Will We See In-Person WordCamps in 2021? An Open Discussion on a Path Forward

Now that COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming more widespread, many hope that in-person WordCamps can once again be a reality. There is no official path forward just yet, and decisions will likely be locally based in the coming months. Angela Jin, a community organizer for Automattic, announced an open discussion around the topic. Currently, all WordCamps are online-only events. There is …

Companies Running Competitive Ads Against WordPress May Soon be Banned from Sponsoring WordCamps

The WordPress Community Team is discussing banning companies from sponsoring WordCamps if they advertise competitively against WordPress. A WordCamp organizing team recently brought the concern to community deputies regarding a potential sponsor that is advertising its product in such a way that it puts WordPress in “an unflattering light.” This particular instance is prompting community leadership to clarify expectations for …

Patchstack Whitepaper: 582 WordPress Security Issues Found in 2020, Over 96% From Third-Party Extensions

Patchstack, which recently rebranded from WebARX, released its 2020 security whitepaper. The report identified a total of 582 security vulnerabilities. However, only 22 of the issues came from WordPress itself. Third-party plugins and themes accounted for the remaining 96.22%. “These are all security issues disclosed by the Patchstack internal research team, Patchstack Red Team community, by third-party security vendors, and …

Gutenberg 10.4 Introduces Block Widgets in the Customizer

The latest release of the Gutenberg plugin (10.4) brings block widgets into the Customizer. When customizing widget-enabled areas, a new block inserter icon is now available for dropping blocks into sidebars. This is the first iteration of block management in the Customizer, tackling the technical integration for editing blocks while also taking advantage of the live preview in the Customizer. …

Full Site Editing Is Partly a ‘Go’ for WordPress 5.8

Today, Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced the results of yesterday’s “go/no-go” demo and decision on whether Full Site Editing (FSE) would land in WordPress 5.8. The site editor and global styles are not landing in the next release. However, several other features should launch and allow users to build their sites with blocks in new ways. The following people attended the …

FSE Outreach Round #5: Venturing out a Query Quest

The Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program is chugging along. Since December, it has called for and completed four rounds of testing. The latest round asks volunteers to provide feedback on the Query block, arguably one of the most crucial pieces of the FSE-puzzle. Automattic Developer Relations Wrangler Anne McCarthy has been overseeing the program since its inception. Each round …