&#8217;s good to talk.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. But I, I hear you. With all the questions that we have there. The inconsistency is definitely something inconsistent. User interfaces overall, the whole site editor. I think there have been great strides made in the last four months to make this all more consistent. Have all the support for all the blocks like the border and fonts and dimensions that every block. Who has. Who needs it, actually has it. Because there are really some inconsistencies that some. Why does the heading not have a font size or something like that? Yeah. When everybody else, every other block has it. But that&#8217;s. It takes a. A lot of perseverance to get through I don&#8217;t know, 60 blocks and kind of make them all consistent that have been built in the last three years. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gutenberg 21.7</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s get into 21.7. The release is going to be on Wednesday, tomorrow, September 24th. We are recording this on September 23rd. So the listeners. When you, when you listen to it, it will already be out because we are not publishing it until Sunday, our episode. So let&#8217;s get into it. We are doing that from the talking through the changelog from the release candidate one that was published last week. So just to. If there are changes on what we didn&#8217;t have in there from the final release next tomorrow. Okay. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Enhancements</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This release has quite a few additional updates on the block comment thing. So that&#8217;s part of the Gutenberg phase three collaboration phase. Where you have one is from the collaboration phase one is synchronized editing where multiple people are working on the same post at the same time, which is a bit scary, but it works in Google Docs. But we are not there yet. But what already is in the works and has been for a while is the block level commenting. So you can. You&#8217;re in your block editor and you click on. And anybody else who has access to it can go in there and say, okay, in this paragraph, change a comma, an acronym, a wording kind of thing, put it in a comment and then you can resolve it in a comment. So the comments show up in the right hand side in the sidebar and each block that has a comment has a little icon that there are comments in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh wow.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And then you can add a comment by going to the block settings, block options drop down where you also have the grouping and the before and after. There&#8217;s also now comment on the block, and then you can start commenting on it, and then it shows up in the sidebar and then other people who are also come back tomorrow or something like that can answer that or you can also resolve it. So there are quite a few improvements on that. So first is that we only talk about two of them. One is to render the comment content. So it&#8217;s rendered in the comment the content completely. So it doesn&#8217;t. And it&#8217;s still. It&#8217;s a HTML kind of thing. So you can put in links in there without having all the HTML. Yeah. Kind of anchor links there. That&#8217;s one thing. And the other one is that the user text area auto size up until now you couldn&#8217;t. You could write in it, but it kind of would go underneath the box. You had to manually kind of increase it, but now it&#8217;s auto sized. That&#8217;s really cool. Yeah, yeah. So. And I know you are a single site producer so you probably might not have a whole lot of use case for that. But I can see, I can see.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>The use for it for sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Would you kind of work with your clients on that or rather with another coworker like a developer or something?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I think to educate my clients about the feature and then they could work together on content. It&#8217;s a nice collaboration tool but with any page or post only one person can edit at a time. So there&#8217;s that which is a useful barrier, unlike a simultaneous thing. So I can definitely share that with people, let them know about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>So there&#8217;s now the ability to reopen resolved comments to see enable inline comments for published posts. Yeah, so if you. Up until now when it was published, all the comments would go away. You wouldn&#8217;t see them. So there was a lot of thought going into that how it&#8217;s actually used from the previous versions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>You know, actually my brother uses WordPress. He&#8217;s a writer and he works with a rather large company. So I&#8217;ll let him know about this upcoming feature because I don&#8217;t know how they manage the editing of content and it would be good if they could do it right there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of. It could eliminate one step. So when you work with a team on a, on a content you normally go into, or we go with the developer blog and other blogs, we go into Google Docs, write the draft, have all the communication in there, including the comments there and then once all the things are resolved, you copy paste it over to WordPress and that sometimes gets you into trouble. And that copy paste step and the reformatting that is necessary kind of could be eliminated with something like that. Yeah, absolutely.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly. Back in the day when I used, when I was a print Designer, we used InDesign. There is a plugin, so to speak, for InDesign where content writers could do all their magic, all their writing right in. It&#8217;s. I think it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s not in vision, I&#8217;m not remembering, but it doesn&#8217;t matter. Same concept.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> What I really like about it as a designer, they had no access to the styling, they couldn&#8217;t change the colors, size. Yeah, I really like that. You know, the head is. Just leave the head alone. It&#8217;s 24 pixels or.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Print design points.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get this. Yeah. That is actually coming also to WordPress with the write mode. It&#8217;s kind of a content only mode that you can have patterns in content only and you can only change wording on that. But the rest of it is. Even the, the structure of the pattern is locked. So there is a design mode and a write mode. It also streamlines kind of the process because you&#8217;re not distracting by all the design features you could do. Yeah, so I really like that. But that. That&#8217;s coming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Same idea.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah. It&#8217;s also. Yeah. So yeah, in 21.7 there&#8217;s also quite a few updates to the data form, especially data forms, also data views. But it has to be kind of to make the form handling kind of bringing up to par to what actually other forms are doing. So the form component has quite a few additional updates in there. So it&#8217;s the radio control, be it the Boolean field types with a toggle, you know, being. Having a URL field that can be in the field control, having a phone field. So it kind of is a build out of what you actually expect when you do forms. But it&#8217;s all in the data view. So it will be in the admin section, not on the front end. So think about when you have a post or page where you have a quick edit. Yeah. Where you can change a few things. That is the form that this is working on. Yeah. Or what the people are working on is kind of. Okay. In the admin we have a user putting data in what can. What controls do we have available for that? Not on the front end or something.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Or in the edit in the block editor. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay, so this is just for quick view.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, it has a better panel for that. The whole data views has. I think Matthias talked about that in one of his blog posts on the Make Core blog about the different building blocks of the new admin design. And one of them was the infrastructure and what&#8217;s on the panel. So thinking about what are the rooms in the house. You have a kitchen that is differently furniture than the living room and you need the different tools in there. And the form is. Is in a tool you can actually create a form that is then triggered through a modal. Yeah. Or you can add. Open up another panel on the right hand side kind of the data. So those are decisions that the developer is gonna. Is going to make. So plugin developers for most of our plugin developers or core developers. And then you have different tools available for different use cases. Yeah. And. But you always need a form. Right. If a user is going to change something. So depending on how much space you need, quick is only Quick edit is just a very limited. Yeah, yeah yeah. This is going to be a little bit more comfortable to do. Yeah it&#8217;s really interesting to. To see it all come to together and how. How granular the whole development process is. Yeah. So the next ones are kind of navigation pieces. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I noticed the changing add page to create page and it seems like such a small thing, but it&#8217;s, you know, it&#8217;s significant. I like that one. That&#8217;s a good change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. And it reminds me, I did some. Some support in. In the forums of WordPress forums and there was one person who had trouble distinguishing between creating a pattern. Yeah. Adding a pattern.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. It&#8217;s it for. For mere mortals, I would say. Yeah, it&#8217;s the same. Yeah. I add a page. Yeah. Let me put the count. Or. But the pattern is you create a pattern that you can reuse or. Or you add an existing pattern to the page.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>It&#8217;s kind of that. Yeah. And this is pretty much similar to add a page or create a page. So add a page would be a page link that you add from your existing page and create a page as okay, I want that link, but I don&#8217;t have the page yet. And now you get a button that says create the page. And of course in the write mode it&#8217;s going to be hidden.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>And you were asking me to check on the status with the navigation block and I don&#8217;t see anything that&#8217;s changed. If you edit the navigate via the navigation area. So you go appearance, design, navigation, the UI seems to be the same as it has been for months, which is in my opinion, ugly and confusing. But if you edit via the design area. So if you just stop at appearance design and click on the navigation there, the. It&#8217;s so much more aesthetically pleasing. It just makes for a more enjoyable experience. It&#8217;s attractive and intuitive. So I know this has been on their plate for a while and when I say them, I mean all these wonderful WordPress team developers. Maybe a good place to start improving this UX is to somehow merge what we&#8217;re seeing in the design UI with the navigation UI.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah, yeah, no, I get you. Yeah. I. When I was creating my theme demo, I had the same. I couldn&#8217;t do anything with the. Well, I saw the dark side of the site editor. It&#8217;s the dark side menu and on the right hand side. So when I go into a template header and just click on the navigation, it opens up the sidebar on the right hand side and there you can add blocks or add another page link and it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s very pleasing to kind of add to that. That part. You don&#8217;t have on the right hand side or on the left hand side in the dark area of navigation or all you can do is I think click on edit and then you go somewhere. But it&#8217;s the isolated navigation and it&#8217;s kind of plucked on top of the. This.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah, exactly. It&#8217;s just this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>You don&#8217;t see very nondescript piece of navigation plopped the top of the screen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>On top of the content design it. You can&#8217;t, you can&#8217;t. You don&#8217;t see it in context. Yeah, so exactly. It&#8217;s definitely something to think about in, in the. In the next few versions to come. Yeah, yeah. And there was this big or that issue that Matthias wrote about. What other new blocks do we need?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, yes, yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>And Justin Tadlock kind of reversed his stance on what needs to be in Core and he wrote of the Gutenberg Times on why we need new blocks, and that is so theme developers can actually prepare for that out of the box. They don&#8217;t have to check. Is an accordion available from. I don&#8217;t know, the other 15 plugins that have accordions and how to style it. There is one in Core and that&#8217;s what my theme is styling the same with a table of contents block. Or there will be. So they are working on grading the table of content ready for coming out of the experimental stage, which it has been for I think three years now. Yeah. So. But there were no resources to kind of attribute to the table of content block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So would this be something you could use in a blog post to identify the sections of the blog post itself and they would be anchor links to that section. Oh, nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. That&#8217;s a table of content block. Yeah. And if you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I know a use of that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Several of my own blog posts.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Yeah. And if you don&#8217;t have Gutenberg installed, the plugin installed, you don&#8217;t have that block. Yeah. Because it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s only available in Gutenberg and it&#8217;s not yet in Core. But there&#8217;s a big push to hopefully get it into Core. The implementation had some accessibility issues and then some usability issues, but there was kind of. The first version was in there, but then every so. And then the other contributors tried to change it, but then they couldn&#8217;t follow through on this because. Yeah. And now maybe this time is the right time. And then there is a new block. It&#8217;s called the terms query block. It&#8217;s like the query block for post, but it also is for terms. So that&#8217;s the categories and the tags. So you can list them in a rolling block in a post. So I need to see it, how it works to kind of find a good use case for it. But we probably have that. It&#8217;s already in Gutenberg and it has an order by. And with a single drop down and. And these kinds of things. So.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So it&#8217;s almost like integrating. Could you integrate that on the same page as a. A category?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. With the descriptions and all that. Because it has the tone blocks in there. Yeah. So you can kind of. So if you. For instance, if you have a parent category and you have a blog post in that category, you can say, okay, I want. Underneath every single post, I want a list of all the categories for that parent category or the children category. So people can navigate a little bit deeper into my content forest.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> I bet that would impact SEO positively, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Well, yeah, if you don&#8217;t have too many. Too many categories and too many terms. Yeah, because that definitely. If you have too many terms, you get into the duplicate content issues when multiple terms of the same content in there, but that&#8217;s a different story. So. But it gives you more flexibility on how you can link deeper. That definitely. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then we mentioned that before that in Site Editor always show the additional CSS button is now finally available in and it will come to 6.9 is what we talked about before that you did we talk about it. Well, with the Site editor you have a place where you can add additional CSS for your site. That what you, you know also from the customizer from classic themes where you had additional CSS. CSS that wasn&#8217;t in the theme. It was on the right hand side on the styles. Yeah, you could add that. But when you were on the left hand side of the styles you didn&#8217;t have a way to add the additional CSS.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>See now this really. This threw me for a loop because I never noticed that, and I can&#8217;t reconstruct the sequence of events from. I have a tutorial site using the 2024 theme and it has just a little bit of additional CSS in it. So yesterday when I noticed this and I explored and I saw my additional CSS field disappear when I deleted its contents and I was like, oh, that&#8217;s not good. And it really threw me for a loop because I always have a backup. So I uploaded my theme backup and thinking it would be in theme JSON and reinstate itself, but it wasn&#8217;t reinstated. So then I had to look at my revision history and find the spot where I was before I deleted really unsettled me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, I imagine. I imagine. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So now if you&#8217;re saying the additional CSS in the right sidebar is the same as what shows up in the. Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. So if you said okay, there must be another way to get to the additional css.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Clone to the right hand side. But that, that is such a. Yeah, it kind of really threw quite a few people. Oh yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> So but why didn&#8217;t it show up in my theme JSON? That&#8217;s what I was.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>It&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s not routed through theme JSON. It&#8217;s user content. So it&#8217;s in the database and when it, when that renders, it renders the last item before the in the head with the styles. That&#8217;s the last thing that is going to pull in. So it overrides everything else what you had in theme JSON in the default. So that&#8217;s why it kind of doesn&#8217;t show up in theme JSON because it&#8217;s a different level of customization. Yeah, it&#8217;s the last defense, so to speak is the user oriented stuff. I&#8217;m glad you pointed this point in pulled in last. Yeah. You will see it so if you go to View Source, you see your additional CSS, the last style tag before you start with the content tags. All that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> All it takes. Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>You&#8217;re welcome.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I can breathe now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But it shows you that it&#8217;s really hard to kind of keep it all straight when you have multiple places where you can change styles. Because the same thing will happen when you change. So you could change your. This appearance of a block for the whole site in the styles styles and then you go further down this typography layout and then you have blocks there. You change how each block, how a block appears every time you use it. But there&#8217;s also a place when you have a paragraph on one page and you change the look and feel of that paragraph through the right hand side with the. With the tools there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Sure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That&#8217;s two places. And the other places theme JSON also kind of controls how a block looks. Yeah. So if something is not right, you have to look at multiple places to find the place where you can change it or where you can. Where it actually was controlled. So that&#8217;s why the additional CSS is just another place to look and to kind of control this. But I think to eliminate the cognitive load, I think learning how to put custom CSS in the theme JSON is probably a good additional skill set to have kind of take away think about not doing the additional CSS right because the advantage is also it only will be loaded. So the additional CSS is always loaded on each page even if the block or whatever you have is not on the page. But if you do it in theme JSON, it will only pulled in when that particular element or block is actually on page. So it&#8217;s actually a performance issues as well. But not a whole lot of people put a whole lot of in additional CSS. So I think it&#8217;s negligent. But just a cognitive load that kind of eliminate another place to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right. And that ties into a whole other subject. Not for now, not for today. But CSS specificity, that&#8217;s a whole other thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Oh yeah, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Gets very complicated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Volumes of books have been written about that. So the command palette is getting another update with 21.7 that is made the navigation commands available on all screens. So you can now go into your Tools menu on WP admin, hit Control K and say go to Site Editor. Then you can kind of jump like that. You don&#8217;t have to be in the editor to use the command palette. We talked about it before, but it&#8217;s getting more and more in there. Oh, there is a nice template API change that it reads really non-ecstatic. This kind of allows template duplication plus the concept of active templates. That&#8217;s something I would ask anybody who does works with template to test out. Because what it helps you is that you can have multiple single post templates on your site and only one is active. So if you have a plugin that kind of adds templates to your site. So through the template hierarchy that WordPress has, there are certain templates need to have a certain slug to be pulled automatically. So the single post or the archive pages or that. But if you want to test out different kinds of templates, right now what you do is use patterns for a certain template and you&#8217;re not adding them to templates, but you&#8217;re adding them to patterns.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>But if you can do, okay, I have a single post template. Oh, and I also want to know how it looks without the featured image to add another single post template and then you can activate each one of them. And that makes it for a much clearer proposition on what templates do and what patterns do. And that also when you have a plugin that adds a template, because plugins now can suggest. Oh, push templates into the template editor. Yeah. Like woocommerce. Yeah. Is going to do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Or when you have a theme, a team plugin or a business directory plugin, you can get the templates into your template editor. So you can modify them. Yeah. As a user, but you already have a team member custom post type template, so the plugin would overwrite it. But if you can have multiple template duplication, deplete duplication or multiple, not only two, but more, you can just. With the activation flag, you can say which one is the one that&#8217;s going to be rendered on front page. Does it make sense?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Okay, cool. So. And I&#8217;m totally excited about that. Yeah, I can&#8217;t.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>This is. It&#8217;ll take me down so many different paths. I won&#8217;t get any work done for a month. I&#8217;ll be busy exploring and testing. That&#8217;s all good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. But Ela Vandorp, one of the Goodmoor developers, has been working on that for so long. Yeah. And when you go to the PR, it has, I don&#8217;t know, 150 comments or something like that. Yeah. But it&#8217;s. It finally made it into the Gutenberg plugin release. Yeah. Now we can test it before it goes into WordPress core in a month. So go and test it, please. Okay, everybody here on the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast needs to test this. And Aki Hamano, he&#8217;s a contributor from Japan.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, sure. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">New API</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. He has a few things that really he contributed quite a lot to Gutenberg in the last year and he introduced a new function called Use Commands. So you can register more than one command for the command palette, which is good, especially when you kind of think about kind of getting the abilities API kind of connected with the commands palette. So yeah, for developers it&#8217;s definitely something to check out how you can add additional commands to the command palette for your users. Your agencies probably can change some of the workflow hiccups that some of the clients have. Yeah. If you can add a command to it and you teach them to control K and you something, that&#8217;s definitely good. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bug Fixes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of bug fixes, bug fixes, data form fixes. Yeah, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s anything I wanted to point out except the global styles bug fix was. Is that the border radius presets kind of had a little bug in there that it generated the wrong variable name in pattern code. And that is definitely fixed. It works. Thank goodness it works good for them. In the block library accordion now has a block gap support. I think that&#8217;s what you are kind of thinking about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh sure. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>That is now in 21.7 and then you also have a term list drop down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Oh, there was a limit. What is. What is the new limit?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think it&#8217;s now 100.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Oh, I was just thinking yeah, 100 would be good and I would never get to 100 but someone might.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> It takes 10 to 100. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So okay, that&#8217;s quite a limit. 10.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Well, you shouldn&#8217;t use too many terms because each term creates another page. A page that needs to be indexed and doesn&#8217;t have a unique thing there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Content only pattern patterns.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. Yeah, that&#8217;s definitely something to test. Is kind of added content in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>So the purple icon was taken away.