WP Mainline

In this episode, Malcom Peralty and I catch you up on the news of the week and there was a ton this week. We start off by sharing what the last week has been like for both of us. Tough going, to say the least. We then dive into the LearnDash acquisition by LiquidWeb and StellarWP. In addition to acquiring LearnDash, Chris Lema announced that he is moving into a General Manager role for the product. We talked a bit about how StellarWP is acquiring companies and maintaining their autonomy vs migrating singular products into a larger offering.

We transitioned into the news that Pippin Williamson has retired from WordPress after Awesome Motive acquired Sandhills Development. We spent quite a while discussing this acquisition, including the controversial take on whether Awesome Motive will use the sales data from EDD users and translate that into in-house products to directly compete against customers. I don’t think it’s likely but it’s definitely a topic worthy of discussion.

To round out the show, I offer a heartfelt congratulations to the team that produces the WPwatercooler podcast. They’re celebrating 9 years and 400 episodes. Longevity is earned, not bought and they’ve certainly earned it.

Stories Discussed:

StellarWP Welcomes LearnDash to the FamilyA Bright Future: SomewhereWarm Joins WooCommercePippin Williamson Retires From WordPressPodcasting about WordPress, what I learned in 9 years

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 13 of the WP mainline podcast for Friday, September 24th, 2021. I’m your host. Jeff chiller joined us by Malcolm Peralta, sir. How you doing?Speaker 2 00:00:30 I’m doing well and yourself.Speaker 1 00:00:32 Uh, you know, today’s better than Monday. I had a, I had a pretty tough week, you know, people, you know, and I, you know, I had a tough week when there was no post on Monday. There was no post on the BP line lineup Tuesday and it was, and then people start wondering what what’s going on with this guy. Well, it’s not like for lack of trying, it’s just, I know that I know it’s my job. It’s place of employment. I gotta get, if I’m going to turn WP mainline into a destination, I gotta write stuff. I gotta have things for people to see and read, but sometimes, you know, the, the mental health and some of the anxiety is debilitating to the point, right? Can’t I can’t do what I want to do. And, uh, it’s very frustrating, but I’m happy to report that, uh, ended up talking to my doctor this week.Speaker 1 00:01:11 I got some, some new meds. In fact, uh, I learned that for the anxiety, for the attacks, I take a federally regulated drug and apparently she’s not supposed to be giving those out anymore. So she’s going to give me 15 to get me by, but now I have to start seeing a behavioral therapist, which is kind of like a psychologist or something. And if I’m going to get a renewed prescription of those pills that I take during the anxiety attacks, I have to get them to that person. And then I have to go see the doctor in person. So it’s like, it’s like, okay, I guess they just want to double check and make sure I’m not

In this episode, I am joined by Aaron Edwards, CTO of IncSub and Joshua Dailey, CMO of Infinite Uploads, to discuss a variety of topics including, NFTs, cryptocurrency, blockchains, smart-contracts, and of course, their Wapuu NFT experiment. We started by learning what Web 3 is and how Web3 WP is experimenting with various decentralized technologies to see how they intersect with the GPL, WordPress, and other open-source projects.

While we didn’t go in-depth on the NFT craze, we covered it just enough to where I think listeners will be able to understand the basics to the point of participating in the experiment. Speaking of the experiment, I wanted to emphasize a few points from the interview.

Points of Emphasis

These two gentleman are employed at longstanding reputable WordPress companies. They understand the intricasies of the WordPress community, the software project, and the freedoms that come along with it. They are not seeking to turn Wapuu, the unofficial official mascot of the WordPress project into a revenue generating machine. They’re looking to start the Minting price at .02 ETH which at the time of recording was around $72 minus the Gas fees.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a Wapuu to be part of the collection, check out their sponsorship page. They will accept sponsorships up until September 25th. Last but not least, we discussed the elephant in the room regarding Wapuu being GPL licensed and how that potentially impacts it being used as an NFT.

