EDITS.WS

Tag: News

  • Jetpack Revamps Mobile App, WordPress.com Users Must Migrate to Keep Using Stats, Reader, and Notification Features

    When Automattic launched a mobile app for Jetpack in June 2021, it was targeted mainly at users who were on a paid Jetpack plan, as it enables access to features like backups, restores, and security scanning. Most importantly, the app gave Automattic a more direct path for monetizing Jetpack, without adding more commercial interests into the official WordPress apps.

    This week Jetpack announced that it has revamped the app and is offering a more compelling reason for those using the free plan to migrate. As part of a longterm effort to refocus the official WordPress apps, features that require Automattic’s products (the Jetpack plugin or a WordPress.com account) in order to use them, will soon be removed. This includes the Stats, Reader, and Notifications features, which have been relocated to the Jetpack app.

    WordPress.com announcement for the revamped Jetpack app

    WordPress.com users and Jetpack users on the free plan who previously relied on these features will need to switch to the free Jetpack mobile app. All the features that are moving over from the core WordPress app will still be free in the Jetpack app.

    While most self-hosted Jetpack users may easily understand the need for the switch, this transition may be rougher for WordPress.com users who do not understand the history of the mobile apps and see it all as “WordPress.” They may not be aware that Automattic’s integrated products have been controversial features in the official WordPress apps for nearly a decade.

    The announcement on WordPress.com is confusing, as it presents Jetpack as just a new optional app and doesn’t convey the urgency of migrating if users still want access to stats, notifications, the reader, and any additional paid features.

    The post’s FAQ section describes the Jetpack app as “the premium mobile publishing experience for our super-connected world” and states that “the Jetpack app is free to download.” WordPress.com users who commented on the post found the words “premium” and “free to download” to be suspicious and confusing. They don’t understand the reason for two apps:

    “Do we have to change over? I only want to blog, I’m not technical and I don’t understand why you have done this or how to use it?”

    “So is WordPress now called Jetpack?”

    “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This move is not in your users’ best interests so why is it being done? This smacks of the recent pricing debacle.”

    “I’m really disappointed by this decision. Why are you forcing us to use two apps? Your explanation of the differences makes no sense, and sounds like you made a decision for some reason you won’t tell us and you’re just trying to justify it. This is not user-focused at all.”

    Users are also concerned about data loss, as those who are migrating to the newly revamped app are advised to delete the WordPress app after installing the Jetpack app. The announcement states that “Managing your site across both apps is currently unsupported and may lead to issues like data conflicts.”

    One user asked if there are premium features in the Jetpack app that will carry additional cost, and if there is any advertising included within the app.

    “For clarity, the Jetpack app is free to use and doesn’t include in-app advertisements,” Automattic representative Siobhan Bamber said.

    “We’re still planning our 2023 roadmap, and it’s possible in-app purchases will be a part of our plans. The driving goal would be to offer features that bring most value to users, and we’re keen to hear any ideas or feedback. Any in-app purchases would be optional, with the currently free features remaining free to use.”

    In response to those asking about the differences between the two apps, Bamber said there will be a couple more posts on the WordPress.com news blog in the following weeks.

    Users will need to have the latest version of the WordPress app installed in order to automatically migrate their data and settings to the Jetpack app. This includes locally stored content, saved posts, and in-app preferences. The FAQ states that after users download the Jetpack app, they will be “auto-magically” logged in with all their content in place.

    “One good way to confirm whether your version of the WordPress app supports ‘auto migration’ is to tap one of the in-app ‘Jetpack powered’ banners,” Bamber advised users in the comments. “You’ll find these banners at the bottom of sections including Stats and Reader. If you tap the banner, you’ll only see the ‘Switch to the new Jetpack app’ prompt in versions that support migration.”

    The revamped Jetpack app has been presented to WordPress.com users as a more feature-rich way to publish to their websites, but it also lays the burden of choice on users to try to understand the difference between the two apps and select one for all the sites they manage. Many don’t want the inconvenience of switching to a new app. Based on the users’ responses, it might have been easier for them to understand that the official WordPress apps are removing all features require the Jetpack plugin or a WordPress.com account – instead of selling it as a new, shiny publishing experience.