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think so, yeah. Well, in the right mode. Yeah. It&#8217;s kind of that mode where you only can change certain things and not do design. So unsync patterns are actually content only by default. So when you add them to the page you only kind of change content if. If it&#8217;s in the write mode. Yeah. So you don&#8217;t get distracted by certain things like edit. Yeah. If you want the pattern to be. It&#8217;s unsynced so it doesn&#8217;t propagate the design over every usage. But you still want to have a consistent layout. And then editors who use that in on the page shouldn&#8217;t change the composition of the pattern, only the content that&#8217;s. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Experiments</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>And then there&#8217;s a pattern content only experiment that makes the template parts section blocks. Yeah, that was one thing that came out of section styles that&#8217;s in 6.6. IIn WordPress 6.6 is that you have patterns that are actually sections and you could style them through JSON files. And then you only get in the style section of the right hand side. You get, I don&#8217;t know, two or three styles and every. The pattern changes its look and feel according to their styles. But it was hard to figure out what makes a pattern a section and whatnot. So it ended up that every group block was actually a section. So the styles would apply to other group box as well that were not meant to do. But there was no way to say okay, only for section styles. I want these. So this call for action or call for call for action block or book kind of things. So it was a little confusing for the users to apply that and some of the features. So in zoom mode when you added a pattern you had a little, little drop, kind of a. A fluid drop that would. You could toggle through. Not toggle, browse through. All the styles that are. Can be attached to that pattern. Oh yeah. And those also needed to be sections. But it wasn&#8217;t clear what does one pattern distinguish. The other pattern is a section. And now they are trying to do that in an experiment and see how far it gets with also the styling part. I don&#8217;t know if all that makes sense what I&#8217;m saying, but.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> No, no, I understand.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>I think that was it for 21.7 that I kind of saw. Yes, that&#8217;s it. Yeah. So now we&#8217;re coming to. I think we&#8217;re really out of time today with our. With our episode here. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So I wanted to talk about tabs, we need to kind of have it in front of us. Yeah. So it. They are not. So one of the new blocks that are. Is worked on is the tabs block. Okay. And the other one is the modal block or the pop up block is kind of when you. So you have a trigger, you have a block for a trigger and then when a user clicks on it, then a modal comes up and you can fill out something. That&#8217;s also in an HTML standard, but there&#8217;s no blocks there. And it definitely is a common use case for certain things. And those things are. And the same as tabs. So you have not as an Accordion where you have one header and then the panel opens and then the next header is. You have multiple tabs on top and then the panel changes. That is also in the works. I hope it makes it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff</em>: Oh, nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Makes it to the 6.9, but I&#8217;m not quite sure it actually goes there because I haven&#8217;t seen anything in the last week that kind of contributes to that. But I&#8217;m also. I might have been out of the loop there because there are so many things that going on at the same time. And I&#8217;m. I&#8217;m waiting. I know that Anne McCarthy, she&#8217;s working on the kind of what&#8217;s the state of the development now? But I hope that it comes out next week or something like that and then we have it for the next episode.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Good timing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. So WordPress 6.9 comes with really a lot of good features and also quality of life changes for. For the editor and for the flow of things. So I&#8217;m really excited about that. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> And wasn&#8217;t there a reduction in the number of releases that was decided to condense?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yes. So in January there were initiatives when Automattic said, okay, we are going to stop contributing for a while. And then the core committers then decided, okay, if it&#8217;s not that we have one more release, that was 6.8 and that would be the only release in 2025. And then in May, Automattic decided to contribute again and kind of push everything further and then said, okay, then we can also have one more release this year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> And that&#8217;s 6.9. And that&#8217;s what we are building up to. That&#8217;s also why there are so many and Gutenberg releases kind of put together into one of the. Into the major WordPress release. Normally it was kind of between 7 and 10, but now we have 15.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff:</em> Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, so yeah, yeah, but that was a good question. Yeah. Not everybody kind of know they stopped, but did we start again contributing to Core? You know. Yes, we did. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Excellent. Well, I look forward to the next release.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>We do, yeah. So we are at the end of the show. Thank you so much for going through that with me, Ann. It was great to talk to you again.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>I know. It was great to talk with you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Yeah. As always, dear listeners, the show notes will be published on <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">GutenbergTimes.com/podcast</a>. This is episode 121, 121. And if you have questions, suggestions or news you want us to include next time, send them to <a href=\"http://changelogutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a> that&#8217;s <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a> and the show notes will have all the contact information for Anne and it will be on, as I said, Gutenbergtimes.com. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>So thank you, everybody. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Thank you for thank you, Birgit. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </em>Thank you, Anne, for your time. And I hope you have a wonderful time in fall. Take care. Bye bye. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Anne Katzeff: </em>Bye. Bye.</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:\"Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:07:25 +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:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";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:36;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:21:\"Matt: Saturday Shares\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=150000\";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:38:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/saturday-shares/\";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:2724:\"<p>A few links for you:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>From Kirschblütenboogie to Khruangbin (from Houston!), here&#8217;s a <a href=\"https://open.spotify.com/playlist/27gcPbqPTfnjS1xnfq9jFe?si=lF1sBoR1R3SyrPOEu3c3aQ\">Saturday chill Spotify playlist I made for you to have good vibes this weekend</a>. Perfect for sunsets. Hat tip: <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgruneberg/\">Daniel Gruneberg</a> who first introduced me to Hermanos Gutiérrez.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-is-not-free-a-joint-statement-on-sustainable-stewardship/\">Open Infrastructure is Not Free: A Joint Statement on Sustainable Stewardship</a>. &#8220;Billion-dollar ecosystems cannot stand on foundations built of goodwill and unpaid weekends.&#8221;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chat-based photo editing is one of the most magical uses of AI right now, and <a href=\"https://blog.google/products/photos/android-conversational-editing-google-photos/\">Google Photos just made it available to everybody</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Did you know <a href=\"https://automattic.com/expectations/anti-glossary/\">Automattic has an anti-glossary</a>?</li>\n\n\n\n<li>It&#8217;s cool to see <a href=\"https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/07/07/copyleft.html\">Vitalik Buterin come around to copyleft licenses</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>I&#8217;m going to <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQDNgy774sg\">re-link the Grit interview, some people are saying it is their favorite they&#8217;ve seen of me in years</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>BCG has an annoyingly-good rundown of <a href=\"https://www.bcg.com/publications/2023/corporate-development-finance-function-excellence-art-of-capital-allocation\">The Art of Capital Allocation</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://siliconangle.com/2025/06/26/linux-foundation-open-source-ai-opensourcesummit/\">The Linux Foundation thinks open source contributes $9 Trillion in global value</a>. Really what we&#8217;re doing is sharing the technological phylogenetic branches for humanity&#8217;s progress.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/08/study-social-media-probably-cant-be-fixed/\">A great interview with Petter Törnberg on his paper about how social media might be structually dysfunctional</a>. &#8220;Rather than bringing us together into one utopian public square and fostering a healthy exchange of ideas, these platforms too often create filter bubbles or echo chambers.&#8221;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>See <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4JxqES_Gzk\">Harry Mack meet Will Smith and Martin Lawrence</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Fun fact: this post has the ID of &#8220;150,000&#8221; in <a href=\"https://codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description#Table:_wp_posts\">my wp_posts table</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:\"Sun, 28 Sep 2025 01:31:04 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:37;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:99:\"Gutenberg Times: WordPress 6.9 is coming, moar plugins, Query block and fonts—Weekend Edition 342\";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:35:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=41984\";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:106:\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/\";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:19187:\"<p>Hi there, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I send you greetings from Gdynia, a polish port city on the East Sea, with some pirate roots, maybe. My only clues are pirate theme of the WordCamp Gdynia, with the Wapuu, the harbor cruise on a pirate ship, and the branding assets of the WordCamp. For one of my slides, I had Gemini create a background image to celebrate the Site Editor the pirate way. </p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Enjoy the weekend edition and have a fantastic weekend!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, <img alt=\"💕\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f495.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /><br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-group\" style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents\"><ol><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#wordpress-6-9-is-coming-into-focus\">WordPress 6.9 is coming into focus. </a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class=\"wp-block-table-of-contents__entry\" href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/wordpress-6-9-is-coming-moar-plugins-query-block-and-fonts-weekend-edition-342/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li></ol></nav>\n</div></div>\n</section>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"wordpress-6-9-is-coming-into-focus\">WordPress 6.9 is coming into focus. </h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I almost missed it; <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/07/28/roadmap-to-6-9/#comment-47884\">commented</a> on the Roadmap post that some priorities changed for WordPress 6.9:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list has-light-background-background-color has-background\">\n<li>&#8220;Added in a “New blocks<strong>” section</strong> under “Refining Content Creation” after there’s been a shift in momentum there.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Removed “An initial experimental version is planned in the Gutenberg plugin, where contributors can opt-in and offer feedback” under “New WordPress Admin experience” as that’s no longer planned based on the current state of work.&#8221; </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>McCarthy</strong> is also <a href=\"https://nomad.blog/2025/09/24/exploring-work-in-progress-for-wordpress-6-9-v2/\"><strong>Exploring work in progress for WordPress 6.9 v2</strong></a> on her personal blog. You&#8217;ll find videos and links to all the pertinent information. It&#8217;s a lot; you probably have to be selective to digest it all. She updates us all about:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Ability to hide blocks</strong>: The first version will just be a hide/show menu item. Don&#8217;t get rid of the Block Visibility plugin just yet.  </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Command Palette everywhere</strong>: It is already available in GB 21.5. Additional work is done on the back end to solidify the API. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Block commenting</strong> has received a myriad of updates, and the UI is still refined. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>New block</strong>: summarizes work around already merged Accordion and Post Term query blocks and work on the way for the Page breakcrumbs, Icons, Stretchy, Tabs, Time to read, and Table of Contents blocks.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Simplified site editing</strong>: Two different experiments are pursued, one more Write/Design mode and the other is a Pattern ContentOnly idea. Videos and more details are in the post. </li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Expanded template management</strong>: work around duplicate templates, switch which one’s active, disable theme templates &amp; keep your custom ones, and use the new “Active templates” view.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Various dev updates</strong>—standardized UTF-8 support, Abilities API, Interactivity API, Block bindings. </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie Marsland </strong>gave a sneak peak on <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSXUfsECVFI\"><strong>WordPress 6.9 in 250 seconds</strong></a> and covers <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/\"></a>Block-level commenting, improved template management and portability across themes, block hiding, and more powerful editing controls.</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block\" width=\"100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>Last month, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> already published a tutorial on how to <a href=\"https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2025/08/registering-custom-social-icons-in-wordpress-6-9/\"><strong>register custom social icons in WordPress 6.9</strong></a> on the WordPress Developer Blog. With the new WordPress version to be released on December 2, 2025, developers will be able to create block variations using JavaScript for editor registration and filter the block_core_social_link_get_services hook for frontend display. The tutorial demonstrates building a plugin that adds Ko-fi, IMDB, Letterboxd, Signal, and YouTube Music icons, including proper brand color styling for both logos-only and standard variations, making social media integration more flexible and customizable.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p><img alt=\"🎙\" class=\"wp-smiley\" src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f399.png\" style=\"height: 1em;\" /> The latest episode is <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-122-gutenberg-21-8-and-wordpress-6-9/\">Gutenberg Changelog #122 – Gutenberg 21.8 and WordPress 6.9</a> with Beth Soderberg of <a href=\"https://bethink.studio/\">Bethink Studio</a></p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-style-no-vertical-margin\"><img alt=\"Gutenberg Changelog 122 with Beth Soderberg\" class=\"wp-image-42236\" height=\"193\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-11-at-12.32.48.png?resize=652%2C193&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><em>If you are listening via Spotify, please leave a comment. If you listen via other podcast apps, please leave a review. It&#8217;ll help with the distribution.</em></p>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"0-p\">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>During their latest <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28VenSxzTZs\"><strong>WPCafe #128 </strong></a>show, <strong>Keith Devon</strong> and <strong>Mark Wilkinson</strong> of Highrise Digital shared how they use the block editor to support their sales effort.</p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block\" width=\"100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ajit Bohra</strong>, Lubus, released the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/blablablocks-formats/\"><strong>BlaBlaBlocks Formats</strong></a> plugin that adds custom RichText formats, like highlights and tooltips, to your WordPress site. You can review the <a href=\"https://github.com/lubusIN/blablablocks-formats/wiki\">documentation</a> on GitHub.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/blablablocks-formats/\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42037\" height=\"326\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/BlaBlaBlocksFormats.png?resize=652%2C326&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></a></figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong>, developer advocate at Automattic, announced the release of a new <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/x3p0-breadcrumbs/\">Breadcrumbs Block </a></strong>plugin version. It now supports the built-in Layout and Block Gap (Spacing) features, and developers can extend the block with custom code.  Checkout the <a href=\"https://github.com/x3p0-dev/x3p0-breadcrumbs/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md\">Changelog notes</a> for information on styling this block in your themes. </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42046\" height=\"353\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-27-at-10.17.50.png?resize=652%2C353&#038;ssl=1\" width=\"652\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Troy Chaplin</strong> updated his <strong><a href=\"https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-accessibility-checks/\">Block Accessibility Checks plugin</a></strong>. Version 2.1 brings a mix of accessibility improvements, developer-focused enhancements, and a much cleaner user experience. Chaplin recorded a short demo video walking through the plugin in action, including validation of both core and custom blocks right in the editor, as well as a tour of the brand-new settings page. <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvunSl2j1CU\">A demo of version 2.1 of the Block Accessibility Checks plugin for WordPress</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled\">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mitch Canter</strong> just wrapped up an awesome online workshop for the WordPress training team on <a href=\"https://wordpress.tv/2025/09/26/mastering-the-query-loop-block-in-wordpress/\"><strong>Mastering the Query Loop block in WordPress.</strong></a> The recording is now up for you to check out! You&#8217;ll dive into how the Query Loop block works and turn it from something that seems super complicated into your new best friend for creating dynamic and eye-catching content. You’ll discover how to tell WordPress exactly what content to grab and how to make it look good… all without having to write a single line of code. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Bud Kraus</strong> looked into <strong><a href=\"https://kinsta.com/blog/variable-fonts/\">variable fonts in WordPress themes</a></strong>, explaining how these fonts can hold different weights and styles all in one file, making them faster than regular web fonts. With the update in WordPress 6.1 that adds <code>theme.json</code> support, variable fonts can load quicker, offer more design options with custom weights, and adjust nicely for different screen sizes. Kraus shows how to use fonts like Vollkorn in child themes, create simple plugins for controlling weights, and add fonts through the Font Library, highlighting how variable fonts are both efficient and versatile in design.</p>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set\" style=\"border-color: #f9f9e5; border-radius: 22px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f9f9e5;\">\n<p><strong> <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2025&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: <strong><strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/\">2020</a> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2021/\">2021</a></strong> | <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2022/\">2022</a></strong></strong> | <strong><a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2023\">2023</a></strong> | <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/gutenberg-index-2024/\"><strong>2024</strong></a></p>\n</section>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press\">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><br />In his post, <a href=\"https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/23/telex-turns-everyone-into-a-wordpress-block-developer/\"><strong>Telex Turns Everyone into a WordPress Block Developer</strong></a>, <strong>Nick Diego</strong> explores Telex, Automattic&#8217;s experimental AI tool that converts natural language prompts into functional WordPress blocks. Unlike traditional block development requiring React, JavaScript, and PHP expertise, Telex democratizes the process for site owners, agencies, and developers. Users simply describe desired functionality, and Telex generates working blocks within minutes using WordPress Playground. The tool supports iterative refinement through follow-up prompts or direct code editing, making WordPress block creation accessible to everyone regardless of technical background.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p>You can also review the discussion on Reddit r/WordPress space: <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1nozn1k/did_you_try_wordpress_telex_its_awesome/\">Did you try WordPress Telex? it&#8217;s awesome!</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> continues his Blockdevelopment Cook Book series on YouTube with <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIMbcHF-g3M\"><strong>Customizing the WordPress Build Process Made Easy!</strong></a> He explained how to customize the @wordpress/scripts build process to bundle a plugin with a single custom block, a JavaScript file that registers a block variation, and a CSS file to style it. &#8220;We’ll keep things neat by organizing the block code in a blocks directory and the JS/CSS in a resources directory—a clean and tasty setup for your project! &#8221; he wrote. </p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-showhide ng-block\" width=\"100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n</div>\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-callout undefined not-color-set\" style=\"border-color: #eeeeee; border-radius: 26px; border-style: solid; border-width: 0; padding-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; text-align: left; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; background-color: #f3efe9;\">\n<p><strong><a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/\">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now also available via <a href=\"https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json\">WordPress Playground</a>. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">Email me </a>with your experience</p>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt=\"GitHub all releases\" src=\"https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge\" /></p>\n</section>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? </em><br /><em>Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href=\"mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com\">them via email</a> or</em><br /><em> send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">For questions to be answered on the <a href=\"http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast\">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, <br />send them to <a href=\"mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com\">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-group\" style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\">\n<p>Featured Image: </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n<form action=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/\" autocomplete=\"on\" class=\"wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait\" method=\"post\"><div class=\"ngl-form-container\"><div class=\"ngl-form-field\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px;\"><label class=\"ngl-form-label\" for=\"ngl_email\"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class=\"ngl-form-input\"><input autocomplete=\"email\" class=\"ngl-form-input-text\" id=\"ngl_email\" name=\"ngl_email\" required=\"required\" style=\"border-radius: 21px;\" type=\"email\" /></div></div><button class=\"ngl-form-button\" style=\"background-color: #005075; border-color: #005075; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 21px;\" type=\"submit\">Subscribe</button><p class=\"ngl-form-text\">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone <br />except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay\"><div class=\"ngl-message-svg-wrap\"><svg fill=\"none\" height=\"24\" stroke=\"#fff\" stroke-width=\"2\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" width=\"24\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><polyline points=\"20 6 9 17 4 12\"></polyline></svg></div><div class=\"ngl-message-overlay-text\">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input id=\"ngl_list_id\" name=\"ngl_list_id\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"26f81bd8ae\" /><input id=\"ngl_double_optin\" name=\"ngl_double_optin\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"yes\" /></form>\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide\" />\n</section>\";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, 27 Sep 2025 09:29:48 +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:\"Birgit Pauli-Haack\";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:38;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:47:\"Matt: Five Publications I’d Love on 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:22:\"https://ma.tt/?p=51331\";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:31:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/big-five/\";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:1808:\"<p>When WordPress started in 2003, I never dreamed it would power over 40% of websites, nine times the number two CMS, but I wrote on a notecard a list of five publications I admired and respected so much I wanted them to run on WP someday. In the interest of sharing your dreams to help them come true, here they are:</p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/\">Atlantic</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.economist.com/\">Economist</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/\">New Yorker</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/\">New York Times</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/\">Wall Street Journal</a></li>\n</ol>\n\n\n\n<p>And one bonus: <a href=\"https://www.chron.com/\">Houston Chronicle</a>. (Gotta root for the hometown.)