I came away from this interview with a better understanding of the NFT world and I can certainly see why so many content creators are utilizing it. I think I’ll use the experiment as an opportunity to learn and participate in the NFT community.

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 12 of the WP mainline podcast for Thursday, September 16th, 2021. I am your host, Jeff Chandler joined by absolutely no one. You know, what’s going on here. I’ve got two co-hosts that switch out, uh, duties on the show and none of them were available today. So I’m flying solo, but not exactly solo. I’ve got some awesome guests lined up on the show today. Uh, first up is Aaron Edwards. Aaron, thanks a lot for joining the show. Thank you. And next up we have Josh daily. Jess, thank you for being on the show.Speaker 2 00:00:55 Thanks for having us. I’m super excited to beSpeaker 1 00:00:58 Here. And the reason why I had these two gentlemen on the show is because they are part of the web three WP project. And if you haven’t been following WP, mainline.com, first off, why the hell not? You know, that should be one of your main priorities during the week. I’m only messing, but, but, uh, I recently wrote an article covered their project. They’re creating a collectable wop hu NFT, which will fund additional experience, uh, experiments with, uh, with the web 3.0 and what that entails. And half of the proceeds will go to the WordPress foundation. So I thought it was apt to get these gentlemen on the show. This is interesting. Take on wapuu and we’re going to learn some things about what NFTs are, uh, what this is all about. I, I gotta say I, I, I’ve been kind of looking at NFTs from, from an outside, looking in.Speaker 1 00:01:55 I found Chris Wallace on Twitter and he’s really big into NFTs and tased those some blockchains on what’s going on. And, and I’m also seeing it. It just seems to me l

In this episode, Malcom Peralty and I are joined by Andrea Middleton, Community organizer for Automattic, at least until the end of September. We begin the episode with Andrea describing what it was like to receive so much praise and goodwill from her announcement on Twitter that she was leaving Automattic to pursue a role on the Community team at Reddit. It’s clear that after ten years of working in and around the WordPress project, she’s positively impacted a number of people.

Andrea described some of the personal and professional challenges she encountered during her tenure at Automattic. She also shared advice for those involved in open-source and you can read her ongoing series, Letters to an Open Source contributor via her personal blog. We also talked about the pandemic and its impact on the event side of WordPress and how it has provided a unique opportunity for in-person event organizers to rethink the way things are done and to try new things.

Last but not least, we learned what her role will be at Reddit and wished her a farewell as she moves on to a new professional chapter of her life. I think I speak for many when I say good luck Andrea! All the best to you on your journey! We’re rooting for you!

Stories Discussed:

WordPress 5.8.1 Released, Squashes 60 Bugs and Patches Three Security VulnerabilitiesINPUT: A WordPress Lifestyle YouTube channel by rocketgenius

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 11 of WP mainline for Thursday, September 9th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler. Join my by my favorite Canadian Malcolm Peralta, Malcolm, sir. How are you doing this week? I’m doing well. I’m your favorite Canadian share? Why not? I appreciate that. How are you doing? I’m doing fine. Hey, wait, that’s your line? I mean, that’s, that’s your word? I’m doing okay. Here we are on a Thursday afternoon. It, um, we have a brief reprieve from late summer heat and, uh, it looks like follow the clouds look like fall. I don’t know about you, but fall has this distinct kind of look outside. It has its distinct look. It has the smelling of the leaves and everything, and we got the cooler going over the lake. I’m hoping that later on today, I can get up to the lake shore and try and see my first water spot.Speaker 1 00:01:09 I’ve never seen a water spot even though I live by the lake. Um, so it’d be really cool to finally get one of those on camera. Hmm. Sounds like a good way to spend your time. Not too bad. Blustery breezy, windy cold fall. Yeah. Sounds great. Right. Sounds like pumpkin spice latte weather. Oh my, but I don’t, but I don’t treat pumpkin spice lattes. My wife does. I don’t, uh, any who we’re going to have an awesome guest on today. It’s going to be an epic show for stay tuned. But first a WordPress 5.8 0.1 has been released this a minor release squash is 60 bucks and patches three security vulnerabilities. Uh, the three security issues that were addressed where it cross site scripting vulnerability in the black editor, uh, data exposure vulnerability in the rest API. And then there were some fixes that were implemented by updating the low dash library to, uh, to the newest version.Speaker 1 00:02:06 So they’re just

