EDITS.WS

Tag: News

  • WooCommerce to Launch WC Blocks Extensibility Monthly Chat

    WooCommerce is calling on its developer community to join a new monthly chat focused on WooCommerce block extensibility. The chat is being run as a three-month pilot program with different topics each month.

    “During these sessions, we want developers to actively shape the future of WC Blocks by hearing what developers’ integrations need from us to be successful and get feedback on existing extensibility points,” WooCommerce developer advocate Stephanie Pi said.

    In order to have the right engineers available for the sessions while testing out the format, the first three months will focus on the Cart and Checkout blocks. WooCommerce developers have recently been attempting to solicit feedback on Cart and Checkout block performance on GitHub, though few have weighed in on the topic so far. This monthly chat may provide a more casual way to get extensibility issues on the WooCommerce team’s radar.

    The first session will be held in the #developers channel on the WooCommerce Community Slack on Monday, February 13, at 1600 UTC. At the end of the pilot program, WooCommerce will evaluate whether it’s a good use of the community’s time and if the monthly chats should be continued.

  • Gutenberg 15.1 Adds Openverse Integration

    Gutenberg 15.1 was released this week with Openverse integration in the Media tab. The Openverse library of openly licensed and public domain works has also moved to its own website with an updated design. It contains more than 600 free-to-use images and audio files that are now available inside WordPress’ editor:

    Clicking on an Openverse image will instantly insert it as an Image block with the proper attribution and license automatically added to the caption. The experience is so much faster than downloading from the Openverse website and then uploading to the Media Library.

    “Stars Galaxy” by Greg Rakozy/ CC0 1.0

    Another major highlight in 15.1 is the ability to add custom CSS on a per-block basis. This can be done through the Global Styles menu in the Site Editor. For each block you can add your own CSS to customize the block appearance by scrolling to the bottom of the panel to the “Additional Block CSS” button. These CSS edits will be applied to all instances of the block on the site.

    Gutenberg 15.1 also introduces support for shadow presets in Global Styles, with four defaults available (Natural, Crisp, Sharp, and Softy), and the ability for theme authors to add custom presets via ‘theme.json’. The announcement post included a video that demonstrates the new UI:

    In 15.1 Navigation has been added to the browse mode sidebar in the Site Editor, so users can quickly access their menus and menu items, rearrange them via drag and drop, or navigate the links.

    This release makes some changes to the “paste styles” feature that was introduced in version 15.0. The Options menu in the block toolbar now displays both “Copy styles” and “Paste Styles” to make it easier to understand how to use the feature, as it previously was unclear with just the “Copy Styles” option available.

    Gutenberg 15.2 improves the Site Editor loading state for better initialization. This is an important update for making the Site Editor ready to come out of Beta. It’s not a complete solution but makes it a bit more polished with the following changes, as outlined by Riad Benguella in the PR:

    • A CanvasSpinner that can be used in components that have a “ready” state. So instead of rendering an empty white page, the spinner is rendered when these components are not ready.
    • Makes sure the iframe has a “white” background by default to avoids too much background color switches during initialization.

    These are just a few of the highlights. Check out the 15.1 release post for the full list of enhancements, bug fixes, performance improvements, and tooling changes.

  • WordPress.com Is Testing AI-Generated Images and Content

    WordPress.com is currently testing two new blocks for generating images and paragraph content using AI. The blocks, which are currently labeled as experimental, were first spotted by Jen T of WPcomMaven who published a few examples on her blog this week.

    WordPress.com developed the blocks through a partnership with OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT and DALL·E. Automattic engineer Artur Piszek gave a quick overview of the experimental blocks in a post on the WordPress.com support forums, calling the new feature “Jetpack AI – your writing assistant on WordPress.com.”

    I took both blocks for a test drive, starting with the image generator. Users put in a prompt in a simple UI and the block generates four images, which can be expanded before selection. Here are a few examples:

    I was not terribly impressed with the images, which every time seemed blurry and ill-conceived. Some of them bore an almost cruel likeness to the prompts, with living creatures and humans faring poorly compared to images of inanimate objects. The faces are almost always distorted with what appears to be bits of flesh melting off. Unless a user is unusually skilled in crafting the prompts, they may struggle to get any useful images.

    The AI-generated paragraphs are a somewhat better experience but need more flexibility. The block will automatically generate new paragraphs based on your existing content. It does a decent job, but it would be more useful if you could start from a blank page and feed it a prompt instead, as one of the main benefits of using AI for generating content is that it can offer a starting place from which the writer can improve.