    Migrating to the Jetpack app is the best option if you want to continue using the Stats, Reader, and Notifications features. In order to make it easy for users to choose the best path forward, future posts on WordPress.com should make it crystal clear what features users can expect in each app and when they will need to take action.

  • WooCommerce 7.3 Introduces New Products Block in Beta

    WooCommerce 7.3 was released this week with the new Products block now in beta. In December 2022, the Products block went into testing in WooCommerce Blocks version 9.1.0. It’s based on the Query Loop block and is intended to replace all of WooCommerce’s current product-displaying blocks.

    This first beta version of the Products block allows users to list products based on specific criteria and their layout in the list or grid.

    Version 7.3 also introduces three “commerce-adjacent” patterns for building WooCommerce store pages. These are patterns that do not tap into WooCommerce store data but allow store owners to customize the images and the links. These patterns were also tested in WooCommerce Blocks 9.1.0. They include an alternating image and text block pattern, a product hero with two columns and two rows, and a “Just Arrived” full hero pattern.

    image source: WooCommerce 7.3 release post

    This release also brings store owners a new multichannel marketing experience in beta. Under the Marketing menu in the admin, users can now view a list of recommended marketing extensions without leaving the dashboard. These can be installed directly from the Marketing page.

    Other notable features in WooCommerce 7.3 include Pinterest and Codisto extensions added to the onboarding wizard, a new warning banner when the tax settings have a conflict, and an improved UI for creating product attributes and uploading product images.

    Check out the release post to see the template changes and all the new actions and filters available for developers. The full 7.3 changelog is available on GitHub.

  • Lettre Newsletter Theme Now Available on WordPress.org

    Automattic has published its Lettre theme to WordPress.org. The company launched its newsletter product at the end of December 2022 using Lettre as the default theme. The self-hosted version of this block theme is for those who want to publish a newsletter using Jetpack.

    The theme puts the focus on the subscription form, which is the most important thing a newsletter landing page can do – make it easy for people to sign up. Beneath the form there is a link to read all the posts, followed by another subscription form. All of these elements in the home page design are blocks, making it easy for them to be removed or rearranged.

    Lettre comes with 15 block patterns for building different pages and designs, including about the author(s), a bold color signup, a two-column signup, various designs for the newsletter intro with light and dark background images, newsletter signup with media on the left, newsletter signup with logos for the background, a list of posts, an in-post article promo, three columns of text, and more.

    A live demo of the theme is available on WordPress.com. The menu items on the demo give a few examples of the different signup patterns in action.

    Lettre is designed to be used with Jetpack’s Subscription block, which uses WordPress.com’s infrastructure to manage emails and subscribers. If you like the design but are already using another newsletter service, the Jetpack Subscribe block can be replaced with any other block, including the shortcode block for newsletter services that haven’t yet made their subscription forms available via a block. Be advised, you may need to write some custom CSS to ensure that the subscribe form matches the original design.

    Lettre is one of the only themes in the WordPress Themes Directory that was made to be a newsletter landing page and certainly the only block theme dedicated to this purpose. Combined with Jetpack’s subscription feature, this is one of the most seamless ways to distribute a newsletter without all the extra steps of copying the content into a newsletter service’s editor. Lettre is available for free download from WordPress.org. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more themes like this pop up now that WordPress.com has launched its newsletter service.

  • New Video Explores Site Building Progress from WordPress 5.9 to 6.2

    WordPress 5.9 “Josephine” was released in January 2022, but that seems like ages ago when you compare the advances made in site building over the past year. Anne McCarthy, an Automattic-sponsored contributor who heads up the Full Site Editing Outreach Program, has published a short video that tours the important changes in WordPress over the past few major releases. The video also doubles as a preview of some of the features coming in 6.2.

    If you are using the Gutenberg plugin and have been tracking the relentless progress of the Site Editor, you will notice how limited the design options are in 5.9 and how much more consistent and expansive they are today. In 5.9 users users can only add a Front page template, and the site building interface is disjointed and less polished.

    McCarthy demonstrates how WordPress 6.2 will introduce smoother interactions with browse mode. It will also greatly expand the template options available for users to add and includes a new colorized list view.

    The Navigation block has had a long, rocky journey but seems to be reborn in 6.2. McCarthy showed how much more intuitive it has become with the new experience of editing navigation in the sidebar, and repositioning via drag and drop with live previews.