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Brian Gardner, founder of Frost. The show starts off with a blast to the past as we discuss the early days of WordPress themes beginning with the Revolution Theme that ultimately catapulted Brian’s career. We talk about the GPL era throughout 2009-2011 and the impact it had on him and his business. We then learn a bit more about his decision to sell StudioPress to WP Engine in 2018 and why it was the right partner at the right time.

Last but not least, we discuss the future of WordPress themes and how Frost takes advantage of what Gutenberg brings to the table. It’s clear that Brian is excited about where WordPress themes are at right now and what the future holds with Full-site Editing on the horizon. It was cool to hear him express how easy it is to accomplish certain ideas through blocks and block patterns versus coding blocks of PHP inside of Page Templates.

To see Frost in action, check out Bob Dunn’s website and John’s blog linked above. You can also view a live demo of the theme on the Frost website.

Click to View Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode 10 of the WP mainline podcast for Thursday, September 2nd, 2021. I am your host, Jeff chiller and joined by John James. I just want to pinch your cheeks. Jacoby.Speaker 2 00:00:33 My cheeks of the red dinosaur cheese.Speaker 1 00:00:35 No, no, no. Your, your cheeks don’t mention the right dentist. So I’m here. Come on, man. Well, I’m bro, that stuff’s supposed to be a NDA. You signed about the red daySpeaker 2 00:00:43 As well. That’s out the window now,Speaker 1 00:00:46 I suppose, but John’s referencing, uh, before the show I was telling him about, I have a stuffy little red dinosaur on here and if it wasn’t for Twitter, which is my gateway to the outside world. And I just sit here and I talked to the red Dennis, and I say, John, John, talk to me, John, what do you think I should do? And he just looks at me with these big googly eyes. He never says anything, but I love him anyways. So there you go. If anything ever happens to you, you live on as this stuff for a Dennis on Jeff Smith. Good to know. Well, how’s your week going, sir?Speaker 2 00:01:20 Uh, it was good. We, uh, Carrie and I went camping last weekend. We were in,Speaker 1 00:01:25 You had to take, now you want to go againSpeaker 2 00:01:27 To, we did go again and it would, if it was hot, hot and soupy and it was humid and everything was just bugs galore. There was tons of bugs and full of flies. Very bad boat. We survived. It was fine. It was a lot of fun. And, uh, here we areSpeaker 1 00:01:46 Good, good to go. That’s why you went to experience all of that and then come home and here’s penny there’s Paul, and then there’s no bugs. We broughtSpeaker 2 00:01:54 The dogs with us, which was a whole other experience because they’re there in door dogs for sure. Oh man. Did, were they scared or they were scared in the tent when it was raining. Uh, penny does not like thunderstorms and uh, so we, uh, I didn’t get much sleep the first night. That’s okay.Speaker 1 00:02:18 Yeah, I’ve actually been struggling, sleeping myself, just tossing and turning. I don’t know what it is. I can’t get me a good night’s sleep. Um, uh, by the way, before we get into today’s episode, we have an awesome guest lined up and we’re going to probably go back in time. It’s going to be like a WordPress time capsule. So

In this episode, Malcom Peralty and I are joined by Scott Kingsley Clark. This was the first time I’ve interviewed Scott since 2018 so we began the show with him describing what he’s been up to lately. We then learned what’s new with Pods and the extensive amount of work the team has been doing transitioning to Reactjs. Scott then shares his thoughts on the direction and future of WordPress. While he feels that WordPress is in a good position today, he thinks that it would be in an even better position had Gutenberg been built on top of a Fields API.

