Last week, I had the pleasure of joining Michael Fienen and Aaron Hill, hosts of the Drunken UX podcast, to discuss Gutenberg. We covered a lot of topics, including, why Gutenberg was created, our experiences, its timeline, pros, cons, resources, our biggest concerns, and what developers and freelancers need to know. The show is one hour and thirty minutes in …
WPWeekly Episode 312 – Dragon Drop, WordPress Accessibility Statement, and WooCommerce GDPR
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I start the show by sharing our thoughts on Mark Zuckberberg’s congressional hearing. We then discuss what’s new in Gutenberg 2.6 and describe our user experience. We let you know what’s in WooCommerce 3.3.5 and discuss what the development team is doing to prepare for GDPR compliance. Stories Discussed: Gutenberg 2.6 Introduces Drag …
Theme Review Changes Place More Onus Onto Theme Authors
The WordPress Theme Review team has implemented changes that simplify the process and places more responsibility onto theme authors. Theme reviewers now only need to check the following items to pass a theme. Licensing Malicious or egregious stuff Content Creation Security Although the bar to pass a theme is significantly lower, theme authors are still expected to follow the required …
Gutenberg 2.6 Introduces Drag and Drop Block Sorting
Gutenberg 2.6 is available for download and with it, comes a new way of sorting blocks. In addition to using up and down arrows, this version introduces the ability to sort blocks by dragging and dropping. If you hover the cursor over the up and down arrows on the left side of a block, you’ll see a hand icon. Simply …
An Update to My Gutenberg Experience
Not long after I published my experience with Gutenberg, developers reached out to me to work on some of the issues I mentioned. Riad Benguella figured out why meta boxes were not collapsing or expanding. It turns out that some meta boxes depend on the post script which has a side effect of calling the window.postboxes.add_postbox_toggles( postType ) twice, causing …
A WordCamp for Organizers Is in the Planning Stages
Last year, Drew Jaynes and Carol Stambaugh proposed a new WordCamp event geared towards organizers to the WordPress Community Team. After fleshing out the details and discussing the idea over the course of seven months, the duo has announced that a WordCamp for Organizers is officially on the table. The goal of the event is to provide an opportunity for …
WPWeekly Episode 311 – Jetpack 6.0, WordPress 4.9.5, and A WordCamp for Organizers
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss a great article published by Caspar Hübinger on AMP and WordPress. We cover what’s new in WordPress 4.9.5, Jetpack 6.0, and a WordCamp geared toward organizers. Stories Discussed: WordPress 4.9.5 Squashes 25 Bugs ‘Try Gutenberg’ Prompt Pushed Back to A Later Release Jetpack 6.0 Released Code of Conduct Survey Want to …
WordPress 4.9.5 Squashes 25 Bugs
WordPress 4.9.5 is available for download and is a maintenance and security release. WordPress 4.9.4 and earlier versions are affected by three security issues. The following security hardening changes are in 4.9.5. Localhost is no longer treated as the same host by default. Safe redirects are used when redirecting the login page if SSL is forced. Versions strings are correctly …
‘Try Gutenberg’ Prompt Pushed Back to A Later Release
Last week, we reported that WordPress 4.9.5 would ship with a call-out prompt that asks users if they want to try the new editor experience. Within the comments of the post, Gary Pendergast, who works for Automattic, is a WordPress core contributor, and a lead developer on the Gutenberg project, informed us that the prompt would not be in WordPress …
WPWeekly Episode 310 – Community Management, PHP, and Hello Dolly
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week including, the removal of offensive lyrics in Hello Dolly, a request for plugin developers to stop supporting legacy PHP versions, and changes coming in WordPress 4.9.5. We also talk about community management, the difference between comments and forums, and finally, John shares his concerns on how …