    The instant that Style Variations were introduced in WordPress 6.0, it seemed they were always with us. Looking back at 5.9 in the video, the Site Editor appears so bare without them. WordPress 6.2 will extend this even further with improved block style previews, a style book, and a new zoomed out view that makes it easy to see changes at a glance.

    Everything coming in 6.2 is converging towards better usability and more design options for site editors. The challenge here is to continue introducing new features without the interface becoming cluttered and chaotic. Many of these features are still being ironed out. For example, McCarthy mentioned that the Edit button is still a work in progress and may soon be relocated to be more prominent in the Site Editor.

    This video gives a quick visual summary of what is being done to wrap up the full-site editing phase of the Gutenberg project before contributors move on to Collaboration. It is worth a watch to see the site building progress that contributors have made in just one year.

    If you want to get involved in making sure all these features in 6.2 are ready for prime time, check out McCarthy’s latest FSE Testing Call: Find Your Style. It will plunge you into the new features of the Site Editor to perform a few tasks. It’s essentially a guided opportunity to explore the new interface while contributing back to WordPress, and you will earn a fancy testing contributor badge that will display on your WordPress.org profile.

  • WordCamp Asia 2023: The First Flagship WordCamp in Asia

    It’s finally happening – Asia’s first flagship WordCamp.

    Hostinger is proud to sponsor WordCamp Asia 2023 and be involved with the worldwide WordPress community.

    WordCamps are exciting gatherings of WordPress enthusiasts who share their skills and ideas. The events consist of a mix of scheduled talks, discussions, and informal workshops, all with the idea of fostering collaboration, communication, and the WordPress community.

    In 2022, Hostinger participated in several WordCamp events, including WordCamp EU in Porto, Portugal, and WordCamp US in San Diego, USA.

    This February, WordCamp is coming to Bangkok, Thailand, from 17-19 February 2023. It’s the first-ever flagship WordCamp to take place in Asia, and we’re looking forward to meeting you all there!

    Hostinger and WordPress

    Hostinger is committed to providing the best WordPress hosting service possible. Speed, uptime, and functionality are at the core of what we do.

    • Our users get access to our 1-click WordPress installation tool, automatic updates, and pre-installed performance plugins.
    • Our WordPress hosting plans come with LiteSpeed servers and LSCWP cache plugins to ensure maximum website speed.
    • Our 10 data centers are distributed globally so our users can choose the one closest to their target audience for better optimization.

    Want to Try Out Our WordPress Hosting?

    You can get 20% off our WordPress plans using the discount code WCASIA2023.

    Why We’re Taking Part in Wordcamp Asia 2023

    Our main reasons for taking part in WordCamp Asia 2023 are simple:

    • 70% of new Hostinger customers use WordPress for their websites. We want to gather feedback and insights on our service. How can we improve it, and what needs to change?
    • We want to get involved in the community. How can we contribute to developing the ecosystem? What can we offer?
    • We want to learn how to provide the best possible WordPress experience. How are others using WordPress, and what can we learn from them?

    That’s why plugging into the global WordPress community and sponsoring an event such as WordCamp Asia 2023 makes total sense to us.

    How We’re Contributing to the Community

    In addition to sponsoring WordCamp Asia 2023, we’re also planning on volunteering throughout the event. In particular, we will participate in Contributor Day, where we will work on various WordPress projects to help build the ecosystem.

    Hostinger is part of WordPress’ Five for the Future program too. That means 27 of our experts collaborate with WordPress development teams weekly to work on various projects. These include back-end development, support, documentation, marketing, and more.

    Where Can You Find Us?

    Take a look at the map below. As you walk in, you’ll find us on the left – just opposite Google and Jetpack.

    WordCamp Asia 2023 floor map

    Fancy a Chat?

    We’d love to catch up with you over tea or coffee. Simply book a slot on our calendar.

    The post WordCamp Asia 2023: The First Flagship WordCamp in Asia appeared first on Hostinger Blog.

  • Automattic Launches Blaze Ad Network for Jetpack and WordPress.com Sites

    Automattic is bringing Tumblr’s Blaze ad tool to WordPress sites with its launch today on WordPress.com and Jetpack. Blaze made its debut in April 2022, to the delight of Tumblr users who will gladly shell out cash to get people to look at their cat or promote a game they made. It’s an affordable way to attract new followers or just send out something funny into the universe, starting at $5/day.