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There has been uneven progress toward this over the years; we&#8217;ve gotten some of the NYT and all of the New Yorker at one point, only to have them revert under new CTOs. Also, there have been some unexpected huge wins, like when <a href=\"https://ma.tt/2023/07/chorus-and-wordpress/\">Vox Media retired its proprietary CMS Chorus and brought over amazing publications like The Verge and New York Magazine</a>. For any projects related to these publications, including trials or micro-sites, I&#8217;d be happy to provide my feedback on architecture, design, and opportunities, and contribute <a href=\"https://automattic.com/\">Automattic</a> and <a href=\"https://wpvip.com/\">VIP</a> resources wherever they could be helpful. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe the most crucial aspect to get right for these customers is real-time co-editing, which is on the <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/\">Gutenberg</a> roadmap and shipping soon. If I were writing this list today I might choose some different targets.</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, 27 Sep 2025 03:28:52 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:39;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:16:\"Matt: Harry Mack\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=149863\";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:33:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/harry-mack/\";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:1480:\"<p>I love the culture of freestyle rap, it&#8217;s so inspiring to see how people can create such rich poetry riddled with allusions and puns on command. Last week <a href=\"https://matt.blog/2025/09/19/with-harry-mack/\">I got to meet Harry Mack</a> and see him improvise live and it totally makes sense that he has a jazz drums background. If you&#8217;re not familiar with <a href=\"https://www.harrymackofficial.com/\">Harry Mack</a>, this is a good example of him taking three words: Imported, Lurking, <a href=\"https://automatic.com/\">Automatic</a> and freestyling with them. (BTW, if you noticed, we finally got the domain spelled correctly.) </p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignwide is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a video chat site called <a href=\"https://www.omegle.fun/\">Omegle</a> that paired you with random people, and Harry would record these encounters, such as <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mccIi2YOFgQ\">this cute one with girls from Sweden who gave him the words Cartoon, Titan, Death</a>. It&#8217;s awesome to <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4JxqES_Gzk\">see him meet Will Smith and Martin Lawrence</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For some fun WordPress rap history, check out when <a href=\"https://youtu.be/KG5vJKOwsjw?t=195\">Childish Gambino referenced me in a rap he performed on Tim Westwood back in 2012</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:\"Fri, 26 Sep 2025 06:38:37 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:40;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:91:\"Open Channels FM: 12 Tips for WordPress Businesses Navigating the WordPress Media Landscape\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=109514\";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:98:\"https://openchannels.fm/12-tips-for-wordpress-businesses-navigating-the-wordpress-media-landscape/\";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:211:\"To enhance your business visibility in the WordPress ecosystem, employ strategies like mapping channels, collaborating with influencers, sponsoring newsletters, and tailoring content to different audience needs.\";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:\"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:44:00 +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:41;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:97:\"Open Channels FM: How a Global Cake Brand Was Built Using WooCommerce and Open Source Communities\";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:33:\"https://openchannels.fm/?p=110411\";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:104:\"https://openchannels.fm/how-a-global-cake-brand-was-built-using-woocommerce-and-open-source-communities/\";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:184:\"In this episode, nurse-turned-baker Precious shares her journey of launching \"Cakes in a Jar\" with WordPress and WooCommerce, blending her Zimbabwean roots with a vibrant online brand.\";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:\"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:38:00 +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:42;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:19:\"Matt: Telex Remixes\";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:23:\"https://ma.tt/?p=149897\";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:36:\"https://ma.tt/2025/09/telex-remixes/\";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:2093:\"<p><a href=\"https://telex.automattic.ai/\">Telex has launched a new design and a gallery of some interesting examples</a>. It&#8217;s really cool to see what people are starting to do with Telex, it really gets back at the fun of hacking and coding at the beginning, when a computer does something for you that makes you gasp.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My colleague <a href=\"https://eduardo.blog/\">Eduardo Villuendas</a> has <a href=\"https://telex.automattic.ai/MTc1ODc1MjQ3OTpmYzVkOWQ2YWRkNWVhN2UwYWM5MQ==~NjU4NTk0OjIzNjA5YWIzLTE3OGQtNDRjZS1iYzc5LThjMGI1OGFiMTUwZDo3NTZiZTdjYTEwNzMyM2EyNjAyZg==\"> been making some cool music with it</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n		<figure class=\"wp-block-jetpack-videopress jetpack-videopress-player\">\n			<div class=\"jetpack-videopress-player__wrapper\"> </div>\n			\n			\n		</figure>\n		\n\n\n<p>This really gets to my vision for Gutenberg to be a builder that anyone can use to create an incredible website, like legos anyone can assemble anything they imagine on the web. This is why I said <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/\">Gutenberg</a> is bigger than WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https://jeffpaul.com/2025/09/pong-block/\">Jeff Paul made a game of Pong</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://juanma.codes/2025/09/19/playing-with-telex-building-a-mermaid-diagram-block-in-just-a-few-prompts/\">JuanMa Garrido made a mermaid diagram</a>. (Which I have never heard of before.)</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https://ivanovicmarko.com/2025/09/17/space-dots/\">Marko Ivanović did a beautiful dot art thing</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Hat tip to the <a href=\"https://gutenbergtimes.com/\">Gutenberg Times</a>. As I said in 2022, <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeigCZuxnfY\">you need to learn AI deeply</a>, there is so much fun stuff happening. They even <a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1nozn1k/did_you_try_wordpress_telex_its_awesome/\">like it on Reddit</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nick Diego writes <a href=\"https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/09/23/telex-turns-everyone-into-a-wordpress-block-developer/\">how Telex Turns Everyone into a WordPress Block developer</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:\"Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:23:06 +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:4:\"Matt\";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:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:\"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 14.4.0, 12.6.0 &amp;amp; 11.5.2 Maintenance and Security Releases\";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://buddypress.org/?p=338169\";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:97:\"https://buddypress.org/2025/09/buddypress-14-4-0-12-6-0-11-5-1-maintenance-and-security-releases/\";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:1916:\"<p id=\"block-f32b73e5-6b93-4d6d-bd23-61aefd49fc8d\"><a href=\"https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.14.4.0.zip\">BuddyPress 14.4.0</a>, <a href=\"https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.12.6.0.zip\">BuddyPress 12.6.0</a>, and <a href=\"https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.11.5.2.zip\">BuddyPress 11.5.2</a> are all now available. This is a security release. Please update as soon as possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-9cfb5de9-d8ba-42e2-b91c-4a75b3e6b832\">14.4.0, 12.6.0 &amp; 11.5.1 fixed one bug and one security issue:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\" id=\"block-2fb851f4-045c-4a07-a303-ca6033780916\">\n<li>The BP REST API signups endpoint could leak signup data, including user email addresses, because of a too-lenient lookup function. Thanks to Asim Alshaya for responsibly reporting this issue.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Improve behavior of <code>bp_email_unsubscribe_handler()</code>. After the changes in the &#8220;Improve security of status update messages&#8221; changeset, non-logged-in users clicking an unsubscribe link received no feedback on the success of their action.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Note: 11.5.2 contains the same code changes as 11.5.1 but has been repackaged to hopefully resolve some SVN oddities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-4e4b201c-6d17-4a66-8eec-d472dfdec7ac\">For complete details, visit the <a href=\"https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-14-4-0/\">14.4.0 changelog</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-8935e1e5-ef63-42ee-8c08-67fad827159a\">Many thanks to our 14.4.0 contributors </h2>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-a8b36bfc-7855-4e99-ba54-508a3776b715\"><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/emaralive\">emaralive</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jjj/\">jjj</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/r-a-y/\">r-a-y</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun/\">vapvarun</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dcavins/\">dcavins</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<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:\"Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:30:21 +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:12:\"David Cavins\";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:21:\"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n\";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:80:\"WPTavern: #186 – Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing\";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=199649\";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:93:\"https://wptavern.com/podcast/186-dave-winer-on-decentralisation-wordpress-and-open-publishing\";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:65469:\"<details>Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<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 Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing.</p>\n\n\n\n<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/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today we have Dave Winer. Dave&#8217;s journey into the heart of Silicon Valley began in the 1980s when he left Wisconsin and moved to California with two products and a dream to achieve fame and fortune in the world of technology. Driven by a deep belief that real communication involves people truly connecting, he set out to make his mark.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Early on, he found himself in a memorable meeting with Steve Jobs. Both were in their early twenties, bursting with ambition and self-assurance. Their encounter was fiery and competitive, yet it marked the start of Dave&#8217;s lifelong mission to wire the world together, not just with technology, but by bringing people closer through it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever subscribed to a blog, listened to a podcast, or shared your thoughts online, chances are you&#8217;ve benefited from Dave&#8217;s pioneering work. He&#8217;s the developer behind influential technologies like RSS, and a longtime advocate for open, user owned, publishing platforms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He describes himself as someone who wrote the first versions of lots of software, wants to work with everyone, still has big ideas, he likes things to be open from top to bottom and doesn&#8217;t care for greedy people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we&#8217;re talking about the vision, history, and future of the open web. Dave reminisces about the origins of today&#8217;s internet, the early days when idealism and collaboration were at the web&#8217;s core. He shares stories from his career, the rise and fall of early software startups, and how the initial spirit of community slowly gave way to the walled gardens of big tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the conversation isn&#8217;t just about nostalgia. It&#8217;s a call to action for reclaiming the internet&#8217;s potential. Dave explains what went wrong with the evolution of the social web, why he thinks blogging tech like RSS just need more love, and how the influx of money and centralisation stifled the creativity and interoperability the web was built for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll also get to hear about Dave&#8217;s latest efforts to reignite those original web ideals. He reveals the thinking behind Wordland, a minimalist and powerful writing tool for WordPress users that puts freedom, portability, and open protocols front and centre.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dave also lays out his Textcasting manifesto, challenging platforms to truly support writers with features like unlimited length, markdown support, and true ownership of content, without the need for permission or platform lock-in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dave truly is a pioneer of the internet, and is certainly not finished yet. He&#8217;s putting WordPress at the centre of many of his future endeavors.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re passionate about owning your content, deeply curious about web history, or looking for inspiration on how technology can empower rather than control, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Dave Winer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Dave Winer. Hello Dave.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Hey, how you doing?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I confess, I&#8217;m going to get this out the way and I&#8217;m going to put it on the record because Dave Winer has been in my brain for about 20 years or more. And I&#8217;m going to allow Dave the opportunity to do a bio. He may lean into that and tell us many, many things, or he may not. But I would just like to offer my profound congratulations for many of the things that I literally have as the foundational bits of my working life.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of those bits are because of you, and I would like to express my enormous thanks for the way that you&#8217;ve done that, the stuff that you&#8217;ve built, the method in which you deployed that, and the way that you didn&#8217;t tie it up to a subscription model.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, with that out of the way, I would just like to offer you the opportunity to introduce yourself. So do you mind just little potted bio, two or three minutes tops, something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:18] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Wow. I didn&#8217;t realize I was gonna be doing this. Well, I&#8217;m a software developer and a blogger. I started software development when I was a grad student in the 1970s, at the University of Wisconsin. And I immediately knew that this is what I was going to do in my whole career. Up to that point, I didn&#8217;t know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It just fit. Everything about developing software, and communication with software. I used to call it communication with a big C. So you talk about communication with a little C is like wiring everything together. But the big C, its people getting connected. And that was going back to the, I guess the early eighties.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I moved from Wisconsin to California to Silicon Valley, and I had two products. My goal was to go to California and achieve fame and fortune, and it didn&#8217;t happen all at once at least. One of my first meetings was with Steve Jobs, and we were both exactly the same age, 23 or something like that, and very arrogant and full of ourselves, and we ended up insulting each other, and I have a lot of regrets about that because I had the two products and he wanted the wrong one. And I told him, man, that&#8217;s the wrong one. You should want the other one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And anyway, so I ended up hooking up with a company that eventually became the biggest software company in the valley and then exploded. And then I started my own company. And that was a pretty long haul. But we got there. We made software for the Apple 2, the IBM PC, the Macintosh.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had a really big hit in 1986, product called MORE. It was a really good product, but it also hit the market at exactly the right time. And then I sold the company and then I started developing software on my own, because that&#8217;s really what I always wanted to do. I was a CEO because I had to be, because nobody else understood the idea, that we were doing there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s actually been the story of my life, is like when I start something, I tell everybody how great it&#8217;s gonna be, and then they look at me like, what are you talking about? I have no idea. Or, that&#8217;s not useful. Or AI, this is what they say today. Oh, AI is gonna do that for us. And I go, no, I actually, I don&#8217;t think it is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so one thing led to another. I started making software on the web. I saw the web as complete liberation. Because the tech industry had gotten so congested with the power of the big companies. This happens periodically by the way. You end up, they get, they lock themselves in, and then they just protect their lock in. And then nothing happens for a while, and then an explosion happens, usually. A new company comes along with a big idea, and the big companies don&#8217;t understand it, and all of a sudden. And that was the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there were things before that. The PC was like that to some extent. The Mac was. Rock and roll was like that for sure. The Beatles fit into that pattern of things that fundamentally changed everything. And the web was one of those things too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it blew the doors off the tech industry. Whenever a big tech company tried to dominate the web, it just didn&#8217;t work. It didn&#8217;t work. Until eventually it did work, and now we&#8217;re pretty thoroughly dominated. We got dominated by Facebook, by Google. Twitter, very influential company, and a few others, and now it&#8217;s Bluesky. They&#8217;re out there telling them that everybody, that they&#8217;re decentralized and whatever. They say they&#8217;re on the web, they&#8217;re not on the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The web means something. It means that I can add a feature that hooks into your product and I don&#8217;t need your permission to do it. That&#8217;s what you have to have for the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You also have to have links. If you don&#8217;t give the person writing in your environment the ability to put hyperlinks in their text, you can&#8217;t say you&#8217;re the web. Because you&#8217;ve deprived the writers of the one most essential thing that they need, the ability to defer to somebody else as the expert on this topic, and build these structures. Twitter, took that out. They just said, we don&#8217;t need that. Or put character limits on it. Or they said no titles. Or you can&#8217;t edit your post, or you can&#8217;t put a podcast, you can&#8217;t put an audio on there, on a post. And they add an API and that&#8217;s really nice, but it&#8217;s still, you don&#8217;t get that freedom. There&#8217;s nothing like that there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I watched the internet develop in much the same way as I might watch a game of, we call it football, you may call it soccer, in that I&#8217;d be in the crowd and all of these characters are moving around on the field and doing important things and it just develops.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The game is afoot and it develops and it&#8217;s like evolution. Curiously, you were one of the people on the field kind of making these decisions. And so with the benefit of hindsight, looking back, it sounds like there&#8217;s a part of you which, not just a part of you, I feel like it might be a big part, which regrets a lot of the way that it has developed. The beginnings of the internet, there seem to be more, I don&#8217;t know, blue sky thinking, let&#8217;s put it that way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:19] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> We actually called it that. We actually called it that, believe it or not, a piece of blue sky. The clouds, sky is overcast and then there&#8217;s a little bit of blue sky and we&#8217;re all gonna go there. Yeah, it was like that, but what was wrong was my model was wrong. My model for humanity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our model, the early web people. We had this very idealistic idea of what humanity was, and how they would take advantage of the opportunity. And that includes the entrepreneurs, because they create structures where people can be very abusive to each other, and they don&#8217;t do anything really about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the people, and we still live with this, in fact, well this comes up sometimes people say, you&#8217;re being altruistic. I&#8217;ve heard that said, and I reject that. I&#8217;m not being altruistic. If anything trying to set an example for what we have to do collectively in order to have freedom.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you don&#8217;t, if you don&#8217;t enable your competitors, you don&#8217;t deserve users, is my feeling. And in fact, you can see that playing out in the WordPress community right now, right? That is what the big controversy seems to be. I&#8217;m gonna step back from it. I&#8217;m not part of the WordPress community. It&#8217;s not that I&#8217;m not really, I&#8217;m not. And I&#8217;m an observer of all of this, and I see it all playing out in a sort of predictable way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as I think you said earlier, we end up in a pretty good place and I put this in one of the pieces I wrote recently about the whole why I am betting so heavy on WordPress, is that whatever you can say about Automattic and Matt and whatever, he didn&#8217;t lock you in. You have freedom of movement. All your data can move with you wherever you want. Anybody can add a feature to WordPress if they want. It probably won&#8217;t get into the main distribution, but you can build on it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I have proven that by building on it. I never hit any dead ends. What I also see there, this is another plus for this platform is, whoever it is that&#8217;s building this, and I know there&#8217;s some contention about that, it really believes in not breaking developers, and that is super important.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s one of the basic, also fundamental principles of the web, is that a website that you built in 1995, you should still be able to read it in 2025. And you can, except Google doesn&#8217;t think you should. Google as recently as 2014, that&#8217;s when HTTPS came along and became something that people wanted to use. Up until that point, HTTP was perfectly fine. And then one day Google and the EFF decided no more of this. It was very bad development. It set a bad precedent, but that&#8217;s a sidebar. That&#8217;s not the real thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s really going on here is, I think there is now an opportunity in the, what we call, I call the Twitter, like world, I won&#8217;t call it the social web, because it isn&#8217;t the web. That&#8217;s not fair, they can&#8217;t. They should support the web before they get to call themselves the web. And they&#8217;ve just inherited all the limits that Twitter put on there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They had the opportunity to relax those limits, but they have no incentive to do it. I could sit there, like you said, as an observer. See, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been too, for the last, whatever, 16 years. 2006, it&#8217;s 2025, 19 years, sorry, for the last 19 years. With all due humility. I&#8217;m a pretty freaking good developer, and I really work very energetically, and I love making products for users, and I&#8217;m stuck. There&#8217;s no place for me to go. And I can&#8217;t accept that. That&#8217;s all I want to say, is I don&#8217;t accept that, and I found a way to work around it, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing. And WordPress is key to it, central to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ll come onto that whole project in a minute, which is really fascinating. But I&#8217;m just gonna rewind the clock and go back to the very beginnings of what we might now call the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>An academic enterprise, really, it felt like. A bunch of academics. Maybe you&#8217;ll go back as far as CERN and have those discussions about just wanting to send academic documentation to one another, and, then the hyperlink came along, and then all of a sudden this world of possibility opened up, and it felt as if there was so much positive potential there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember the beginnings of the internet, the burgeoning of it, people beginning to talk about it, people starting to use it on desktops and things like that. And there was this real sense positivity that it was, like it was, it was this blue sky thing. For the first time in humanity&#8217;s history everybody had a way to interconnect.