Later in the show, Scott describes what his experience has been like managing multiple plugins on the directory. We discuss ideas on how to improve the handling of support and how plugin authors could be better financially supported for their time. Last but not least, if you listen to the very end, Scott plays a special tune with his Ukulele. Definitely check out Scott’s music at Soft Charisma. Thanks Scott for the special song, it was awesome.

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode nine of the WP mainline podcast for Friday, August 27th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler joined up by my conductor in charge Malcolm Perotti Malcolm. How’s it going, man? How’s your week. It’s been a rough one, you know, but, uh, I agree. We’re all allowed those. They don’t all have to be great. They don’t have to be good. I, I it’s so funny. Right? Cause my initial response is a Canadian Institute of that. Oh, it’s been fine. It’s been fine. Um, and not make a big deal out of it, but yeah, you can’t bad weeks and good weeks. Right. So yeah, this, this, this week was rough. I, I, I was reading WordPress stuff in, you know, with me, I can actually write posts, but it’s in my head, but getting from head to keyboard, you know, that’s, that’s difficult a lot of the times, which, uh, which it shouldn’t be, but I didn’t get a chance to publish a lot of things this week on, uh, on WP mainline.Speaker 1 00:01:17 I did, however I did, uh, wake up one day to see 15 spam messages in my Akismet queue. And I’m like, what happened? Uh, you know, it might, it might like famous now. And what happened was I was, uh, one of my articles was linked to, by just entail. I can WP Tavern and I forgot how many websites, republish, WP Tavern content in full. And I actually got pinged back. So I’m like 15, 16, 70 different sites, you know that, uh, this flawed it repost. I forgot about that. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. You’ll get the Tavern effect. You’ll get back to that point with a main line and then everyone else will be complaining about the same thing. So, oh man, know what that’d be a nice problem to have. And I mean, we’re ending the week on a, on a good note. This is gonna be a great show today.Speaker 1 00:02:03 I’m super super man. I can’t even speak. I’m so stoked. So how about that? Yes, indeed. Uh, we got, uh, not only do we have an awesome guest, but we have an awesome surprise at the end of the show. I can’t wait. Uh, there is one headlight before we get to our guests to just one headline I wanted to bring up because I think it’s somewhat important if, uh, you’ve been waiting, waiting with bated breath on what’s going to happen with the classic editor plugin. Uh, well you no longer have to wait. We found out that the classic editor plugin is going to be officially supported by the wordpress.org development team through the rest of this year

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I have a lengthy discussion about why the WP- prefix is being blocked when submitting a plugin to the directory. There’s a lot to unpack surrounding the story such as context, information available at the time, handling the situation, reporting the story, and figuring out how to resolve the issue. Considering the amount of time we spent on this topic, I’m fairly certain we scaled the peak of mount wp molehill which prepares us for the next one we’ll have to climb.

We also have a great conversation about Automattic’s recent round of funding, the stock buyback programs, and the job descriptions for new positions that are available at the company. For example, check out the one for Head of Creative Talent Development. Last but not least, we discussed what it means or doesn’t mean when people refer to the core team as opposed to an individual on that team.

Stories Discussed:

Blocking WP From Being Used in A New Plugin Name Is Not as Bad as It SeemsImprove checks on non-viable plugin names to prevent abuseWhat does it mean when people refer to the core teamJohn’s thoughts on being nominated to speak at WCUS and the session idea proposed by Josh StrebelFunding, Buyback, and HiringA Big Orange Heart Is Looking for Artists and WritersNew ways to subscribe to the WP Mainline podcast