    The content can be further edited by transforming the block into a paragraph. This isn’t easy to discover and would need to be emphasized better in the UI.

    “We were considering making the block outright editable, and I see that we may need to create a more intuitive editing experience,” Piszek said after reviewing feedback from users in the forum.

    When using this experimental paragraph-generating block, users may want to familiarize themselves with how AI-generated content can impact their search rankings. Google recently published guidance stating it will reward high-quality content however it is produced but cautions that “those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).” This is not always possible when using automation.

    WordPress.com’s AI-generated content blocks are in the earliest stages of testing and are not guaranteed to be publicly launched or make it into Jetpack. With some refinements, the blocks could prove useful but will more than likely only be available to paying customers, as the costs of AI-generated processing resources can stack up fairly quickly.

    “AI models and tools are a bit unpredictable,” Piszek said. “We want to be mindful of how those tools behave, what impact they have on your creativity, and how we can make them support you.

    “At the same time, we are still learning and adapting, so please keep in mind that these features can change or disappear anytime.

    “Once we announce them, they are most likely be paid extra (on top of existing plans) depending on how much we have to pay OpenAI for their services.”

    WordPress.com users who test the experimental blocks are encouraged to leave their feedback in the announcement thread.

  • Twitter Outage Uncovers More Details on Upcoming API Access Changes, Giving the Fediverse a Shot in the Arm

    Twitter experienced a major outage today lasting several hours, which left most users unable to tweet or send private messages to each other. Some reported receiving error messages telling them they were “over the daily limit for sending tweets.”

    Twitter’s development team took the opportunity to update users on the upcoming changes to API access, which it appears the team was working on before CEO Elon Musk advised them to pause “in favor of maximizing system stability and robustness, especially with the Super Bowl coming up.”

    The Twitter Dev account announced that after February 13, free access users will be limited to 1,500 tweets per month:

    We have been busy with some updates to the Twitter API so you can continue to build and innovate with us. We’re excited to announce an extension of the current free Twitter API access through February 13. Here’s what we’re shipping then:

    Paid basic access that offers low level of API usage, and access to Ads API for a $100 monthly fee.

    A new form of free access will be introduced as this is extremely important to our ecosystem – limited to Tweet creation of up to 1,500 Tweets per month for a single authenticated user token, including Login with Twitter.

    Also on February 13, we will deprecate the Premium API. If you’re subscribed to Premium, you can apply for Enterprise to continue using these endpoints.

    This is a new chapter for the Twitter API to increase quality, reduce spam, and enable a thriving ecosystem. We appreciate your patience as we implement these changes and we can’t wait to see what you build next! Stay tuned for more information on continued Twitter API access.

    With no more third-party clients, Twitter has severely diminished its resilience during outages like these. Many users were driven to platforms like Mastodon to speculate about the reasons for Twitter breaking. Cloudflare also found some lucky timing today in launching Wildebeest, an AcitivityPub and Mastodon-compatible server that enables anyone to operate their Fediverse server and identity on their domain with minimal setup and without needing to keep up the infrastructure.

    For those who are looking to get started on Mastodon as the result of Twitter’s recent outage, WordPress developer Daniel Auener curates and maintains a list of WordPress community members’ Mastodon accounts that anyone can follow by downloading a CSV file and importing it into Mastodon.

    The list includes all accounts, where the account owner has at least one community badge on their WordPress.org profile page. Auener has also published a WordPress guide to the Fediverse with helpful information on finding an instance, following hashtags, and engaging with the WordPress community.

  • WP Community Collective Names Alex Stine as First Accessibility Fellow

    WordPress Accessibility contributor Alex Stine
    WordPress Accessibility contributor Alex Stine – photo credit: The WP Community Collective

    The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a newly formed nonprofit organization dedicated to funding individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has announced its first Accessibility Fellow. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the fellowship.

    WPCC is managing its finances transparently on Open Collective. The fellowship has yet to be fully funded. Just $645.63 USD of $15,000 (4%) has been raised for the Accessibility Fellowship, although individual memberships are at $3,589.75 USD of the organization’s $20,000 goal.

    “We’ve set up a few different ways folks can support the WPCC,” co-founder Sé Reed said. “We’re just launching our fundraising campaign for the Accessibility Fellowship now. So far, most of our contributors have opted to support us as members, with a recurring membership pledge.