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We don&#8217;t need to go into what happened, but at some point, through a whole series of dominoes falling, we get all these walled gardens, and now the internet seems like anything other than blue sky. It feels like there&#8217;s just these silos everywhere. You&#8217;ve got a Meta silo, and you&#8217;ve got an X silo, and you&#8217;ve got a TikTok silo, and a YouTube silo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think, with hand on heart, almost everybody would be able to point to at least some downside to that. Sure, you might enjoy consuming YouTube videos, but there may be a flip side to that. You end up doing it at the wrong time of the day. I think anybody could agree that people&#8217;s passions get inflamed to the point of getting a bit out of hand on the internet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was never what it was supposed to be. And so going back to my question from a minute ago, where I was implying that maybe there&#8217;s some sense of regret. If you could go back and move the jigsaw pieces, or move the chess pieces differently, I expect you would. I&#8217;d expect you&#8217;d be shouting a bit louder about the need for things to be not walled in, and maybe things would be different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:58] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I don&#8217;t think anybody hears that. I think I shouted it pretty loud. I repeated it over and over. I don&#8217;t have any regret about that, I think I did a tremendous amount of that, but the problem is, I can&#8217;t call it regret. I think that collectively there was a blogging community prior to WordPress. There was. There were competitive products. And then in 1999, it all clicked with RSS, and that gave us a way, we had ways, by the way, to find the updates on blogs before that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had a site called weblogs.com, and it would go looking around the blogosphere, had a list. There weren&#8217;t that many blogs, okay. So it would look at all of them, see if they updated, and if they updated it would put it at the top of the list. And so bloggers were just reloading that page all day long. And it worked. You still had to find the new post, but that wasn&#8217;t too hard because they were at the top of the page, right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then after that, with Netscape, we got RSS going. And that led to a whole other generation of that kind of stuff. We had it, it was going. But what killed it. Killed is too strong a word. What put a limit on it, what said that what you described would happen is that, do you remember the .com boom, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of a sudden it wasn&#8217;t just a place for idealists to screw around and try out new ideas and everything. It was a place to come and get rich, and so it attracted all those people who wanted to get rich. That&#8217;s all they wanted. They didn&#8217;t care about what they had to do to get rich, and that attracted the professional investors, the venture capitalists. They want to get rich, it&#8217;s totally okay to do whatever they have to do to get rich. It just simply, it is their business to get rich, and it&#8217;s hard to blame them for that. And then, here&#8217;s the key point, they wouldn&#8217;t work with each other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:50] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> They would not work with each other. And I just wrote a piece this morning, on my blog, and it said in retrospect, it was a retrospective thing about RSS, because that&#8217;s becoming an issue again, and it said what RSS needed was love. It needed to be loved and nurtured, and fed and taken care of, and the users had to be given features that were collective across all the products. So that if you wanted to subscribe to a feed, you didn&#8217;t have to memorize a complicated process, involving pasting URLs or reading the HTML source, or all the crazy stuff that became, until Twitter, what choice was there, right? So people had to do it, but it was tremendous weakness.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Twitter came in and just completely blew it out. Because in Twitter subscribing was a single click. And we&#8217;re gonna hit that again now. If I&#8217;m successful in what I do, we&#8217;re gonna hit it again, and we&#8217;re gonna have to answer that question differently.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I was just gonna say, so many of the underpinnings that could have made the internet into a different place never went away, they just got ignored. Maybe that&#8217;s the wrong word, but they just got forgotten about. And so we wholeheartedly subscribed to X, formally Twitter. We wholeheartedly jumped in on Facebook, because they offered this amazing level of convenience. And of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it&#8217;s easy to see how maybe that was a catastrophic failure, but the time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:18] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I have no regrets about that either, Twitter was amazing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It was so revolutionary, you could suddenly connect with people that you&#8217;d lost touch with many years ago.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There you go. You put your finger right on it. It wasn&#8217;t that Twitter was so great. It&#8217;s that look at all the people. One of the first experiences I had on Twitter that really, really showed me what the difference is, is that there was just this random guy. I would meet him. We had our own community too, by the way. And so we would go to conferences and, I watched the WordCamp conference from afar, right? And I said, oh, I know all those people. Because in our community we had people like that. Only there only about 30 years younger than I was, than we were, but I recognize it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, meet somebody at a conference that&#8217;s, now I know what he&#8217;s doing with his family. I know what his sports are, who his team is, what&#8217;s the weather like where they live. And how does he describe it? There&#8217;s all these inputs that you simply don&#8217;t get from seeing somebody couple of times a year. It&#8217;s nice and everything, but this was a different thing altogether.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I still use Facebook. I don&#8217;t use Twitter very much anymore. But, I still have my account. I didn&#8217;t delete it. But I use Facebook. I will never stop using Facebook because my friends from childhood are there. Where am I gonna get new friends from childhood? That&#8217;s not happening, right. They have their advantages. But they&#8217;re a really good example of people that refuse to do anything to help anything other than their mission to make more money. I&#8217;ve had these conversations with executives at Facebook, and we&#8217;ve had a couple of, fits and starts a couple of them, twice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were gonna add RSS support in and out, to Facebook. Kind of like what they&#8217;re doing with Threads and ActivityPub, right? Or the Fediverse. Yeah, I&#8217;m trying to forget that because I don&#8217;t believe in it, to be honest with you, but I do believe in Mastodon. I think that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re really doing here. And I think they blow a lot of smoke at these things, and they, make them seem like, they shouldn&#8217;t make them appear to be more than they are because we need to have both of those things. There&#8217;s no reason we can&#8217;t have both, but that means you have to be a little bit altruistic to use that word. You may feel like you&#8217;re being an altruist, but then look at the times we live in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the United States, we are very worried about what&#8217;s coming or what&#8217;s here right now. And we&#8217;re all asking, what can we do? What can we do? One of the things you can do is let down, open up to your inner altruist, start doing things that aren&#8217;t just about putting food on the table or getting ahead in your career.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do things that make connecting with other people a lot easier, and more free. Because those services are now owned by people that go to dinner with the government of the United States. You&#8217;ve never seen a more clear picture of what we&#8217;re up against. You think that somebody from the White House calls Mark Zuckerberg and says, get Dave Winer off of Facebook. I guarantee you I&#8217;m off Facebook in 10 seconds. That&#8217;s who we are, depending on their honor, I think that&#8217;s a really bad bet. We&#8217;re all gonna have that choice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And at the same time, people who know how to work with WordPress are gonna have an amazing advantage, because I see WordPress as being comparable to the Mastodon server and the Bluesky server, and Bluesky doesn&#8217;t give you a server to install yet, but Mastodon does. And, I didn&#8217;t install it. I had a friend because I tried and I couldn&#8217;t get it to go. That is what it&#8217;s gonna take. And WordPress is a lot easier to install, and it&#8217;s a lot more mature, and it really works and the APIs aren&#8217;t gonna break. So we got a much better foundation to build on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Going back to what you said a moment ago about, it&#8217;s not either or. What we&#8217;re imagining here, I think is, you keep your Facebook, and you keep your X, and all of those things can go. Fine, carry on using those, but there&#8217;s an alternative, which many people may prefer. There&#8217;s a whole kind of ethos behind that, and a whole philosophy behind that. But underpinning it all, things like Mastodon, and potentially WordPress, and we&#8217;ll get into that, are a bunch of APIs and protocols and things like that, many of which you were very much involved in the creation of things like RSS, and thank you for that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:38] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> More altruism there, huh?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This entire whole podcast thing sits right on top of it. It feels like we&#8217;re going back to those things to try and, not compete, but be alongside of these other walled gardens, if you like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:51] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Oh, I think we&#8217;re competing. I&#8217;m not scared of competition. Let&#8217;s do it. There will be differences, however. There will be. There&#8217;ll be things that you can do in this world that you couldn&#8217;t do over there. But the opposite is true as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the thing that we&#8217;re gonna do, if we&#8217;re successful, is we&#8217;re gonna influence those networks. And we&#8217;re going to get them to support markdown. That&#8217;s very specific. Just let me put markdown in my posts on Bluesky and get rid of the character limits and let me edit. And then we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re fine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have to support inbound RSS as well, not just outbound. I have to be able to stay in my space, and contribute, and write, and have anybody read it wherever they are. That&#8217;s it. It&#8217;s saying basically, let&#8217;s actually live up to the promise of the web. And that&#8217;s what the web promised. And if you&#8217;re confident in your users will find value in your network, and there&#8217;s no reason they won&#8217;t. I&#8217;m talking about Bluesky and Mastodon, then why wouldn&#8217;t you do it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think then we&#8217;ve outed you. If you don&#8217;t want to do it. Okay, they don&#8217;t want to do it now because they don&#8217;t see it as a way of attracting new users, or keeping the users they have. They don&#8217;t see it that way because it&#8217;s true. It&#8217;s not, and that&#8217;s what we have to do. We have to make it that. They have to be hearing it all the time. You have to support markdown, that&#8217;s what Textcasting was all about. I think markdown is the mp3 of text. We did podcasting too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was a fall out of all this stuff. I want to do radio. I love radio. I always have. And I always thought at some point I&#8217;m gonna do audio blogs. That&#8217;s what I was doing, getting ready to do that. And there we were, and one thing led to another and did I ever think about using something other than mp3? That would be crazy. It was a gift. They gave me the answer. Of course I&#8217;m going to use mp3. Why would I screw around with that? We&#8217;re gonna make it just as obvious that the other networks, if they&#8217;re gonna pretend to deal with text, they have to support a basic set of features, which are simply defined by the web. That&#8217;s it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And WordPress does all that. WordPress documents are web documents, and that&#8217;s super important. That&#8217;s everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It feels like in the last few months you&#8217;ve very much planted a flag in the sand and it feels like you&#8217;ve committed to following through on the promise that we&#8217;re about to get into. And the underpinnings of it, I&#8217;m gonna link in the show notes to this, so you want to head to wptavern.com, search for the episode with Dave Winer, and in there will be a whole list of things. Anything that discuss, I&#8217;ll basically link to.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there&#8217;s a couple of pieces which Dave has penned. One of them was in 2024, November, 2024, called Textcasting. And the URL for that is textcasting.org, and we&#8217;ll go into that in a minute. But then much more recently over on scripting.com, published on 28th of August, 2025, so very recently, was a piece which kind of built a top of that called Think Differently About WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m gonna return to the Textcasting one &#8217;cause this feels like the foundational technological underpinnings of what you are proposing here, this thing which would be a competitor to all of these walled gardens. It sits outside of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:14] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s more of a, okay, for me, this is when I was planning this product. I hadn&#8217;t even begun to develop it yet. But I wanted to write down in one place, these are all the things we&#8217;re gonna do. And that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s all it was. I keep going on and on about all the different things that I wanted that I wasn&#8217;t getting, as a writer. I am a writer and I feel like Twitter was the original one, said you can&#8217;t have all your writing tools. It&#8217;s like I&#8217;m designing a guitar. And I&#8217;m saying, you can have three strings if you want. You can play music on three strings, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ultimate insult is the people who made this decision are not guitar players. They&#8217;re not musicians. They don&#8217;t have the slightest clue what the f they&#8217;re doing, and I&#8217;ve been told that even getting a new generation of products isn&#8217;t gonna solve this problem, because they are just as clueless about what writers need. And so at least I feel like upfront I ought to tell them exactly what I want from them. And that&#8217;s what textcasting.org is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when we give it to the people, they can say, they might say, why didn&#8217;t you tell us that&#8217;s all you want? Yeah, look at textcasting.org, and look at the creation date. I was very clear about what I wanted, but understand that I needed this for myself as the requirements document for the product I was making. I&#8217;m a blogger, so when I write a requirements document, I put it in the public, because that&#8217;s what bloggers do. It is just the knee jerk. I do write some private documents, I do, it&#8217;s true. But my impulse is to write them publicly. So that&#8217;s really all that it is. It&#8217;s just saying, this is what we&#8217;re gonna do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So right at the top, the goal is very simply encapsulated and it goes like this. It&#8217;s easy to get in your head and parse. Interop between social media apps based on the features writers needs, specifically the services of the social web, and there&#8217;s a link there, support these basic features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you go on to describe the ethics behind the movement is. But then you list out the things that you would like as a writer. It&#8217;s surprisingly a short list. There&#8217;s only six things, titles, optional. Links, de rigueur, you&#8217;ve gotta have links. Simple styling, bold, italics, that&#8217;s probably enough. Enclosures making it possible to do other things like, I don&#8217;t know, podcasting and things like that. Unlimited length, that&#8217;s the big differentiator, isn&#8217;t it? Because more or less all the platforms that have gained success have stifled that in some way. And then the, this is important, I think maybe this is the bit that I think is most enjoyable, editable. Go back, modify it because why not? You wrote it, it&#8217;s yours. And markdown. That basically is textcasting encapsulated in just a few sentences. I&#8217;ve probably missed a lot of the nuance there, but that&#8217;s kind of how I see it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:04] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, I don&#8217;t think so. Actually. Notice what&#8217;s not there? You&#8217;ll kick yourself. Comments. I don&#8217;t give a damn about comments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Presumably the comments could be handled elsewhere.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:15] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Absolutely, and I have a new idea for how comments should work. I wrote that up. I did a podcast about that, I think it was yesterday or the day before. I&#8217;ve had this design for many years, but I think there&#8217;s a way around all the abuse, and all the spamming that goes on these networks. I think it&#8217;s time for another look, first of all. I mean, I had a look, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, second of all, it&#8217;s time to open it up so everybody can play in this game so we can try out lots of different ways of doing it. Which by the way is also part of what I&#8217;m doing. I&#8217;m making a, the thing Wordland. If you go to wordland.social. Go there and try it out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s there. It works with your WordPress sites. And so you might think, okay, it is actually my business to make a new writing tool for WordPress. I made the writing tool I would like to use. The idea is that you focus all your attention on writing, so it has all the functionality that you need to write and nothing else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everything else that it does that&#8217;s in the WordPress, their command structure. And it was what I felt was in the way for me to be a writer using WordPress. Because what WordPress, I don&#8217;t want to call it a mistake, it&#8217;s just how it evolved, is that the writing functionality is intermixed with everything else. And it makes it a very intimidating thing to get started with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so if you look at the people that are the insiders in the WordPress community, that&#8217;s a very small number compared to the number of people who have tried to use WordPress. That&#8217;s a huge number because WordPress is it, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the number of people who use it, but they might prefer a better tool because this isn&#8217;t really what they think about. The things that are in the WordPress command structure are things that most people never need to go to. It&#8217;s too complicated. Look at the feature set of Twitter, for example. And it does a lot more than Twitter does, but most people aren&#8217;t interested in that. That&#8217;s one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Number two is, there are modes of working and writing requires severe focus. I don&#8217;t want to have to jump. Every time I have to go some random other place in the, that I have to devote my brain power to that, what I&#8217;m not doing, I&#8217;m not focused on the plan for writing. When I write something, I&#8217;m thinking three paragraphs ahead. And I&#8217;m trying to remember that because I don&#8217;t want to stop writing to take a note. I want to just go down the page and get my first draft out. But if in order to do this I have to go somewhere far away, that requires me to think, now I&#8217;ve lost my place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it creates a certain stress and programmers, if you say this to a programmer, most programmers go, oh, you&#8217;re just being weird. That&#8217;s not the way it works. Let me tell you how it works. I am also myself a programmer, so I understand the thought process, but you have to play. You have to have both roles in there. And that&#8217;s one of the things that makes me a fairly unique developer, is that I&#8217;m both a writer and a developer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I play on both sides of that fence. And so if I want a writer to test my code, I don&#8217;t do it right after I wrote the code. I come back a couple of days later, now that I&#8217;ve got a fresh way of looking at things and then I try to use it, and then I see the problems right off the bat.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;ll link to Wordland. I&#8217;ve had a good long look at the pages that you&#8217;ve offered up. I confess, I haven&#8217;t actually tried it out, but it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a very different take on a fairly minimal editing interface in WordPress. So I&#8217;ll make sure to link out to that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:37] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s fairly minimal, but it does everything on the Textcasting page. It doesn&#8217;t have the limits that all the Twitter like products have. It&#8217;s all supported, you get to do all of that stuff. And plus you get categories. And I think categories are huge. I really do. And it has a very nice, simple interface for it, but a very powerful one for categories. So, have a look at that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:59] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> And bookmarks. It&#8217;s very important for a writer. I have, I don&#8217;t know how many hundreds of documents that I&#8217;ve written over the years. I pretty much need quick access to all of them. Because I never know when I&#8217;m gonna have to make a change, and that&#8217;s in there too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Oh wait, I forgot the actual main point. The main point I was gonna make is that I&#8217;ve also, all the work I had to do on the server side to set this up, I&#8217;m not gonna make anybody have to do. That&#8217;s all open source, and I&#8217;ll even run the server for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, because what I want is a development community to pop up here. And so if somebody looks at Wordland, says that&#8217;s not the way to do it, here&#8217;s how you should do it. Say, great, go ahead, do it. And what they&#8217;ll find is, just like with WordPress, okay, there&#8217;s nothing in your way. You get to do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there&#8217;s more from that too, is that the user owns the documents, and all the documents are in markdown format. And so if you want to use a different editor on a document, just to work on it for whatever purpose, go ahead and it&#8217;ll still work in the place it came from.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this is going back to the IBM PC and the Macintosh, where when you had those machines, you owned the documents and you could have any editor you want edit it. And this led to file format standards, because if you come along three years after Microsoft Word comes along in the Macintosh, you better read Word format documents.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since I get to go first here, if this, if something happens, okay, that I have to say, maybe nothing will happen here, you never know. But because I got to go first, I chose markdown. Because markdown is the mp3 of text. It&#8217;s the obvious answer. And tell me why they don&#8217;t support markdown. Anything that works with text should support markdown in my opinion.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s just a nice, easy to access. The keyboard does everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There&#8217;s more. I&#8217;ve written feed readers. All along have been writing feed readers, and we have to sterilize the content because people put all kinds of garbage. And so you basically strip everything out. I&#8217;m tired of doing that. What I want to do is give the writers the ability to put some bold face and italics, and put some links in there, and give it, all the things that are on the Textcasting thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I don&#8217;t want to strip that out anymore. And so in Feedland and in Wordland, markdown is fully supported everywhere, and in RSS. It&#8217;s a key point. If I had that to do over again. I can&#8217;t do that one. I&#8217;m sorry, I&#8217;m going on about this but I really believe in it. I couldn&#8217;t do it over again. If I had to do over again in the beginning, I would&#8217;ve made markdown the text format in RSS, totally. I couldn&#8217;t do it &#8217;cause it didn&#8217;t exist. RSS came first but I&#8217;ve taken care of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Wordland produces its own RSS feed for every document, along with the one that WordPress produces. And the feed we produce has the markdown in it. And it has a couple of other things, and it, we will have more. As we think of more features to add. I&#8217;ve now got a place where I can add features. These are in a namespace, it&#8217;s totally non-controversial. I&#8217;m not modifying RSS, I have something called the source namespace.