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode eight of the WP mainline podcast for Thursday, August 19th, 2021. I am your host, Jeff Chandler joined by John James. I love you Jacoby.Speaker 2 00:00:30 Hi. I love you too. Oh, hi, everyone. Starting to showSpeaker 1 00:00:33 Off with a bit of positivity, cause we’re going to dive right into the negativity.Speaker 2 00:00:39 Well, that’s it. Everyone have a good day. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you next week. Oh yeah.Speaker 1 00:00:44 Well, I mean we could, we could wrap it up like a nice, a nice type burrito. We could wrap this up right now and probably still be fillingSpeaker 2 00:00:53 I’m hungry. Now we should wrap it up. Wrap it up. Wow. No,Speaker 1 00:00:57 No, no. I am hungry though, as well. Anyways, welcome everybody. We’ve got a lot to talk about this week. Uh, let’s start off with, uh, an interesting story that has made the rounds. Now there’s a lot to get into not a different aspects. I’ve been thinking about revolving around this story, but, uh, it turns out that a fellow by the name of Joe Youngblood posted on Twitter, that we’re press was claiming, but well, he, he, he says in his tweet that we’re press is now claiming that the WordPress foundation has demanded that developers stop allowing WP to be used in plugging names. And in his tweet, he published a screenshot from context he had with the plug-in review team. And in that screenshot, it says, we know, and yet they reached out. They meaning the WordPress foundation and asked us to for now prohibit the us

In this episode, Malcom Peralty and I discuss a variety of topics including our thoughts on the Freemium model. Personally, I’m tired of the freemium model and want to see two tiers, free or paid. I share my viewing experience of the Perseid meteor shower which put on another good show this year.

The conversation around correcting people who forget to camelcase WordPress has popped up again. Camel casing WordPress over the past 13 years has caused me to camelcase product and business names by default, then having to check if it’s correct. I suppose I have the opposite problem of Capital P Dangit.

We discuss an interesting monetizing strategy for the WordPress.org plugin directory which involves profit sharing to developers of commercial plugins hosted on the directory. But first, the directory would have to open up and allow commercial plugins to be hosted alongside free ones. This is an idea that has been tossed aside in the past but never say never. Last but not least, we share out thoughts Yoast being acquired by Newfound Digital.

Stories Discussed:

Why Can’t I Transform Two Paragraph Blocks and an Ordered List Block Into A Quote Block?Stop With The Capital D Dangit AlreadyIs Hosting a Plugin on the WordPress.org Directory Worth it?Widgets in WordPress 5.8 and BeyondExciting news: Yoast joins Newfold Digital

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome to episode seven of WP mainline for Friday, August 13th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler and joined by Malcolm. Perotti the ever so elusive, but very lucky Friday the 13th. Are you superstitious? Not typically now. I don’t know why my brain always sticks on a Friday at 30 and I’m like, oh, it’s a Friday the 13th because they never happened. I don’t, I think the horror movie craze kind of made kind of put all the relevance to Friday the 13th that it’s not, I’ve never found it to be a, an unlucky day or a day where bad things happen. I mean, Hey, it’s a Friday. So we got that going for us. You know, you can’t, can’t really hate on a Friday. I think, uh, I think worse things happen more on a full moon than a kind of Friday the 13th. You’re probably right. That gravitational pool messes with people’s heads, man.Speaker 1 00:01:14 There’s actually research out there that shows that during a full moon, like calls to nine 11 and hospital visits and it’s just people go crazier. I don’t know something to do with the full moon there’s research out there about it. But you got to wonder if it’s a it’s if it’s a cause and effect thing, right. Is it the moon or is it people deciding because the moon is that way that they can act a little bit more silly. Oh, well, I don’t know. Perhaps you have a, perhaps you have a point. All right. So, um, so last, actually last week, uh, I mentioned, I covered a lot of things. We had me and John James Jacoby just kind of had one of those episodes where we’re just, uh, I had no show notes and we decided to just riff it and it turned out okay.Speaker 1 00:01:56 We had things to get off our chest. And I think, uh, people always enjoy those kinds of episodes where they get to hear the r

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I barely talk about WordPress at all. Instead, I describe as best I can what it’s like to have anxiety and how disabling it can be. John shared his struggles with depression and other feelings over the years which have been linked to caffeine levels.

I go in-depth on why I published a post discussing white male hosts in the WordPress podcasting scene. The issues go far and beyond WordPress. We later discuss a few WordPress-related topics but by and large, John and I needed to get some things off our chest. Oh, and if you have some ideas on how John can monetize his WP User Profiles plugin, let us know in the comments or on Twitter. We’ll be back to our regular programming next week.