    “Monthly membership funds go to our general fund, which will primarily be used to support our fellowships and projects. As of today, we’ve raised slightly more than $4k, with $3,600 of that reserved for the Accessibility Fellowship.”

    The organization is currently in the process of finalizing sponsorships from a few large companies and is building out a corporate sponsorship program and a small business sponsorship program.

    “We can’t discuss anything yet as we’re still working out the details, but there is a lot happening that we hope to announce soon,” Reed said.

    Once the Accessibility fellowship is funded, Stine will continue his work with WordPress’ Accessibility Team and will serve as the Team Rep, while continuing his private work as a consultant and an engineer at Waystar.

    “I am excited to have the opportunity to give back to the project that provided me with my start in the technology field,” Stine said. “I could not continue to give back at my current capacity without this generous program. I will help ensure WordPress becomes more accessible, and I will fight to have the community as a whole adopt new principles that will ensure accessibility is the first thought, never the last.”

  • Get Ready for WordCamp Asia 2023, Finally

    After three difficult years, WordCamp Asia is happening! The flagship event was scheduled for February of 2020 but had to be canceled due to the pandemic. This was a painful decision for the organizers who had put so much volunteer time into organizing such a ground-breaking event.

    However, nothing can dampen the spirit of the WordPress community who banded together to make it happen this year. Same city, same venue, same great people.

    The conference runs from February 17-19 in Bangkok, Thailand. If you were unable to secure a ticket before they sold out in only 24 hours, never fear. The entire event will be livestreamed so you can participate in every single talk without taking off your sweats. The website will display the dates and times in your time zone so you can plan accordingly.

    Let’s get started and dive into everything you need to know about WordCamp Asia 2023.

    WordCamp Asia 2023

    WordPressers will be coming from all over the world to celebrate the power of WordPress. Let’s get into the where and who of this exciting new conference.

    Important Locations

    Held on the banks of the Chao Phraya River at the ICONSIAM, this three-day event will bring together WordPress experts and users from all over the country.

    The ICONSIAM, venue for WordCamp Asia 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand.

    You will not want to miss the After Party on Saturday night at Lhong 1919. Built in 1850 as a port for overseas shipping, it has since been renovated into an event and shop space. It’s only a 15 minute walk from the conference venue so it is definitely worth stopping by.

    Lhong 1919, site of the WordCamp Asia After Party.

    If on after party isn’t enough, the organizers have compiled a list of Side Events other companies are hosting. If you are holding a get together, you can submit the information on that page.

    Don’t forget to stop by the sponsor hall and say hi to the WP Engine team!

    Can’t Miss Talks

    Organizers have scheduled three jam-packed days of WordPress programming and learning.

    Contributor Day is on Feb. 17 and you must register ahead of time. If you have never contributed before, a WordCamp is a great way to get started. You are surrounded by people who can answer questions and support your work. People who aren’t attending in person are encouraged to participate via the #contributor-day channel in the Make.WordPress slack.

    The next two days are full of fun and interesting programming. There are three tracks with workshops, lightning talks, and full-length talks so you can fit anything into your schedule.

    Here are a few we can’t wait to see:

    • Getting the Most out of the REST API with K. Adam White: This talk will take a look at the REST API, something that has been in WordPress for a long time but has fallen out of discussion. This will go over when to use the REST API vs WP GraphQL and new features coming out in 4.6.
    • Code Isn’t the Only Way into Tech with Allie Nimmons: Getting involved in WordPress can feel daunting if you don’t know how to code. Nimmons goes over the different paths to get involved with WordPress and tech as a whole that don’t involved coding.
    • Q and A with Matt Mullenweg: At every continental WordCamp, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg presents a talk of some kind. WordCamp Asia will end with a question and answer session with him. Questions will be taken in person but can also be submitted in the livestream chat. The State of the Word was recently held, so it will be interesting to hear the questions that come up during WordCamp Asia.

    These are just a few of the incredible talks that will be available at WordCamp Asia.

    A Long Time Coming

    The organizers of this WordCamp have been working three years to welcome everyone to Thailand and it is finally time. The pandemic has not been easy on anyone but one thing has remained clear, the WordPress community is strong and resilient.

    We are so lucky to be able to get together all around the world and celebrate this thing we all love. I want to thank the organizers and volunteers who have had to be incredibly flexible since 2020 and still managed to bring such an historic event to life.