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then at some point, again, it&#8217;s all prefixed by if it catches on, then I&#8217;ll go to the guys that do the feeds inside of WordPress and say, here&#8217;s some suggestions for features to your feed. And at that point we&#8217;ll be friends, I hope. And they&#8217;ll, love me and I&#8217;ll love them. It&#8217;s not impossible. There are people on the team that are helping us. That&#8217;s nice, I really love that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So taking it back a little bit, we&#8217;ve got the Textcasting framework that we described a little bit, a few moments ago. That kind of feels like the underpinnings to this other piece that I mentioned. And again, links in the show notes. Think Different About WordPress. Now, I confess, I&#8217;ve been following you for many years. really, in my head, collided you with WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:08] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I wasn&#8217;t, you interpreted</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And then suddenly you pop up with this piece about Wordland for start, which is a, an editor, which binds to WordPress. And then this whole piece about think differently about WordPress. Now this is really curious because, well you tell me what you&#8217;re proposing. I could try, try to interpret it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:26] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I tried put the key idea upfront, okay. When I say Think Different About WordPress, I can tell you exactly what that is, what you&#8217;re supposed to think. I used the grammatically incorrect version that Apple uses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Think different.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:43] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yeah, it was cute. I thought, what the heck, let&#8217;s do it. That&#8217;s the point, really. And it is just think of WordPress as the equivalent of the Bluesky service and the Mastodon service. And the reason you can do that is because it&#8217;s really comparable. They&#8217;re all text databases, that&#8217;s what they are. They have some different structures. That&#8217;s okay, we can add structures too. But it&#8217;s how good are they at doing that, and how mature is their code, this is very technical stuff, right? But what does the API look like, and how stable is the API? These are all the concerns that limit what people can develop on the platform. And if you do the check boxes, I probably should do that, but WordPress wins on every one of them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a lot of life behind it and a lot of commitment to backwards compatibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:35] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> It&#8217;s very simple actually. The reason it is that way is that whoever made the calls, they had a philosophy for the whole 22 years of the web will tell us what to do, and they did it. What else?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know, I felt Rip Van Winkle, you know what I&#8217;m saying? It&#8217;s like, I was not paying attention to WordPress because I had all the wrong ideas. Now, they didn&#8217;t market to me. They never told me in 2017 they had a new API never. It. They didn&#8217;t tell me that they had a Node.js package for that API. They never told me. I was working in Node.js at that point. So I could have tried it out right away. They never told me. And all of a sudden, like I&#8217;m looking around, I need to add WordPress login to Feedland, because that&#8217;s running, we have a, at feedland.com people should try that too. Okay, because that&#8217;s a big part.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s the feed backend for the system that we&#8217;re talking about. And Feedland runs on the Automattic VIP server. So that thing scales. Okay. I learned how to write, I didn&#8217;t know how to write scalable software before I hooked up with them, in I guess it was like three years ago or something.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the first thing we did is, and they were very generous about this in teaching me, and I kept finding things I had to change to make it so that you could support millions of users, right? It&#8217;s not mysterious once you learn how to do it, but there&#8217;s an art to it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bigger project is imagine Twitter with an editor that could support. Twitter has what I call a tiny little text box, okay? You get to type something in there and they&#8217;ve extended their limit, if you pay them money, 10,000 characters, that&#8217;s a pretty good character limit. I say in Textcasting, unlimited. 10,000 is unlimited, okay. For all practical purposes, if you&#8217;re writing more than 10,000 characters, there shouldn&#8217;t be a limit, but, okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you got a text editor. Twitter has a text editor. We have a text editor. Our text editor does the web the way I want it to do the web. And it has timelines where you see messages in reverse chronological order. So imagine if that was RSS, instead of their server. That timeline. You could make a timeline in RSS look just like it came from Twitter. There&#8217;s no problem with that, and that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve done. When you subscribe to feeds, what you get.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So anything that supports RSS plugs into this system, and guess what? RSS is totally replaceable. Everything that I do, you can come up with another one and it works just as well, because RSS is an open format. Yeah, it&#8217;s got a protocol with it too. There&#8217;s a RSS cloud, which I mentioned in that piece, which does the real time component of it. It worked great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress supports it in every one of the instances they do it, and so it may be more limited than the one, but I don&#8217;t know the one that&#8217;s in Bluesky or Mastodon. It may have features that are hard to do, but like I said, then it will do features. It&#8217;ll have things that they can&#8217;t do either.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing it&#8217;ll do is it&#8217;ll be very, very, very, very, simple. That&#8217;s the point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:42:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What I&#8217;m thinking here is, I think that the typical listener listening to this will be thinking, how does this differ from, let&#8217;s say, going to Twitter, but it&#8217;s got a different interface and it&#8217;s got a different character limit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:42:59] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Not that different. whole idea is that it won&#8217;t be that different. I&#8217;m not actually running your server. Go, you could pick and choose. You don&#8217;t like my timeline, fine. Go get Joe&#8217;s timeline or Mary&#8217;s timeline or, Google might have a timeline or OpenAI might have one or. Do you need a license to create an RSS reader? No, that&#8217;s the point. The point is you get innovation, you get the doors blown off. You don&#8217;t have a silo. There&#8217;s no silo anywhere in sight.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want the users, you have to give them features, performance or price. They don&#8217;t have to stay with you if they don&#8217;t want to. There&#8217;s no import or export. It&#8217;s just there. It&#8217;s the feeds you subscribe to. That&#8217;s really, there&#8217;s not a whole lot of technology there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:43:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I mean, it&#8217;s a fairly nice, simple, basic proposition. It sounds from what you were saying in the Think Different About WordPress, it sounds like, well I said you planted your flag in the sand a little bit before. It sounds like you are committing yourself to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:44:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> I&#8217;ve already done the work. I&#8217;ll be demoing this at WordCamp Canada in October, hopefully that will all be webcast so everybody can watch it. And it&#8217;ll be archived and it probably will crash, because that&#8217;s the way these things work, right? And, but I will stay with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I will get the bugs out. It&#8217;s gonna be a process. It&#8217;s not gonna be done, on October, whatever, 17th I think it is. It&#8217;s not gonna be done. All I ask is have a look then, and then when there&#8217;s a new version, please come have a look then too, and I&#8217;ll come back on your podcast if you want. We can talk about it as it develops. Remember the things that we&#8217;re puzzling, and don&#8217;t mistake for a minute that I&#8217;m not confused too. I am.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m gonna tell you a little self-aggrandizing anecdote. Once in, I think it was high school or something, teachers said, somebody like to come up and solve this problem, it was a math class, solve this problem on the whiteboard?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I said, okay, I&#8217;ll go. And I go up there and I&#8217;m doing it, and I got the answer, and the teacher said, you didn&#8217;t know the answer when you raised your hand, did you? No. I, it&#8217;s like, I&#8217;m an old guy now, that was when I was young. What the hell have I got to lose? Nothing. Nothing. I&#8217;m giving you software, an approach to software that I believe in. And, I&#8217;m testing the idea of the assumption.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was always told that RSS can&#8217;t do what Twitter does, and because I had not mastered server side scaled software, and remember until a couple of years ago, I had never done that. So I said, I have no way of testing that. They say you can&#8217;t do it. They know. I have my doubts about what they said, but I have no way of doing anything about it. And then I got the skill, and then I think now that it&#8217;s not true, I think that you absolutely can do it, and that they had a reason for telling me that, is that they didn&#8217;t want me to do it. Okay, that&#8217;s an invitation, a great invitation if I&#8217;ve ever seen one, right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean go for it. Let&#8217;s go for it, but let&#8217;s all go for it together. You see, that&#8217;s the point. It&#8217;s no fun if I&#8217;m just sitting here going, oh, please, I beg you, would you please try my software so I can be a billionaire too?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was just gonna say, if you&#8217;re going into WordCamp Canada, and you&#8217;re demoing it all there, but at the moment, I&#8217;m guessing you&#8217;re doing all of the work, or you have done all of the work, by yourself. Are you hoping to create a community around this?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:31] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yeah. I want a developer community, but in order to have a developer community, there better be some users, &#8217;cause the developers don&#8217;t come until there are users. So this is something, if a user says, what can I do to help? I&#8217;m just a user. The answer is you could do a lot to help. You can use the damn thing. Your product, your content, the stuff that you write will be a magnet for other people. They&#8217;ll see the reality of it and they&#8217;ll say, oh wow, I guess you can use stuff like this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the next question I have then is how does what you wish to do, how does that stand in relation to some of the currently existing things out there? So for example, the Fediverse, I know maybe that term&#8217;s not something you like to use, but let&#8217;s say Mastodon for want of a better word or ActivityPub, let&#8217;s go with that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>ActivityPub has a plugin which is under the custodianship of Automattic, so we&#8217;re obviously trying to bind our WordPress websites with the Fedi verse and being able to communicate in that way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:31] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, that&#8217;s good. That&#8217;s very good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How does yours stand in contrast to that? How, will yours differ from that familiar thing?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:47:39] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> What that does is it&#8217;s wonderful. First, let me tell you why it&#8217;s wonderful, and then I&#8217;ll tell you, I don&#8217;t even know how to begin telling you what the difference is. But, it&#8217;s wonderful because it accomplishes at least part of the goal of bringing the Textcasting vision into Mastodon. So if I have a blog called daveverse.org, which is a WordPress blog, and when I post something there, it&#8217;s also cross posted to Mastodon. And as far as I can tell, there&#8217;s no character limit. And it has styling, and it supports links, and it has images, and block quotes. It&#8217;s got a lot of the stuff. It even has titles. That&#8217;s right, it has titles too. If you go look at the Textcasting list, that&#8217;s pretty good coverage, right? It&#8217;s a major innovation, it&#8217;s a major step forward.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what that does, hopefully it gets it onto the radar of the developers of Mastodon. The more people want that, okay, they have to make that clear. And right now, I don&#8217;t think people even know it exists. There&#8217;s not a lot of awareness of it. I&#8217;ve tried the best I can to, and I&#8217;ll keep pumping it for this reason. And the more successful it is, the more it puts pressure on Bluesky to do the same thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s having the same effect that I&#8217;m hoping to have and, so I like it. Remember, I&#8217;m wearing a lot of hats here, but one of the hats I wear is, as a writer who wants the freedom to use all the writing tools, I don&#8217;t want to be given three strings, I want all five strings, using the guitar anology.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So this, what I&#8217;ve done is create something that has the potential of playing the role that, the core of Mastodon does. The whole thing. The whole thing, right? It&#8217;s not comparable to a plugin that connects WordPress to Mastodon because that&#8217;s a plugin, and what they&#8217;re doing is heroic, that&#8217;s the word I use for it, Matthias and his team are doing at Automattic, are doing is heroic, because it&#8217;s a hard problem to solve. It&#8217;s taking &#8217;em a lot of time and they&#8217;re working really hard, but those guys really believe, they&#8217;re really committed. And I, love that. It&#8217;s both heroic and love inspiring. These guys are great. And they won&#8217;t have to do that for my system. They won&#8217;t, it&#8217;ll just come for free.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:50:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> With the Mastodon system, obviously the ActivityPub protocol will bind to a server of your choice. So many people go with mastodon.social as the sort of the default. Presumably there&#8217;s gotta be some part of the architecture for your system, which in that way, some central place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:50:20] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> There is a server component to what I&#8217;m doing. Okay. It doesn&#8217;t matter where that server is running. You can run it anywhere, somebody has to run it, and it&#8217;s open source, and it&#8217;s not even a GPL license, it&#8217;s MIT licensed. So go have fun with this thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s on GitHub right now. I&#8217;m not asking people to install it yet because I want to get a chance to like lock it down before we start cloning it. It&#8217;s going to, it is designed to be no lock-in. It is, does, require somebody to run a server</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:51:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the bit that I&#8217;m reading off the scripting.com website where, you know the piece entitled Think Different About WordPress. You have this sentence where it says, a storage service and it says, I&#8217;m going to run the server for you to get the bootstrap going, my treat. That was the bit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:51:14] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> That raised the alarms, right? It should raise the alarms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:51:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Exactly. It made me think Twitter in a way, it made me think there&#8217;s this central bit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:51:21] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> No, it&#8217;s not, because I have the answer that Twitter never had, which is I&#8217;m giving you all the code you need to run your own server. I&#8217;m giving that to you. I&#8217;m not making you write it. In Twitter you can&#8217;t even write it. If I wrote a server that did what Twitter&#8217;s server does, that&#8217;s great, but it wouldn&#8217;t be part of Twitter. It wouldn&#8217;t be available to everyone. The availability here is the same availability as RSS. So can I subscribe to your RSS feed, even if your thing is on another server? Of course.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s all you need to know. Ultimately, that&#8217;s all you&#8217;re going to need is to be able to. It&#8217;s just RSS, that&#8217;s all it is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s RSS all the way down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:03] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> But let me just say this, is that&#8217;s also a strength of the WordPress community, the skepticism. You&#8217;re always, you guys are always watching for the lock in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;ve spent trying to encourage the world that you need to own your own data, or at least have. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:17] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Unfortunately the world, on the whole, didn&#8217;t listen, so we keep banging that gong.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:24] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Yes. But let me point out that you are the distillation of the people. You&#8217;re the group of people who care deeply about that stuff. So keep it up because, and that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m ready to answer those questions because, and here&#8217;s the punchline. Even though I&#8217;m not part of your community, we share that religion.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s nice.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:52:43] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Why do we share the religion? Because it&#8217;s the web. Because that&#8217;s what the web taught us. Maybe we believed, maybe we were very naive in the nineties and the early two thousands. We were, we&#8217;re not naive anymore. I think the last, the very last sentence in the Think Different, go read that, right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:53:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> They lied to the users all the time, over and over. No, I don&#8217;t object to you making money, but I&#8217;m putting it out there. You can compete with me. I want you to compete with me, as long as you don&#8217;t try to cut off the interop. I&#8217;m not naive. Believe me, I expect that will happen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:53:16] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> That&#8217;s just all the credentials I need to be in your community, right? Not all the credentials. I don&#8217;t know half the stuff any of you guys know about the how to do. I don&#8217;t do PHP for example. I don&#8217;t know how to set up a WordPress server. I have somebody that helps me with that. So I&#8217;m not qualified to be a member of the WordPress community, but that&#8217;s the beauty of the web. I don&#8217;t have to be to connect with that community, because that&#8217;s what the web gives. And that&#8217;s pretty awesome, don&#8217;t you think? And the other thing is that makes it even more awesome is that all the other people like me will be able to do it too. Why? Because in the end they played straight with you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:54:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Depending on when this podcast is released, it may well be that you&#8217;ve done your presentation. If that is in fact the case, then I will make sure to link to the WordPress TV, the video that will have been captured. I&#8217;ll link that into this post. But also I&#8217;ll link to the Textcasting document and, also the Think Different About WordPress document. And encourage you, if you&#8217;ve got any interesting kind of, I&#8217;m gonna say rewinding the clock and returning the world to a different era where the blue sky was there, and there was less cloud, than go and explore those different bits and pieces.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I will definitely be coming back to you, Dave Winer, to figure out exactly how it&#8217;s gone and maybe call it months or something like that. And we&#8217;ll see where you&#8217;ve got with the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:54:40] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> If we&#8217;re still here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:54:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. But we will, we&#8217;ll leave it there. And, I will say thank you for chatting to me today about this really important subject. Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:54:48] <strong>Dave Winer:</strong> Thank you much, it was great. Have a good day.</p>\n</div></details>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href=\"https://bsky.app/profile/scripting.com\">Dave Winer.</a> </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dave’s journey into the heart of Silicon Valley began in the early 1980s, when he left Wisconsin and moved to California with two products and a dream: to achieve fame and fortune in the world of technology. Driven by a deep belief that real communication involves people truly connecting, he set out to make his mark.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Early on, he found himself in a memorable meeting with Steve Jobs, both were in their early 20s, bursting with ambition and self-assurance. Their encounter was fiery and competitive, yet it marked the start of Dave’s lifelong mission to wire the world together, not just with technology, but by bringing people closer through it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’ve ever subscribed to a blog, listened to a podcast, or shared your thoughts online, chances are you’ve benefitted from Dave’s pioneering work, he’s the developer behind influential technologies like RSS, and a long-time advocate for open, user-owned, publishing platforms.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He describes himself as someone who wrote the first versions of lots of software, wants to work with everyone, still has big ideas, he likes things to be open from top to bottom, and doesn&#8217;t care for greedy people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we’re talking about the vision, history, and future of the open web. Dave reminisces about the origins of today’s internet, the early days when idealism and collaboration were at the web’s core. He shares stories from his career, the rise and fall of early software startups, and how the initial spirit of community slowly gave way to the “walled gardens” of big tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the conversation isn’t just about nostalgia, it’s a call to action for reclaiming the internet’s potential. Dave explains what went wrong with the evolution of the social web, why he thinks blogging tech like RSS just needed “more love”, and how the influx of money and centralisation stifled the creativity and interoperability the web was built for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You’ll also get to hear about Dave’s latest efforts to reignite those original web ideals, he reveals the thinking behind Wordland, a minimalist and powerful writing tool for WordPress users that puts freedom, portability, and open protocols front and centre.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dave also lays out his “Textcasting” manifesto, challenging platforms to truly support writers with features like unlimited length, markdown support, and true ownership of content, without the need for permission or platform lock-in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dave truly is a pioneer of the internet, and is certainly not finished yet. 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If you have sites that support automatic [&#8230;]\";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:15:\"John Blackbourn\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4937:\"\n<p><strong>WordPress 6.8.3 is now available!</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a security release that features two fixes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because this is a security release,<strong> it is recommended that you update your sites immediately</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.8.3.zip\">download WordPress 6.8.3 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. 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Need help? Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/tutorials/faq-for-new-contributors/\">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Props to <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ehtis/\">Ehtisham Siddiqui</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/\">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/paulkevan/\">Paul Kevan</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/\">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/\">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter\">Weston Ruter</a> for reviewing.</p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"19204\";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:1;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:57:\"Portland Welcomes WordCamp US 2025: A Community Gathering\";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:63:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/08/portland-welcomes-wcus-2025/\";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, 30 Aug 2025 03:03:52 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6:\"Events\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:7:\"General\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"WordCamp\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=19074\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:405:\"A full house of attendees gathered in Portland, Oregon, for WordCamp US 2025, with thousands more tuning in online. 