    WordPress.com users can now to go to wordpress.com/advertising, select a site, and promote content with Blaze. Jetpack users have access to the ad network inside the WordPress.com dashboard.

    After selecting a post, users are taken to the design wizard where they can add an image, title, a snippet, and a destination URL. The URL can be the post or page or it can direct visitors to the main website.

    When Blaze first launched on Tumblr there was no way to target the promoted content – it just displayed to random users. Now there are a few more options. When promoting content from WordPress.com or a Jetpack-enabled site, users can narrow the audience by device: mobile, desktop, or all devices, select from a few main geographic areas (continents) or serve it everywhere. There is also a dropdown with topics of interest, but they are fairly general, e.g. Arts & Entertainment, Automotive, Business, Education.

    After selecting the audience, users can set the budget for the campaign, starting at $5 with a max daily budget of $50. With a minimum of $5/day for a week users can expect an estimated 5,900 – 8,000 impressions. For $25/day, users can expect 29,700 – 40,200, and up to 59,500 – 80,500 for $50/day. Site owners can monitor the success of their ads in the Campaigns tab.

    Content sponsored by Blaze will be promoted across WordPress.com sites and Tumblr pages, an audience that accounts for an estimated 13.5 billion impressions per month.

    Blazing has become somewhat of an art in the short time it has been available on Tumblr. It will be interesting to see how ads originating from WordPress.com and Jetpack go over with the Tumblr audience.

    https://www.tumblr.com/madmadammims/700822694806044672

    Creating advertising content that works across the disparate audiences between WordPress and Tumblr-powered pages may be a challenge for some site owners. Tumblr users can only target audiences by location for blazed posts. It’s possible that WordPress’ additional targeting options can help funnel the ads to sites where they will be most well-received, but the announcement says ads will be promoted across WordPress.com and Tumblr.

    Blaze campaigns require approval to be in compliance with Automattic’s Advertising Policy before being published. They are currently moderated in approximately 30 minutes but this may change in the future as more users try out Blaze.

    Automattic is treading new ground in creating its own ad network that any user across Tumblr and WordPress can tap into. It’s a strategic move to extend access to the world of WordPress, given that it’s such a large audience, and it will be interesting to see how the company improves the targeting options to meet the challenges of serving both audiences.

  • ClassicPress Community Votes to Re-Fork WordPress

    In December 2022, the ClassicPress community voted on whether to re-fork WordPress or continue on with the project as-is. As WordPress continues to evolve, ClassicPress fell behind in pursuit of PHP 8+ compatibility. The fork is based on WordPress 4.9 and users are increasingly limited in what plugins will work with the five-year-old codebase.

    In a discussion limited to ClassicPress core contributors, Viktor Nagornyy, one of the project’s directors, announced the results of the vote: “The option to re-fork has 20 votes while continue-as-is has 18.” Nagornyy summarized previous discussions and suggested an approach that would be more realistic for the project’s limited contributors:

    ClassicPress can’t be WordPress without Gutenberg, but it also can’t be its own CMS with a small core team at this time. There are simply not enough developers to make progress without backporting code from WP to move away from WP.

    An almost even split in the poll suggests the best option might be a hybrid one, find a compromise solution that will satisfy both sides.

    With a small core team, we have to find ways to be more efficient, to get more done with less. The only way to do that is to leverage all the work that’s done by WP contributors. As the core team grows, we can always explore the possibility of splitting away from WP but at this point in time, it’s simply not feasible.

    Some participants in the previous discussion saw re-forking as postponing the inevitable, kicking the can down the road until the next re-fork, but it is the only option if users want to retain compatibility with the rest of the WordPress ecosystem.

    “If you read recent threads, you find out that the community expects plugin compatibility with WordPress… another reason for the re-fork option,” ClassicPress core committer Álvaro Franz said.

    Franz, who is also the author of the WP-CMS fork based on WordPress 6.0, previously said he would be unwilling to help with a continuation of the current version based on WordPress 4.9.