    Come back to Torque for more event coverage.

    The post Get Ready for WordCamp Asia 2023, Finally appeared first on Torque.

  • WordPress Opens Applications for 2023 Community Summit

    The WordPress open source project will be hosting a Community Summit as part of WordCamp US this year. It will take place prior to the main conference on August 22-23, 2023, in National Harbor, Washington, DC. The invitation-only event will be the first summit in six years, since the last one was held in Paris, France in 2017.

    In the past the Community Summit was created to provide an opportunity for contributors to have important discussions and open communication channels about their work and the future of the project. A few proposed topics include streamlining contributions to components of Gutenberg that are already part of WordPress core, the importance of performance, strengthening the contributor pipeline, improving cross-team communication, modernizing and simplifying WordPress settings pages, to name a few.

    “Our goal is to have a diverse and inclusive summit that provides a safe and encouraging space for our dedicated contributors to work on the WordPress project and the problems we encounter within it,” Automattic-sponsored Community Team contributor Julia Golomb said.

    “We iterated this year by holding the call for topics before asking people to apply to participate. By identifying the topics that are relevant right now, we are positioned to build the invited participants list in a new way, mixing in the long-time contributors we need and including newer contributors who haven’t yet had the opportunity to contribute in this way in the past.”

    The application to attend is open to any contributor, regardless of how long they have been involved in the project. Golomb also said the event may include a travel assistance program so that no selected attendee is left out due to financial reasons. Applicants will be selected on a rolling basis to ensure enough time for those who need visas to acquire them. Organizers are aiming to notify all applicants by the end of June 2023.

  • WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 Released and Ready for Testing

    WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 was released on time today, and can be tested by using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or downloaded directly. In just seven weeks, the upcoming major release will roll in the last nine Gutenberg plugin releases, which account for 292 editor enhancements and 354 bug fixes.

    The beta 1 announcement confirms that WordPress 6.2 will be removing the Beta label from the Site Editor. Although the remaining required items for removal, namely a ticket for refining the Site Editor loading state, remains open, Editor Triage co-lead Anne McCarthy confirmed that work has “quickly progressed over the last few weeks to to get some items in place for 6.2 and to start a new PR for improving the loading state further,” beyond the initial effort from Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella.

    WordPress 6.2 contributors have published a detailed testing guide, with information on setting up a testing environment and key features to test with videos, screenshots, and information on what features should do and how they can be tested.

    One of the major highlights in this release includes the new distraction-free mode, which offers a more focused writing experience that hides unnecessary interface elements from the editor. The testing guide demonstrates how it can be enabled and disabled.

    video credit: WordPress 6.2 Testing Guide

    WordPress 6.2 also makes major strides towards improving the Navigation experience, which has proven to be one of the more complicated problems to solve on the full-site editing journey. The testing guide offers a quick tour of the updated Navigation Block UI, which now contains an editable view in the block settings sidebar, along with inline editing for menu items.

    video credit: WordPress 6.2 Testing Guide

    A few other highlights of the upcoming 6.2 release include the completely revamped Site Editor interface, block settings with split controls for Styles and Settings, improved Pattern insertion, a new Style Book for previewing block styles, custom CSS for specific blocks, and Openverse integration with the WordPress media library.

    Following a few more beta releases, RC 1 is expected on March 7, and the final release is scheduled for March 28, 2023.

  • BuddyPress 12.0 to Focus on Merging BP Rewrites Into Core, Moving Legacy Widgets Into BP Classic Plugin

    During the most recent BuddyPress development meeting, contributors decided to focus the upcoming 12.0 release on merging the BP Rewrites feature plugin into core. This plugin is the result of a ten-year-old effort to migrate BuddyPress’ custom URI parser to use WordPress’ Rewrite API.

    One year ago, BP Rewrites went into beta. It’s not certain how the change will interact with different plugins, so BP developers recommended it be tested for at least two major BuddyPress core releases before considering a merge. Early testers uncovered many incompatibilities and conflicts with various BuddyPress features.

    In order to move forward confidently with support for users who may experience plugin conflicts, BP Rewrites’ maintainers have decided to create a new plugin that will provide backward compatibility. This new plugin will be called BP Classic and will also contain BuddyPress’ legacy widgets, a change that BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet said “will be our first move towards progressively rebooting BuddyPress.” BP 9.0.0 (released July 2021) gave users the ability to transform legacy widgets into a block with two clicks. Moving these widgets out into BP Classic will be a significant step towards their eventual retirement.