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Over four days, the flagship WordPress event brought together contributors, innovators, and community members for collaboration, inspiration, and discovery.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-6c531013 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>WordPress is so unique because we&#8217;re not just a product; we&#8217;re a movement.</p><cite>Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder</cite></blockquote></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>The WordPress event began with a dedicated Contributor Day and continued with a Showcase Day and two days of sessions filled with talks, panels, workshops, and community celebrations. 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By day’s end, the collective energy was clear: WordPress continues to be built by and for everyone.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped has-black-background-color has-background wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\" style=\"border-width:20px;border-radius:2px\">\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af868d20&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af868d20\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19080\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19080\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5641-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af868ff2&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af868ff2\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19081\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19081\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5630-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af869239&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af869239\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19087\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?fit=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19087\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?w=1707&amp;ssl=1 1707w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 683w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8717-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1365%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86947a&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86947a\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19084\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19084\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633022-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af8696af&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af8696af\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19082\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19082\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_5634-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af8698d8&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af8698d8\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19085\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19085\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z632926-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af869b16&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af869b16\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19086\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19086\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633226-1-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af869dbc&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af869dbc\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19090\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19090\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Z633121-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86a006&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86a006\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19089\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19089\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8723-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, 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data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86a4ec&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86a4ec\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19088\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8753-1-scaled.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19088\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8753-1-scaled.jpg?w=2560&amp;ssl=1 2560w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8753-1-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, 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viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86a9a5&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86a9a5\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19083\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19083\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC8887-2-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n</figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The mix of experience in the room made this year especially notable. First-time contributors were paired with seasoned table leads who guided them through their first steps into open source contribution. Longtime contributors reconnected with their teams and advanced ongoing initiatives, while new voices added fresh perspectives and momentum. The spirit of mentorship was woven throughout, ensuring that Contributor Day was productive and welcoming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results spoke for themselves:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Polyglots</strong> translated more than 12,000 strings, expanding WordPress’s accessibility worldwide.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <strong>Community team</strong> celebrated the approval of two brand-new local meetups.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <strong>Training team</strong> achieved its objective of updating outdated course thumbnails.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <strong>Core team</strong> worked through a live bug scrub, with 9 committers and 16 contributors collaborating on improvements.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <strong>Documentation team</strong> completed numerous content updates to keep resources fresh and reliable.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Momentum carried through every table, with participants reporting measurable progress and a renewed sense of shared purpose. Contributor Day once again highlighted the unique power of collaboration in shaping the open web, proving that every contribution matters through code, translations, training, or community building.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Showcase Day: WordPress in Action</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Wednesday, August 27, was the popular Showcase Day, spotlighting real-world innovation in WordPress. Initially expected to draw about 250 participants, Showcase Day welcomed more than 800 attendees — a powerful sign of how much energy and curiosity the community brought to Portland. The sessions demonstrated how WordPress powers meaningful work across industries from nonprofits to newsrooms, agencies to global enterprises, while staying true to open source values.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The day opened with a keynote by Amy Sample Ward: <em>The Tech That Comes Next</em>. Drawing from their co-authored book with Afua Bruce, Amy highlighted the inequities embedded in today’s technologies — from dataset bias to accessibility gaps — and challenged attendees to rethink how tools are funded, built, and deployed. Their talk invited technologists, funders, and community leaders to imagine a more equitable digital future, rooted in collaboration and shared responsibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WordCamp US 2025 - Amy Sample Ward &quot;The Tech That Comes Next&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/RKnM75GFZxw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, <a href=\"https://youtu.be/PGvh7fCOUk0\">Joeleen Kennedy</a> of Human Made shared how Full Site Editing (FSE) shapes the refresh of Wikimedia’s ongoing user experience. Her session <em>Modernizing at Scale</em> detailed how FSE is simplifying workflows, improving accessibility, and making the multilingual platform more sustainable for the long term. Attendees gained a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world’s largest open knowledge platforms is leveraging WordPress innovation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https://youtu.be/F4NEPcwGRCI\">Josh Bryant</a> took the stage to explore what happens when Gutenberg leaves the WP-Admin dashboard. His talk, <em>Reimagining WordPress Editing</em>, walked through embedding the block editor into a standalone React application to support Dow Jones’s newsroom workflows. From decoupling Gutenberg to managing custom data stores, the session showcased advanced techniques for scaling editorial tools while maintaining the flexibility of the WordPress ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hands-on learning was a hallmark of Showcase Day, with Jamie Marsland’s workshop leading participants through building and launching their own professional portfolio sites — no coding required. Attendees left with a fully functioning site, demonstrating WordPress’s continued ability to empower anyone, anywhere, to publish online.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the afternoon, Jeffrey Paul’s session <em>Scalable, Ethical AI</em> addressed one of the most pressing topics in today’s digital world: how to integrate AI without sacrificing ownership, privacy, or open standards. Walking participants through practical use cases with ClassifAI and local LLMs, Paul emphasized how WordPress can help content creators harness AI while maintaining autonomy over their data.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The day closed with a forward-looking community highlight: <a href=\"https://events.wordpress.org/campusconnect/\">WordPress Campus Connect</a>. Panelists <a href=\"https://youtu.be/ARqM9U0ESvo\">Destiny Kanno, Andrés Parra, Javier Montes de Blas, Mauricio Barrantes, and Elineth Morera Campos</a> shared how this initiative brings WordPress into classrooms and universities worldwide. Student Andrés Parra received a scholarship to attend WordCamp. During the panel, Elineth also announced that Fidélitas University will begin offering its students a <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/07/introducing-wordpress-credits-a-new-contribution-internship-program-for-university-students/\">WordPress Credits</a> program starting in October 2025, making it a mandatory addition sometime in 2026, enabling them to contribute directly to WordPress as part of their studies.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>By connecting students and educators with the open web, Campus Connect is building the next generation of contributors and innovators, ensuring that WordPress remains both a learning tool and a pathway to opportunity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taken together, Showcase Day affirmed that WordPress is more than just a CMS — it is a platform for equitable technology, global collaboration, cutting-edge enterprise solutions, and the future of digital education. WordPress has the power to be both a platform and a community tool for education, equity, and innovation.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Presentation Days: Learning, Inspiration, and Connection</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The first full day of sessions at WordCamp US 2025 opened with warm remarks from the organizing team, who reminded attendees: <em>“The most important thanks goes to all of you. The mix of new energy and veteran experience is what makes WordCamp so special, so thank you for being here.”</em> That spirit of gratitude and community carried throughout the event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Sponsor Hall became a hub of activity, complete with raffles, the return of Career Corner, and even a Voodoo Donut Truck parked outside. Attendees lined up to test their luck at a claw machine stuffed with plush Wapuus, while others sought guidance at the Happiness Bar — a hands-on help desk for WordPress questions big and small. Between these activities, the steady buzz of conversations made it clear: the “hallway track” remained one of WordCamp’s most valuable experiences.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WordCamp US - Danny Sullivan &quot;How (and why!) Google Search Keeps Evolving&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZF_sxLdfTbY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The program itself set a high bar. Danny Sullivan’s keynote shed light on how search has evolved to meet the needs of new generations, from 24/7 demand and mobile expectations to short-form video and AI. His session gave attendees a deeper understanding of how search intersects with publishing today and sparked conversations about how WordPress can continue adapting in an era where AI shapes discovery and content.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, the schedule unfolded across multiple tracks. The Core AI panel — featuring <a href=\"https://youtu.be/v_0O6dQ4Q4E\">James LePage, Felix Arntz, and Jeffrey Paul</a> — offered a look into how AI tools are woven into WordPress core. Emphasizing ethics, transparency, and user empowerment, the panel painted a roadmap for how WordPress can adopt new technologies without compromising its open-source values.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19103\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/Programming-Day-1-2.jpg?w=1600&amp;ssl=1 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Hands-on learning played a significant role throughout the conference. Ryan Welcher’s interactive <em>Block Developer Cookbook</em> drew a packed room as participants worked through community-selected code recipes built on the latest WordPress APIs. By the end, attendees left with working examples and practical strategies they could bring back to their projects.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The program also highlighted diverse technical perspectives. <a href=\"https://youtu.be/vBjNqdacbh4\">Jemima Abu’s</a> session, <em>A PHP Developer’s Guide to ReactJS</em>, bridged the gap between classic and modern web development. At the same time, Adam Gazzaley’s keynote, <em>A New Era of Experiential Medicine – AI and the Brain</em>, invited attendees to consider the human side of technology, exploring how digital tools can advance health and well-being.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second day of presentations, Friday, August 29, opened with creativity and imagination. <a href=\"https://youtu.be/O7FPiFpRI3o\">John Maeda’s</a> keynote, <em>Cozy AI Cooking: WordCamp Edition</em>, used the metaphor of a kitchen to demystify AI, blending storytelling with technical insight to show how curiosity and care can guide builders in integrating AI into their work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later in the day, <a href=\"https://youtu.be/ORnJTpjA-4w\">Tammie Lister’s</a> <em>The System is the Strategy</em> illustrated how design systems provide structure and scalability for growing WordPress projects. At the same time, Adam Silverstein’s Unlock Developer Superpowers with AI showcased new ways developers can use emerging tools to speed up workflows and problem-solving.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Community stories also took center stage. In Creators around a Campfire, Anne McCarthy, Jamie Marsland, Christian Taylor, Mark Szymanski, and Michael Cunningham reflected on how YouTubers and content creators shape the WordPress ecosystem. Their session highlighted the role of storytelling and education in expanding WordPress’s reach to new audiences worldwide.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Sponsor Hall remained lively between sessions — with attendees meeting companies, testing demos, and swapping ideas that extended far beyond the conference halls. They also shared moments together at the arcade built for the event and added smiles, hugs, and laughter, which underscored the atmosphere: WordCamp US was as much about connection as code.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Together Into the Future</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As the event drew to a close, WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg took the stage to share the current state of WordPress and a vision for its future. He highlighted the growth in social media for WordPress with 124,726 new followers since last WCUS — and the WordPress.org website growing over 10% in users along with almost 20% in new users. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Matt also spotlighted community initiatives shaping the future of open source education and diversity: WordPress Campus Connect, which has already reached 570 students across 11 events. Combined with the growth in overall events (77) which is a 32.76% increase over 2024. Each effort reinforced the message that WordPress is more than software; it is a global movement driven by people.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"WordCamp US 2025 - Ma.tt Mullenweg &quot;Keynote Address &amp; Q&amp;A&quot;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/45HRzzc0waU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen></iframe>\n</div></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He concluded with a live Q&amp;A, fielding questions from the audience on the direction of WordPress, its role in an AI-driven web, and the importance of keeping the project open, inclusive, and adaptable. The final notes of the keynote carried into a closing party in downtown Portland, where attendees capped off the week with music, conversation, and the unmistakable joy of a community coming together.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Closing</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp US 2025 once again demonstrated what makes the WordPress ecosystem extraordinary: a community committed to building tools, resources, and opportunities that empower people everywhere.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year also marked the debut of the <a href=\"https://airtable.com/appWF6hdXuEOFQMvV/shrV5RZIv0aJjjU00\">Open Horizons Scholarship</a>, which funded six recipients — two organizers, three volunteers, and one speaker — from five countries. A total of $14,670 supported their journeys to WCUS. The scholarship, which also supports participation at WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Europe, is designed to make flagship events more accessible to contributors worldwide.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A heartfelt thank you goes to the organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and speakers who brought the Portland edition to life — and to every attendee who joined us in person or followed along online. We hope you leave with fresh ideas, meaningful connections, and renewed energy to help shape the future of the open web.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped has-black-background-color has-background wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\" style=\"border-width:20px\">\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86b29f&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86b29f\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19112\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948.jpg?resize=1024%2C577&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19112\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C577&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C865&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_215948-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1153&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gale Wallace</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86b543&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86b543\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19124\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19124\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6997-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Topher DeRosia</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86b7fd&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86b7fd\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19122\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19122\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_7014-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Topher DeRosia</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86ba67&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86ba67\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19107\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752.jpg?resize=1024%2C577&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19107\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C577&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C865&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250826_101752-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1153&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gale Wallace</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86bd3a&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86bd3a\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"675\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19108\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?resize=1024%2C675&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19108\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?resize=1024%2C675&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?resize=300%2C198&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?resize=768%2C506&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?resize=1536%2C1012&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/20250825_113602.jpg?w=1764&amp;ssl=1 1764w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gale Wallace</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86c0b6&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86c0b6\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19113\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19113\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC9076-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86c2db&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86c2db\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"433\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19106\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809.jpeg?resize=1024%2C433&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19106\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C433&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C127&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C325&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C650&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6809-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C866&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Topher DeRosia</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86c506&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86c506\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19110\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC04553.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19110\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/DSC04553.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, 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srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6827-scaled.jpeg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6827-scaled.jpeg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6827-scaled.jpeg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6827-scaled.jpeg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG_6827-scaled.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Topher DeRosia</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af86c9b1&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af86c9b1\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"19133\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19133\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/IMG-20250829-WA0024.jpg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button></figure>\n</figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Be sure to mark your calendars for the next global gatherings: <a href=\"https://asia.wordcamp.org/2026/\">WordCamp Asia 2026</a>&nbsp; in Mumbai, India, <a href=\"https://europe.wordcamp.org/2026/\">WordCamp Europe 2026</a>&nbsp; in Kraków, Poland, and WordCamp US 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. We can’t wait to see you at the next chapter of the WordPress story.</p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"19074\";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:2;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:69:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"Portland, Are You Ready? The WCUS 2025 Schedule Has Arrived!\";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:93:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/08/portland-are-you-ready-the-wcus-2025-schedule-has-arrived/\";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, 06 Aug 2025 20:03:43 +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:8:\"category\";a:5:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"Community\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6:\"Events\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"WordCamp\";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:3;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"WCUS\";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:4;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"WordCamps\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=19004\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:402:\"We’re excited to announce that the full schedule for WordCamp US 2025 has been published! From August 26–29 in Portland, Oregon, join web creators, innovators, and community leaders for four days of learning, collaboration, and inspiration. This year’s lineup brings together sessions on everything from cutting-edge AI to hands-on workshops, performance, accessibility, design, and the [&#8230;]\";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:\"Brett McSherry\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5698:\"\n<p>We’re excited to announce that the full schedule for WordCamp US 2025 has been published! From August 26–29 in Portland, Oregon, join web creators, innovators, and community leaders for four days of learning, collaboration, and inspiration. This year’s lineup brings together sessions on everything from cutting-edge AI to hands-on workshops, performance, accessibility, design, and the future of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader.png?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19026\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader-scaled.png?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader-scaled.png?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader-scaled.png?