View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome to episode six of WP mainline for Thursday, August 5th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler and joined by the lovely, talented, beautiful John James Jacoby, who was probably thinking to himself. T G I T I’m thinking to myself is that Tuesday is a Thursday. I think it’sSpeaker 2 00:00:40 Thursday have every, every compliment that you give me, I feel like, uh, just you put it on my tab and I owe it. I owe it to you at the end of the year. And, uh, and then I’m like, Hey, Jeff, I can’t afford to pay the compliment tab this year again. So just let it ride. But thank you. It’s good to see you. I mean, here you, uh, I’m glad that we’re recording again. Have I said that yet? It’s always good to, uh, to hear your voiceSpeaker 1 00:01:08 There. I think you have, and, and by the way, this week, if you noticed, you know, last week we had 10 can John, this week, you’ve got full bodied. This is what I like to hear,Speaker 2 00:01:19 John. This is what I like to hear too. A story about last weekend was I listened to it. It was really, it was pretty terrible. So this will be like a redo without Chris, sorry, Chris. But it was a good show last week and this week’s going to be different, though. It sounds like it’s just me. And, youSpeaker 1 00:01:35 Know, so I’m, so I’m looking at my show notes and it’s just a blank page. You know, actually it was a, it was a bit of a rough week for me. I thought, I thought I’d start off by saying, you know, if you, uh, pay attention to me on Twitter and that’s, uh, at Jeffrey, J E F F R zero. Um, you’ll notice that from time to time, I’ll mention that, you know, I’m dealing with anxiety and I’m having a rough time when I’m having a rough go of it. And I thought maybe I’d kind of explain or trying to describe what it is. I mean, when I say that I have anxiety or it’s tough, and for me, it’s like, uh, it’s this feeling of like this, it’s a combination of like nervousness, excitement. It’s weird because you know, I, I, I spend the day, sometimes I spend the day with this anxiety.Speaker 1 00:02:27 It’s like, um, actually it’s kind of hard to describe, I guess, now that I’m thinking about it and talking about it, but it’s, uh, what ends up happening is I spend time and energy and focus on trying to remain calm, trying to remain even keel because what what’s, what wants to happen is my heart rate wants to increase, which provides labored breathing. And then if it escalates beyond that my blood pressure rises, then I get all hot and bothered and sweaty and, you know, don’t get too excited there, John, this is not the good kind. And, uh, and, and

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Chris Wiegman as we discuss the complexities of developing for and contributing to WordPress these days. JavaScript has a lot to do with it but it’s more than that. The lack of documentation was cited as one of the reasons as was the overwhelming amount of libraries, testing suites, packages, and other tools that developers need to keep up with just to stay afloat.

Later in the show, John described his experience thus far with the four-day workweek experiment taking place at Sandhills Development. To sum things up, it’s working out quite nicely. One of the nicest perks of the experiment is not having to make up the eight hours during the other four days of the week. Last but not least, we give our takes on the proposed guideline changes that WordCamps would need to follow in 2022.

Stories Discussed:

WordCamp US is BackProposal: how to return to safe in-person WordCampsError: Maximum Number of White Male WordPress Podcast Hosts Exceeded