    The BP Attachments Add-on, a new component for managing BuddyPress attachments, is ready to move into beta testing. Viet has updated the plugin’s README file to include the features it will launch with in the plugin on WordPress.org:

    • Front-end and back-end Media library for all your members
    • Administrators can moderate Members media from the back-end Media library
    • Members can upload public or private media into their personal Media Library as well as organize them creating file directories, photo albums, movie or music playlists
    • User media blocks for all your site’s content contributors
    • Members can upload and attach public media to their activity updates (Needs the BP Activity component to be active)
    • Members can upload and attach private media to their private messages (Needs the BP Messages component to be active)
    • All members public media can be browsed from the Community Media directory.
    • (beta) A new avatar Upload UI

    Future versions of the feature plugin will include a new cover image upload UI, and the ability to share media with friends and between group members.

    BuddyPress contributors anticipate bumping the required WordPress version to 5.8 in the 12.0 release. Beta 1 is planned for April 15, with the official release landing May 31.

  • WordPress Plugin Developers Alerted Ahead of Twitter API Changes

    Beginning February 9, 2023, Twitter will turn off free access to its APIs. The company announced yesterday that it will be offering “a paid basic tier” with more details coming next week.

    In response to a user who conjectured that this move is more about raising the friction to making bots, Elon Musk responded, saying that this is one factor motivating the change.

    “Yeah, free API is being abused badly right now by bot scammers and opinion manipulators,” Musk said. “There’s no verification process or cost, so easy to spin up 100k bots to do bad things. Just ~$100/month for API access with ID verification will clean things up greatly.”

    It’s not yet clear how this will effect the Twitter ecosystem, whether it will impact bots that auto-tweet links from blogs and other useful tools. So far it is already affecting some migration tools like Movetodon that rely on the Twitter API to help users find their contacts on Mastodon. Movetodon’s creator said his app’s access was shut down today. According to Twitter, the app “has violated Twitter Rules and policies.” Fedifinder, a tool that helps users find the Fediverse accounts of their Twitter contacts, is still up and running at the time of publishing.

    NetNewsWire, an open source news aggregator, has already announced it will be removing Twitter integration in its next release:

    You might think we’re reading RSS feeds from Twitter, but Twitter removed RSS feeds from the service something like ten years ago. We rely completely on the Twitter API.

    WordPress’ Plugins team published a notice, alerting developers and site owners of Twitter’s upcoming API change. The team warned that the following types of Twitter plugins might be affected:

    • Auto-posting
    • Login with Twitter
    • Analytics
    • Management Tools
    • Scripted Interactions (auto-blocking etc)

    “If your plugin (or the related service) does any of those, you will have to investigate if this change impacts you,” Plugin Review Team Rep Mika Epstein said. “If you are impacted, you will need to update (or close) your plugin accordingly. I know a lot of free plugins will have some hard choices to make here.

    “For plugin users, if a plugin suddenly breaks on/around the 9th, please be generous and kind to the developers. They really got blindsided by this, and it’s a lot to sort out in a short amount of time.”

    WordPress plugin developer Joe Dolson, author of WP to Twitter and WP Tweets Pro, published an early reaction to the news.

    “WP to Twitter makes very little revenue as it is,” Dolson said. “If I end up doing a lot of support because of this, or need to make significant changes to the plug-in, I will most likely just shut everything down and close the plug-in. That’s a purely practical decision.”

    Dolson also said if the API costs are affordable for the average small user, then he will likely keep things as they are. This is because API access for the plugin is managed through each users’ developer account with Twitter.

    “If the API costs are very expensive for the average small user, I suspect that will completely destroy the WP to Twitter user base, and there will be little to no justification to my continuing to maintain it,” Dolson said.

    Many users are likely not technical enough to understand what an API is, let alone why free access is being cut off. This could create a major support burden for plugins that no longer work after February 9. Developers who become frustrated with the platform becoming less open, may no longer be motivated to create these kinds of tools.

    With just one week’s notice, and very few details, developers have little time to react. Once Twitter releases more information next week about its API changes, plugin developers will need to be ready to take action with notices written to help users understand what is happening. This news comes on the heels of the company updating its developer rules last month to ban third-party Twitter clients.