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader-scaled.png?resize=1536%2C864&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/08/ScheduleHeader-scaled.png?resize=2048%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"padding-top:0;padding-right:0;padding-bottom:0;padding-left:0\"><strong>Check out the full schedule and start planning your WordCamp experience.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button is-style-fill\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-blue-1-background-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/schedule/\">View The Schedule</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Contributor Day — Connect, Collaborate, and Give Back</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Kicking off the week on Tuesday, August 26 is Contributor Day, it is your chance to roll up your sleeves and make a direct impact on WordPress. Whether you’re a seasoned developer, creative designer, translator, marketer, or simply passionate about open source, there’s a place for you to get involved. Join WordPress teams working on real projects, share your skills, and connect with people across the global community. Contributor Day is also a fantastic place for hiring managers or business owners to meet emerging talent and see contributors in action. Lunch is provided, and both in-person and select remote participation options are available. If you’ve ever wanted to help shape the future of WordPress, this is your moment!<br></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/schedule/#contributor-day\">Start planning your Contributor Day activities &gt;&gt;</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Showcase Day — See WordPress in Action</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Showcase Day on Wednesday, August 27, shines a spotlight on what&#8217;s possible with WordPress. Get inspired by live demos, case studies, and actionable presentations from experts and innovators using WordPress in creative and impactful ways. You’ll see how changemakers, nonprofits, publishers, and agencies use WordPress to solve real-world problems, build new products, and drive the web forward. Highlights include hands-on workshops, technical talks, and practical sessions covering everything from design systems to modern AI. It’s a full day dedicated to celebrating the talent, creativity, and innovation of the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/schedule/#showcase-day\">See where these inspirational showcases take you &gt;&gt;</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conference Days — Learn, Connect, and Level Up</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The main event days for Thursday and Friday, August 28-29, feature a robust mix of technical deep-dives, product masterclasses, and sessions designed for all experience levels. Whether you’re a developer, designer, business owner, or just starting out, you’ll find plenty to explore—from future-focused discussions on AI and performance to hands-on workshops and networking events that bring the community together.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Keynote Highlights:</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN:</strong> The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Philanthropists, and Technologists Can Build an Equitable World. Featured Wednesday, August 27.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Danny Sullivan, from Google Search</strong>: Industry leader, featured Thursday, August 28.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Matt Mullenweg, Co-founder of WordPress:</strong> Featured Friday, August 29.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>More keynotes announcing soon!</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>With dozens of sessions across multiple tracks, plus workshops and networking opportunities, WordCamp US is set to be an unforgettable experience. Don’t miss your chance to connect, share ideas, and help shape the future of the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Check out the full schedule and start planning your WordCamp experience.</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button is-style-fill\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-blue-1-background-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/schedule/\">View The Schedule</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"19004\";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:3;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:54:\"Maintenance Releases for WordPress branches 4.7 to 6.7\";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:90:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/08/maintenance-releases-for-wordpress-branches-4-7-to-6-7/\";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, 05 Aug 2025 19:11:05 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:7:\"General\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"minor-releases\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"releases\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18997\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:374:\"Following on from the WordPress 6.8.2 maintenance release last month, the included update to the root security certificate bundle has been backported to all branches back to 4.7. This ensures that when your site performs server-side HTTP requests, the most up-to-date information about trusted security certificates is used. Further information can be found on the [&#8230;]\";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:15:\"John Blackbourn\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:2119:\"\n<p>Following on from <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/07/wordpress-6-8-2-maintenance-release/\">the WordPress 6.8.2 maintenance release last month</a>, the included update to the root security certificate bundle has been backported to all branches back to 4.7. This ensures that when your site performs server-side HTTP requests, the most up-to-date information about trusted security certificates is used. Further information can be found on <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/62811\">the Core Trac ticket</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A new maintenance release for each branch from 4.7 to 6.7 is now available. If you have sites on these branches and they support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest and only supported version of WordPress remains as 6.8.2. This is being done as a courtesy for sites still running older versions of WordPress. You can <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.8.2.zip\">download WordPress 6.8.2 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Special thanks to <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>desrosj</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/ocean90/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>ocean90</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>davidbaumwald</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>peterwilsoncc</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>jorbin</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/estelaris/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>estelaris</a>, and <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>johnbillion</a> for backporting and releasing this update.</p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18997\";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:4;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:35:\"WordPress 6.8.2 Maintenance Release\";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:71:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/07/wordpress-6-8-2-maintenance-release/\";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, 15 Jul 2025 15:41:50 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"Releases\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:14:\"minor-releases\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"releases\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18903\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:357:\"WordPress 6.8.2 is now available! This minor release includes fixes for 20 Core tickets and 15 Block Editor issues. For a full list of bug fixes, please refer to the release candidate announcement. WordPress 6.8.2 is a short-cycle maintenance release. More maintenance releases may be made available throughout 2025. If you have sites that support [&#8230;]\";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:9:\"Jb Audras\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:10720:\"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 6.8.2 is now available!</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This minor release includes fixes for <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?resolution=fixed&amp;milestone=6.8.2&amp;group=component&amp;col=id&amp;col=summary&amp;col=milestone&amp;col=owner&amp;col=type&amp;col=status&amp;col=priority&amp;order=priority\">20 Core tickets</a> and <a href=\"https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/70557\">15 Block Editor issues</a>. For a full list of bug fixes, please refer to the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/2025/07/08/wordpress-6-8-2-rc1-is-now-available/\">release candidate announcement.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.8.2 is a short-cycle maintenance release. More maintenance releases may be made available throughout 2025.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.8.2.zip\">download WordPress 6.8.2 from WordPress.org</a>, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/support/wordpress-version/version-6-8-2\">visit the HelpHub version page</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dropping security updates for WordPress versions 4.1 through 4.6</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not directly related to the 6.8.2 maintenance release, but <a href=\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/06/dropping-security-updates-for-wordpress-versions-4-1-through-4-6/\">branches 4.1 to 4.6 had their final release today</a>. These branches won&#8217;t receive any security update anymore.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thank you to these WordPress contributors</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.8.2 was led by <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/\">Jb Audras</a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/estelaris/\">Estela Rueda</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zunaid321/\">Zunaid Amin</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Special thanks to <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>davidbaumwald</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/sergeybiryukov/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>sergeybiryukov</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>mamaduka</a>, <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>wildworks</a> and <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>jorbin</a> for their help on specific release tasks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress 6.8.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following 96 people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-wporg-props-medium has-white-color has-midnight-gradient-background has-text-color has-background has-link-color has-normal-font-size wp-elements-2ad7deb15a87fd29427f001e4c18a1ac\"><a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jorbin\">Aaron Jorbin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/adamsilverstein\">Adam Silverstein</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zieladam\">Adam Zieliński</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks\">Aki Hamano</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/alexstine\">Alex Stine</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/anatolbroder\">Anatol Broder</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/afercia\">Andrea Fercia</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nacin\">Andrew Nacin</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ankitkumarshah\">Ankit Kumar Shah</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu\">annezazu</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/azharderaiya\">Azhar Deraiya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/benjamingosset\">Benjamin Gosset</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bhubbard\">Brandon Hubbard</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/kraftbj\">Brandon Kraft</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/brhodes\">brhodes</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/poena\">Carolina Nymark</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/czarate\">Chris Zarate</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/courane01\">Courtney Robertson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/talldanwp\">Daniel Richards</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/darshitrajyaguru97\">Darshit Rajyaguru</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald\">David Baumwald</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dmsnell\">Dennis Snell</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dhruvang21\">Dhruvang21</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dilipbheda\">Dilip Bheda</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dd32\">Dion Hulse</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/divinenephron\">divinenephron</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustintechsmith\">dustintechsmith</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ericlewis\">Eric Andrew Lewis</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/im3dabasia1\">Eshaan Dabasiya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/estelaris\">Estela Rueda</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/eherman24\">Evan Herman</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/fabiankaegy\">Fabian Kägy</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/faisalahammad\">Faisal Ahammad</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90\">Felix Arntz</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/pento\">Gary Pendergast</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/guddu1315\">Gaurang Dabhi</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mamaduka\">George Mamadashvili</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/gernberg\">gernberg</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/gziolo\">Greg Ziółkowski</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/harshgajipara\">Harsh Gajipara</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/helgatheviking\">HelgaTheViking</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/abcd95\">Himanshu Pathak</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb\">Jb Audras</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/JeffPaul\">Jeffrey Paul</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jdy68\">Jenny Dupuy</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/luminuu\">Jessica Lyschik</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jigarpanchal\">Jigar Panchal</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/joedolson\">Joe Dolson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/joemcgill\">Joe McGill</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/johnbillion\">John Blackbourn</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mindctrl\">John Parris</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/jonsurrell\">Jon Surrell</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj\">Jonathan Desrosiers</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/spacedmonkey\">Jonny Harris</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/kausaralm\">Kausar Alam</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/kishanjasani\">Kishan Jasani</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/tyxla\">Marin Atanasov</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/matt\">Matt Mullenweg</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/pfefferle\">Matthias Pfefferle</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/megane9988\">megane9988</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mosescursor\">Moses Cursor Ssebunya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mukesh27\">Mukesh Panchal</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/mwillman1991\">mwillman1991</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/bugnumber9\">Nazar Hotsa</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nidhidhandhukiya\">nidhidhandhukiya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/nikunj8866\">Nikunj Hatkar</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/oferlaor\">oferlaor</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/oglekler\">Olga Gleckler</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/swissspidy\">Pascal Birchler</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/paulstanos\">paulstanos</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/peterwilsoncc\">Peter Wilson</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/puggan\">puggan</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ravigadhiyawp\">Ravi Gadhiya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/youknowriad\">Riad Benguella</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/rollybueno\">Rolly Bueno</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/room34\">room34</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sainathpoojary\">Sainath Poojary</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sajjad67\">Sajjad Hossain Sagor</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/Sam_a\">sam_a</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sandeepdahiya\">Sandeep Dahiya</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/SergeyBiryukov\">Sergey Biryukov</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/shanemuir\">Shane Muirhead</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/siliconforks\">siliconforks</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sirlouen\">SirLouen</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt\">Stephen Bernhardt</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/sukhendu2002\">Sukhendu Sekhar Guria</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/karmatosed\">Tammie Lister</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/TobiasBg\">Tobias Bäthge</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/wpsmith\">Travis Smith</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/ugyensupport\">Ugyen Dorji</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/uxl\">uxl</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/westonruter\">Weston Ruter</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/whaze\">whaze</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/getsyash\">Yash B</a>, <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/yogeshbhutkar\">Yogesh Bhutkar</a>, and <a href=\"https://profiles.wordpress.org/zunaid321\">Zunaid Amin</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to contribute</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, <a href=\"https://core.trac.wordpress.org/report/6\">pick a ticket</a>, and join the conversation on Slack, in the <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW\">#core</a> and <a href=\"https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C080HLPP2Q6\">#6-8-release-leads</a> channels. Need help? Check out the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/\">Core Contributor Handbook</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right\"><em>Thanks to <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/estelaris/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>estelaris</a> and <a href=\'https://profiles.wordpress.org/zunaid321/\' class=\'mention\'><span class=\'mentions-prefix\'>@</span>zunaid321</a> for proofreading.</em></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18903\";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:5;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:71:\"Celebrating Kim Parsell: 2025 WordCamp US Scholarship Applications Open\";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://wordpress.org/news/2025/07/kim-parsell-2025-wcus-scholarship-applications-open/\";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, 14 Jul 2025 18:57:47 +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:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"Community\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"WordCamp\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18911\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:364:\"The WordPress Foundation is pleased to announce the return of the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2025. Applications are being accepted until July 25, 2025. Remembering Kim Parsell Kim Parsell was a dedicated contributor and a beloved member of the WordPress community. Her passion for open source and her welcoming spirit inspired many, [&#8230;]\";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:\"Brett McSherry\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6224:\"\n<p>The WordPress Foundation is pleased to announce the return of the <strong>Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship</strong> for WordCamp US 2025. Applications are being accepted until <strong>July 25, 2025</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full has-custom-border\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"604\" height=\"370\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/wpdocs-team-1.webp?resize=604%2C370&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18912\" style=\"border-width:25px;border-radius:40px\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/wpdocs-team-1.webp?w=604&amp;ssl=1 604w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/wpdocs-team-1.webp?resize=300%2C184&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 604px) 100vw, 604px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-off-white-2-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-6cbf45de wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\" style=\"margin-top:48px;margin-bottom:48px;padding-top:24px;padding-bottom:24px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-not-stacked-on-mobile is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:2%\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:96%\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Remembering Kim Parsell</h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-28f84493 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:40%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/Kim-parsell-twitter-image-2.jpeg?resize=400%2C400&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18956\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/Kim-parsell-twitter-image-2.jpeg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/Kim-parsell-twitter-image-2.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/Kim-parsell-twitter-image-2.jpeg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" /></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:60%\">\n<p>Kim Parsell was a dedicated contributor and a beloved member of the WordPress community. Her passion for open source and her welcoming spirit inspired many, both online and in person. Each year at WordCamp US, the WordPress Foundation celebrates Kim’s legacy by supporting contributors who share her commitment and enthusiasm. The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship aims to make it easier for deserving community members to attend WordCamp US, reflecting Kim’s belief in making WordPress accessible and inclusive for all.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--10);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--10)\">If you’re unfamiliar with Kim’s story or her invaluable role in the community, we encourage you to <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2019/memories-of-kim-parsell/\">read these heartfelt tributes</a> collected from friends and colleagues.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:2%\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Scholarship Eligibility</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This year, a single scholarship will be awarded. To qualify, applicants must:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Identify as a woman</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Be actively involved as a contributor to WordPress</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Have never attended WordCamp US before</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Demonstrate a need for financial support to attend the event</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you meet these qualifications, we invite you to apply before the July 25 deadline. All applicants will be notified of the decision by August 7, 2025.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For additional information, visit the <a href=\"https://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/\">Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship page</a> hosted by the WordPress Foundation.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-off-white-2-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8503c47b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\"><strong>Ready to Apply?</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-text-align-center wp-element-button\" href=\"https://wordcampcentral.survey.fm/wcus-2025-kim-parsell-scholarship-application\">Submit Your Application Today</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full has-custom-border\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/kim-jose.jpeg?resize=500%2C333&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18917\" style=\"border-width:25px;border-radius:40px\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/kim-jose.jpeg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/07/kim-jose.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Join the Celebration</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Tickets for WordCamp US 2025 are now available—secure yours soon!</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Volunteer applications are open until July 11, 2025</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Interested in supporting the event? Explore our <a>sponsorship opportunities</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Help us spread the word about this opportunity and make WordCamp US 2025 even more special.</p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18911\";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:6;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:92:\"Introducing WordPress Credits: A New Contribution Internship Program for University Students\";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:127:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/07/introducing-wordpress-credits-a-new-contribution-internship-program-for-university-students/\";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:\"Thu, 10 Jul 2025 16:56:52 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"Community\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:9:\"community\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:17:\"WordPress Credits\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18913\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:393:\"The WordPress Foundation is proud to launch WordPress Credits, a contribution-focused internship program that brings university students into the heart of the WordPress open source project. While WordPress thrives on contributions from a global volunteer community, many students and newcomers face barriers to entry, such as a lack of structured guidance or real-world experience in [&#8230;]\";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:12:\"Isotta Peira\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4712:\"\n<p>The WordPress Foundation is proud to launch WordPress Credits, a contribution-focused internship program that brings university students into the heart of the WordPress open source project. While WordPress thrives on contributions from a global volunteer community, many students and newcomers face barriers to entry, such as a lack of structured guidance or real-world experience in open source projects. This new program is designed to bridge that gap, nurturing future contributors and ensuring WordPress remains innovative, inclusive, and sustainable for years to come.