    “It [ClassicPress] doesn’t have to be a competition (and it never could compete with WordPress anyways), but it can be a leaner version, for people who are already disabling Gutenberg via plugins, for developers who want a different approach to the way they develop their projects (closer to ‘the classic’ experience, but yet… modern!),” Franz said.

    “Eventually, it won’t make sense to run a fresh copy of WordPress to then go and install a plugin that ‘disables’ half of it. What’s the point? Why not have a version that covers that specific use case?”

    As part of Nagornyy’s proposed hybrid approach, he suggested the project retain some changes that were introduced in ClassicPress in v1.x, such as the privacy-oriented changes (anonymizing data CP sends to APIs), the news widget, and ensure that all API endpoints use ClassicPress APIs as in v1.x.

    The discussion continues around how to proceed with the fork. ClassicPress contributors are leaning towards using Franz’s WP-CMS fork based on WordPress 6.0 but have not finalized the details yet.

  • WordPress Performance Team Working Towards Unbundling Performance Lab Plugin

    WordPress’ Performance Team met this week with the express purpose of responding to Matt Mullenweg’s recent request to stop adding functionality to the Performance Lab plugin which could otherwise work as a standalone plugin.

    At the end of December 2022, the Performance Team published instructions for how to test the new SQLite implementation, which was bundled into the Performance Lab plugin as a module. Mullenweg commented on the post, indicating he saw the SQLite functionality as better suited to becoming a standalone community plugin:

    Can we please make this its own community plugin, hopefully to become a canonical one, and stop putting additional things like this into Performance Lab — it feels like we’re stuffing things into PL unnecessarily.

    In mid-October I have requested that we stop this unnecessary bundling before with @tweetythierry around WebP, which was put into Performance Lab, so it is disappointing that another large function like SQLite was bundled into Performance Lab plugin.

    In an effort to galvanize a base of testers for upcoming performance features, the Performance Team has leaned towards bundling new performance-related functionality into the plugin. Although they are already developed as self-contained modules so they can be easily extracted as individual plugins, the concern is that their visibility would be greatly reduced. The Performance Lab plugin has more than 30,000 active installs. Any standalone plugin would take time to build up to a user base, whereas functionality added to Performance Lab has an instant audience.

    “Agreed that there are definitely valid use cases for stand alone plugins, remaining mindful of some of the advantages of a single hub plugin such as development/maintenance, adoption, promotion, developer onboarding/contribution etc. which the Performance Lab facilitates well today as a central performance focus community hub plugin,” Performance Team contributor Thierry Muller said in response to the unbundling request.

    Muller outlined three different options contributors discussed in this week’s Performance Team meeting:

    • Option 1: Keep PL as is, but additionally deploy modules as individual plugins
    • Option 2: Make PL a “wrapper” focused on central infrastructure and recommendation of individual plugins
    • Option 3: Deprecate PL completely in favor of individual plugins

    Option 3 seems to be the least attractive to those who participated in this week’s discussion, as it introduces more hurdles for discoverability. Performance Team contributor Felix Arntz noted that one benefit of option 1 is the plugin would continue to work as-is for the 30K people who currently have it installed and that option 2 “would require a complex migration that users likely would not understand.”

    WordPress developer Jonny Harris suggested that having each functionality in its own plugin helps with testing but also asked what defines a module.

    “Would the current Site Health checks all be together, for example?” Harris asked. “SQLite and WebP are clearly their own modules, but what about smaller things?”

    Arntz suggested contributors continue the discussion regarding the scope of how the current modules could be distributed as plugins. He suggested every module could become its own plugin where some modules become standalone plugins and others would be grouped together into a few “topic specific” plugins.

    Contributors are discussing the different approaches in more detail on a GitHub issue and will be voting on the best approach. The vote will be open until Friday, January 20, 2023.

  • Gutenberg Times to Host Webinar on How to Use New WordPress Layout Features

    Gutenberg Times will be hosting a live Q&A webinar titled “Layout, Layout, Layout” on January 11, 2023, at 05:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada) via Zoom. This event is open to WordPress users of all experience levels who are interested to learn more about how to use WordPress’ layout features when building sites with blocks.

    Host Birgit Pauli-Haack will be joined by WordPress veterans Isabel Brison, Andrew Serong, and Justin Tadlock. Brison will be demonstrating different layout scenarios during the presentation, and attendees will be able to participate with questions.