View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:19 Welcome everybody to episode five of WP mainline for Thursday, July 29th, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff challenged joined by John, actually reunited with John James Jacoby. Talk about the news of the week and yes, we are doing this on a Thursday because my cohost boy, he’s real special. Now he works at Sandhill developments and they have four day work weeks. So one Fridays, sorry,Speaker 2 00:00:52 Just don’t want to, don’t want to work on the day off. Sorry about that. Jesus. Come on, man. Uh,Speaker 1 00:01:02 Sit back, sir. It’s, it’s glad to hear your voice and, and uh, a lot of people are going to be glad to hear us both back on the show. ISpeaker 2 00:01:10 Will speak on behalf of all of our listeners that everyone’s happy to hear you back. Lots of feedback on those on the internet and the Twitter. Isn’t it. Everyone misses you. So, uh, it’s good to see you back behind the microphone, Jack. Thanks for havingSpeaker 1 00:01:27 Me. That is so kind of you, sir. And, uh, you know, I don’t actually actually we’ll get into it a little bit later in the show, but, um, so we’re going to dive right deep into it right off the bat here. And in fact, so we’re going to talk about a tweet. That’s beginning a lot of conversation in the WordPress world, a tweet that you responded to, and even your tweet, your response is getting a lot of, a lot of feedback on Twitter. And the gentlemen who actually tweeted this out is actually on the show today, Chris Wigman, Hey Chris, welcome to the show. Hey Jeff. Well, this makes you two for two and being mentioned on WP line, which puts you almost at cohost category.Speaker 3 00:02:10 Oh God. If it was three, is this a three strikes and I’m out system? No three strikes.Speaker 1 00:02:19 Uh, but uh, for those who don’t know Chris wingman, um, boy, way back in the day he created the, uh, I think, or I w what was the name of the security plugin before is I think securitySpeaker 3 00:02:31 Be a piece of gear,Speaker 1 00:02:32 Better WB security. Then it turned an I-Team security and that got acquired by themes. And you’ve been working with, uh

In this episode, Malcolm Peralty and I describe what’s new in WordPress 5.8 such as improvements to Media, block-based widget management screen, and WebP image support. I also share what solutions I’ve discovered to problems people have been having with the new block-based widget management screen and the forty image limit for gallery pages.

Later in this episode, we talk about WordCamps and when we can expect to be going back to them or whether we’ll attend them at all. Last but not least, we discuss some of the proposed requirements for the theme directory.

STORIES DISCUSSED:

WordPress 5.8 Released – TatumImage Gallery Infinite Scrolling removedWordFest LiveTheme Requirement Changes FeedbackNew Theme for Chris Wiegman A Defunct Video Hosting Site Is Flooding Normal Websites With Hardcore Porn

Click to View Transcript:

Speaker 1 00:00:20 Welcome everybody to episode four of WP mainline for Friday, July 23rd, 2021. I’m your host, Jeff Chandler and joined, uh, by Malcolm Peralta. And it’s a big week this week because we’re pressed 5.8. Tatum has dropped Tatum.Speaker 2 00:00:34 I don’t know that the name of that is always going to get meSpeaker 1 00:00:37 Tatum, Tatum, Tatum. So this, uh, this release was named in honor of art Tatum, the legendary jazz pianist, uh, according to the, uh, release bod post his formidable technique and willingness to push boundaries, inspired musicians and changed what people thought could be done. Uh, so this was a big release depending on how you look at it. I mean, uh, you’ve got new, uh, you can now manage widgets with blocks. In fact, uh, I guess we’ll stop right there at that first one, because that’s, that’s probably going to be the feature that users maybe recognize at first or it’s one of the most user-facing features in a WordPress 5.8 and it turns out it’s also causing, uh, some issues for, for quite a few users. Um, I’ve been watching the wordpress.org support forums since the release of 5.8 and there are users reporting that their widgets are now, uh, generating, uh, plugin warnings.Speaker 1 00:01:37 Uh, the widgets have disappeared. The widget screen has disappeared. Things have gone very wonky. And then when you start getting into themes and plugins that mess with widgets of widget interface, uh, then things really start to get crazy. Uh, thankfully there is a plugin. You can go look for it on the plugin directory, it’s called classic widgets. And when you install it, it, uh, pretty much puts back the widget management interface, uh, prior to WordPress 5.8. And in most cases that I have seen this has fixed the problem or problems that people have been experiencing. And, uh, and I was actually writing a post about this last night, uh, because there are some things I wanted to cover and, um, you know, uh, I accidentally, I don’t even know the shortcut, the keyboard shortcut to close a browser window. And last night I figured it out at the worst time.Speaker 1 00:02:31 Uh, so those of you who have been listening to the show, remember how I talke