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://gamma.app/docs/EN-WordPress-Credits-vz0k2vr1ulg91qq?mode=doc\">pilot program</a>, developed in partnership with the University of Pisa, was announced on stage at WordCamp Europe 2025 by Matt Mullenweg and Mary Hubbard. Since then, it has attracted interest from students across various fields of study, including humanities, computer science, and communication. Companies in the WordPress ecosystem have also expressed support and interest in contributing to the project. In response to the growing interest from both community members and academic institutions, we are now inviting more universities to join the initiative.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Open to students from all fields of study, the program blends structured onboarding with a personalized contribution project. Activities are adapted to each student’s degree program and familiarity with WordPress, aiming to develop transferable skills, academic-related competencies, and active participation in the WordPress community. Internship durations may vary depending on the university or educational institution. Some may align with academic semesters (typically 3–4 months), while others, like the University of Pisa, allow students to sign up year-round with a requirement to complete a set number of contribution hours (e.g. 150 hours). Flexible arrangements can be discussed to meet the specific requirements of each institution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Foundational Training includes:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>An introduction to open source principles and the WordPress Foundation</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Getting familiar with community tools (Slack, Make blogs, Learn platform, GitHub)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Setting up a personal WordPress site and publishing content</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Each student will choose a contribution area and design their own personal project within that area. Examples of possible projects include:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Translating interfaces or documentation</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Creating multilingual subtitles for educational videos</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Contributing code or performing testing</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Supporting product development or design</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Writing or editing content</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Assisting with community event organization</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Developing training materials for Learn WordPress</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Creating open source tools</li>\n\n\n\n<li>And much more…<br></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Interns are guided by an experienced mentor specific to their chosen area and supported by a dedicated WordPress Foundation contact person throughout the program. All student contributions, whether code, translations, documentation, or educational materials, will be publicly visible and integrated into official WordPress projects and resources, directly benefiting the wider community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Interested universities and educational institutions</strong> interested in participating can reach out by filling <a href=\"https://airtable.com/appIzQKfwTn5dyPVp/shrYvY0CDNIkILIre\">the interest form</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also invite companies in the WordPress ecosystem to support this initiative by sponsoring mentors who will guide and empower the next generation of contributors, or by providing tools and resources that help students succeed in their contribution journey.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If your company is interested in getting involved</strong>, please visit the <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/wordpress-credits-contribution-internship-program/get-involved-company-guide/\">Company Guide</a> to learn more and <a href=\"https://airtable.com/appIzQKfwTn5dyPVp/shrKDkjeUdw8Fof34\">fill out the form</a> to join the program.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By welcoming students, mentors, sponsors, and volunteers into this initiative, we are building a stronger and more connected WordPress community. Each person who takes part, whether they guide a student, share their experiences, provide sponsorship, or simply help spread the word, helps ensure that open source remains vibrant and accessible for all. Together, we are not just supporting individual contributors; we are shaping the future of WordPress and open source itself.</em></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18913\";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:7;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:46:\"WordCamp US 2025: See You in Portland, Oregon!\";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:79:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-see-you-in-portland-oregon/\";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, 27 Jun 2025 18:14:33 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6:\"Events\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"WordCamp\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"WCUS\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18884\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:383:\"WordCamp US 2025 is heading to vibrant Portland, Oregon, from August 26–29, 2025! Join fellow open source enthusiasts, developers, designers, and WordPress professionals from across the United States and around the world for four days of learning, networking, and collaboration at the Oregon Convention Center. Nestled in the Pacific Northwest, Portland is famous for its [&#8230;]\";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:\"Brett McSherry\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8274:\"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-portland.png?resize=1024%2C576&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18885\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-portland.png?resize=1024%2C576&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-portland.png?resize=300%2C169&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-portland.png?resize=768%2C432&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us-2025-portland.png?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp US 2025 is heading to vibrant Portland, Oregon, from August 26–29, 2025! Join fellow open source enthusiasts, developers, designers, and WordPress professionals from across the United States and around the world for four days of learning, networking, and collaboration at the Oregon Convention Center.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nestled in the Pacific Northwest, Portland is famous for its creative spirit, lush green spaces, and riverside trails, making it an inspiring backdrop for this year’s WordCamp. Whether building your first site or leading a digital agency, WordCamp US offers something for everyone, all set against the city’s stunning natural scenery.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-off-white-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8503c47b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f39f.png\" alt=\"🎟\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" /> <strong>Tickets are limited—secure yours today!</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-text-align-center wp-element-button\" href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/tickets/\">Get your ticket now</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to Expect</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Contributor Day: August 26</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Kick off your WordCamp US experience by giving back. Contributor Day welcomes all skill levels to collaborate on teams that help make WordPress better, from code to community to documentation. You can make a difference to the project, and build new friendships or rekindle old ones, perhaps even while enjoying views of Portland’s skyline and tree-lined streets.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Main Conference: August 27–29</h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Showcase Day &#8211; August 27</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of the main conference, day one will give us a look at project showcases, discover innovative uses of WordPress, see how people push the platform’s boundaries, and get inspired to try something new.</p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Session Days + Expo Hall &#8211; August 28-29</h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Experience another two days filled with inspiring keynotes, practical sessions, and deep dives into the latest trends in web development, design, content, accessibility, and more. Hear from some of the brightest minds in the WordPress ecosystem and explore topics that get to the heart of what makes WordPress unique. Also, take some time to explore the main floors of WCUS, like the Sponsors Hall.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Networking and Community</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Meet WordPress friends new and old, exchange ideas with community leaders, and collaborate with people who share your passion for open source. Enjoy daily lunches and a memorable social event, all included with your ticket. Stroll along the Willamette River or explore nearby parks in between sessions.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Venue &amp; Accommodations</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>This year, we’re gathering at the Oregon Convention Center in the heart of Portland—a city known for its vibrant neighborhoods and abundant green spaces. We’ve secured a special hotel block right across the street at the Hyatt Regency Portland for convenient, comfortable lodging during your stay.</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f3e2.png\" alt=\"🏢\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" /></strong> <strong>Oregon Convention Center<br></strong>777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd<br>Portland, OR 97232<br></li>\n\n\n\n<li><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f6cf.png\" alt=\"🛏\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" /> <strong>Hyatt Regency Portland</strong><br>375 NE Holladay Street<br>Portland, OR 97232<br><a href=\"https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/group-booking/PDXRP/G-CAMP\">Book your room!</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Registration and Tickets</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Registration officially kicked off last month. Secure your spot early; tickets are selling quickly.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-off-white-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8503c47b wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\"><img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f39f.png\" alt=\"🎟\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" /> <strong>Tickets are limited—secure yours today!</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-text-align-center wp-element-button\" href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/tickets/\">Get your ticket now</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ready to Plan Your WordCamp US Experience?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep checking the <a href=\"https://us.wordcamp.org/2025/\">WordCamp US site</a> for travel tips, to book accommodations, and to watch for the whole event schedule—coming soon! While here, why not plan to take in some of Portland’s scenic hiking trails, bike-friendly streets, or local food scene?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay tuned for updates and announcements on <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/handbook/social-media/\">WordPress social media channels</a>, and join the conversation.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Help Us Spread the Word!</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether attending in person or following along online, share your experience and help welcome others to the WordPress community. Use the #WCUS and #WordPress hashtags and tell your story on social!</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18898\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/wordcamp-us.jpg?w=2048&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Portland is calling—see you at WordCamp US 2025! <img src=\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/16.0.1/72x72/1f332.png\" alt=\"🌲\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" /></p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18884\";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:8;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:60:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:64:\"Dropping security updates for WordPress versions 4.1 through 4.6\";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:100:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/06/dropping-security-updates-for-wordpress-versions-4-1-through-4-6/\";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:\"Thu, 19 Jun 2025 15:26:06 +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:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"Security\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:7:\"Updates\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18872\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:331:\"As of July 2025, the WordPress Security Team will no longer provide security updates for WordPress versions 4.1 through 4.6. These versions were first released nine or more years ago and over 99% of WordPress installations run a more recent version. The chances this will affect your site, or sites, is very small. If you [&#8230;]\";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:15:\"John Blackbourn\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:3132:\"\n<p>As of July 2025, the WordPress Security Team will no longer provide security updates for WordPress versions 4.1 through 4.6.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>These versions were first released nine or more years ago and over 99% of WordPress installations run a more recent version. The chances this will affect your site, or sites, is very small.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are unsure if you are running an up-to-date version of WordPress, please log in to your site’s dashboard. Out of date versions will display a notice that looks like this:</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full has-custom-border\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1048\" height=\"122\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/WordPress-681-update-notice.png?resize=1048%2C122&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Dashboard notice: &quot;WordPress 6.8.1 is available! Please update now.&quot;\" class=\"has-border-color has-luminous-vivid-amber-border-color wp-image-18873\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/WordPress-681-update-notice.png?w=1048&amp;ssl=1 1048w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/WordPress-681-update-notice.png?resize=300%2C35&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/WordPress-681-update-notice.png?resize=1024%2C119&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/WordPress-681-update-notice.png?resize=768%2C89&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The version you are running is displayed in the bottom of the “At a Glance” section of the dashboard.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large has-custom-border\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"281\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?resize=1024%2C281&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"At a glance widget showing a site running WordPress 4.1.41\" class=\"has-border-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-border-color wp-image-18875\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?resize=1024%2C281&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?resize=300%2C82&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?resize=768%2C211&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?resize=1536%2C421&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2022/09/at-a-glance-wp-4141.png?w=1798&amp;ssl=1 1798w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As a reminder, the only <em>actively</em> supported version of WordPress is the most recent one. Security updates are only backported to older branches as a courtesy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Make WordPress Security blog has further details about <a href=\"https://make.wordpress.org/security/2025/06/18/security-updates-will-cease-for-wordpress-versions-4-1-through-4-6/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https://make.wordpress.org/security/2025/06/18/security-updates-will-cease-for-wordpress-versions-4-1-through-4-6/\">the process to end support</a>.</p>\n\";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:30:\"com-wordpress:feed-additions:1\";a:1:{s:7:\"post-id\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:5:\"18872\";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:9;a:6:{s:4:\"data\";s:63:\"\n		\n		\n		\n		\n		\n				\n		\n		\n		\n\n					\n										\n					\n		\n		\n			\";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:4:{s:0:\"\";a:6:{s:5:\"title\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:51:\"WCEU 2025: A Community Celebration in the Swiss Sun\";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:86:\"https://wordpress.org/news/2025/06/wceu-2025-a-community-celebration-in-the-swiss-sun/\";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, 07 Jun 2025 19:19:18 +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:8:\"category\";a:3:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:6:\"Events\";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:1;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:8:\"WordCamp\";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:2;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:4:\"WCEU\";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:35:\"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=18776\";s:7:\"attribs\";a:1:{s:0:\"\";a:1:{s:11:\"isPermaLink\";s:5:\"false\";}}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:362:\"Over 1,723 attendees from 84 countries gathered at the Messe and Congress Center Basel in Switzerland, and 20,353 more joined online for WordCamp Europe 2025. I’m personally very excited&#8230; There’s so much I want to do. I think there’s a clear pathway to 7.0 and beyond. Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder The flagship WordPress event kicked [&#8230;]\";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:\"Brett McSherry\";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:40:\"http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/\";a:1:{s:7:\"encoded\";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:\"data\";s:61400:\"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18837\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/IMG-20250607-WA0151-scaled.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;ssl=1 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" /><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Photo by Nilo Velez</em></figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Over 1,723 attendees from 84 countries gathered at the Messe and Congress Center Basel in Switzerland, and 20,353 more joined online for WordCamp Europe 2025.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-6c531013 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>I’m personally very excited&#8230; There’s so much I want to do. I think there’s a clear pathway to 7.0 and beyond.</p><cite>Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder</cite></blockquote></figure>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>The flagship WordPress event kicked off in Basel, Switzerland, with a dedicated Contributor Day. It was followed by two days of engaging talks, panels, hands-on workshops, and vibrant community connections. WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Mary Hubbard joined a diverse lineup of speakers and panelists, sharing insights in the heart of one of Europe’s most charming cities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Set against the backdrop of Basel’s historic streets and Rhine-side views, the sponsor hall buzzed with activity as companies from across the WordPress ecosystem showcased their latest innovations, offered live demos, and connected with attendees. Each day, participants refueled with a range of local and international cuisine — from Swiss specialties to global favorites — making mealtime a lively space for networking, collaboration, and sparking new ideas.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Global Gathering in Basel</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp Europe has long been one of the most anticipated WordPress events of the year — a space where community, creativity, and collaboration thrive. This year in Basel, the conference delivered an exciting and diverse program that reached every corner of the WordPress ecosystem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here’s what attendees experienced:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Engaging Sessions Across Tracks</strong> &#8211; Across two full days, the conference featured informative talks, captivating keynotes, and dynamic discussions exploring WordPress and the broader web.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A Global Speaker Lineup</strong> &#8211; The stage welcomed 52 speakers from 23 countries across five continents, each bringing unique insights and global perspectives.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Wide-Ranging Topics</strong> &#8211; The schedule included 45 sessions and four hands-on workshops across three tracks, covering:\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Accessibility and key policy updates like the European Accessibility Act and the Cyber Resilience Act</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The evolving role of Artificial Intelligence in the open web</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Cutting-edge web design, development best practices, SEO, and content strategy</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Real-world case studies and showcases from across the community</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Hands-On Learning Opportunities</strong> &#8211; Interactive workshops allowed attendees to roll up their sleeves and develop practical skills in a collaborative setting.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A Community Built on Collaboration</strong> &#8211; Whether developer, designer, content creator, or entrepreneur, every attendee found space to connect, learn, and grow within a vibrant and welcoming community.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Contributor Day</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp Europe began with a vibrant Contributor Day that brought together 640 contributors—including many first-timers—to collaborate, share knowledge, and support the WordPress project. Guided by 33 dedicated table leads, with 21 teams, attendees of all experience levels came together to exchange ideas, solve real challenges, and make meaningful contributions to open source. From accessibility improvements to theme development and translation efforts, every table played a part in moving WordPress forward.</p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped has-black-background-color has-background wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\" style=\"border-width:20px;border-radius:2px\">\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af883310&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af883310\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"18798\" 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/><button\n			class=\"lightbox-trigger\"\n			type=\"button\"\n			aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"\n			aria-label=\"Enlarge\"\n			data-wp-init=\"callbacks.initTriggerButton\"\n			data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\"\n			data-wp-style--right=\"state.imageButtonRight\"\n			data-wp-style--top=\"state.imageButtonTop\"\n		>\n			<svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" fill=\"none\" viewBox=\"0 0 12 12\">\n				<path fill=\"#fff\" d=\"M2 0a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v2h1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 1 .5-.5h2V0H2Zm2 10.5H2a.5.5 0 0 1-.5-.5V8H0v2a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h2v-1.5ZM8 12v-1.5h2a.5.5 0 0 0 .5-.5V8H12v2a2 2 0 0 1-2 2H8Zm2-12a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v2h-1.5V2a.5.5 0 0 0-.5-.5H8V0h2Z\" />\n			</svg>\n		</button><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Thanh Nguyen</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af88357a&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af88357a\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img 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class=\"wp-element-caption\">Jeroen Rotty</figcaption></figure>\n\n\n\n<figure data-wp-context=\"{&quot;imageId&quot;:&quot;68f09af8837c9&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"core/image\" data-wp-key=\"68f09af8837c9\" class=\"wp-block-image size-large wp-lightbox-container\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-wp-class--hide=\"state.isContentHidden\" data-wp-class--show=\"state.isContentVisible\" data-wp-init=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async--click=\"actions.showLightbox\" data-wp-on-async--load=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-wp-on-async-window--resize=\"callbacks.setButtonStyles\" data-id=\"18800\" src=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/54568127677_4608e6c2e5_k.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18800\" srcset=\"https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2025/06/54568127677_4608e6c2e5_k.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&amp;ssl=1 1024w, 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