    Any user who has attempted to layout a design in WordPress has likely tried out container blocks that offer layout settings. These blocks include Columns, the Cover block, and the generic Group block.

    The event will cover how to manipulate layouts by defining the width of post content, arranging blocks horizontally or vertically, right or left aligned, and inside container blocks.

    “In terms of block styling, Layout is a complex feature because it affects child blocks in ways that go beyond CSS inheritance,” Pauli-Haack said.

    WordPress 6.1 introduced more layout controls and flexibility in the block editor, but Pauli-Haack said the dev note on updated layout support was written more for developers.

    “Feedback from users through the FSE program and other connections revealed that handling the layout settings for container blocks is not particularly intuitive and takes some trial and error to find the right combination,” she said. “The Live Q & A will bring a better understanding to users and #nocode site builders.”

    When Pauli-Haack started the Live Q & A’s in 2018, she routinely brought in guests who were building the block editor, with the intention of having users meet them and discuss features like full-site editing, block themes, case studies, and discuss challenges.

    “Since then, quite a few initiatives of the official WordPress project have come to life,” she said. “There is the highly successful Full Site Editing outreach program, spearheaded by Anne McCarthy, who now holds regular Hallway Hangouts with community members and contributors.”

    People are also learning the ins and outs of site editing through the efforts of the training team, which began creating courses and lesson plans and hosting workshops on Meetup.com in 2021. These are also recorded and uploaded to WordPress.tv and YouTube. WordPress.org also launched a blog for developers in November 2022. With all these new learning opportunities, Pauli-Haack is changing the focus for her live events.

    “For the Gutenberg Times Live Q & As, I am now looking at topics and discussions about more complex concepts, more case studies, and technology on the cutting edge,” she said. Most recently, the show featured the developers and digital strategies of the Pew Research Center, a high profile site that was built with a block-first approach.

    “We are also in planning phase to hold a Live Q & A with the developers of GiveWP who are using Gutenberg as a framework to build the next generation of their popular donations plugin with the components and scripts that Gutenberg uses, but outside the post or site editor,” Pauli-Haack said.

    She also has another Live Q & A planned with the WordPress VIP design team that works on design systems for companies that need a streamlined way to stay within their design standards. Pauli-Haack intends to talk with them about a plugin they created that lets designers automatically create a website’s theme.json file with all the styling pulled directly from Figma designs.

    The upcoming Layouts webinar is free but attendees need to register to get the zoom link. An archive of all the past Live Q & A events is available on the Gutenberg Times website. The best way to stay informed about future events is to subscribe to Gutenberg Times’ Weekend Edition, as subscribers get an early invitation for the next Live Q & A’s.

  • WordCamp Europe 2023 Speaker Applications Open, Organizers Call for More Interactive Sessions

    WordCamp Europe 2023 is being hosted in Athens this year with two conference days scheduled for June 9 and 10. The first day’s theme is “WordPress Now” (Everything that can be currently achieved with WordPress) and the second day is “WordPress Tomorrow.”

    Organizers have opened the call for speakers and are especially interested in scheduling talks that “empower people to feel more comfortable using WordPress.” They are soliciting new voices this year with fresh perspectives.

    After reviewing attendee feedback from the previous year, organizers have identified more than three dozen requested topics across the development, business, community, and design categories. These include many more development topics, such as security, CI/CD, headless CMS, ReactJS for PHP Developers / Building Blocks, and more. Attendees are also eager to hear about content monetization, recurring revenue, GDPR compliance, brand identity, and designing for accessibility, to list a few examples.

    Presentation formats will include traditional talks, hands-on workshops, expert panels, and lightning talks. Organizers are encouraging speakers to add activities to sessions that will get the audience involved and avoid the afternoon slump. They cited a few examples, including a WordCamp in the Czech Republic where a security researcher installed a Wi-Fi honeypot in the venue and demonstrated how dangerous public wi-fi is when logging into a WordPress site that doesn’t have SSL.

    WCEU has launched a Speaker’s support program to help fund selected speakers with financial barriers to attending. Organizers arrange for speakers and the sponsoring companies to connect but are not involved in selecting who receives the funds.

    The call for speakers will close the first week of February and applicants will receive a response by the second week of March. Speakers will be announced in the second week of April.