Lots of WordPress core, Gutenberg, and WordCamp news this week. Are off-forum .org support requests OK? Matt: Tumblr will be open sourced. What’s the WP Way?
WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 is available for testing. This beta allows theme authors to use webfonts in theme.json. In the future, it will be possible for plugins to register and enqueue webfonts through a public API. This beta also includes three new style variations for the Twenty Twenty-Two default theme.
It looks like performance improvements for taxonomies are coming to WordPress 6.0 — including term query caching and a limit on taxonomy queries.
It’s official — WordCamp US 2022 will be held at the Town and Country Resort in San Diego. Seating capacity is in the thousands there, so event planners may be anticipating attendee levels comparable to 2019 and pre-COVID times.
Anne McCarthy shares her thoughts on who full site editing is for as well as the barriers she has heard lately that “prevent folks from adopting full site editing in its current state.”
Sören Wrede explains that an old Gutenberg issue will be fixed in the 13.1 release: “if you close the welcome guide once, it will not open again in another browser.”
After 13.1, users’ editor preferences will be saved in the user meta table as wp_persisted_preferences.
Pascal Birchler shares an update on the Preferred Languages feature project. He’s given it a good polish but needs more feedback and testing.
The first PHP Roundup update from the PHP Foundation is out and recommended if you want PHP news outside of the WordPress “bubble.”
In the US, the White House announced it is launching a “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” with over 60 global partners and countries. The Declaration’s principles include commitments to “protect human rights and fundamental freedoms” and to “promote a global Internet that advances the free flow of information.”
As Andrew Blok notes, this nonbinding agreement comes in the face of rising authoritarianism.
Munir Kamal has a new app that lets you create full-page layouts using patterns from the official WordPress Patterns library. He also has a video briefly showcasing his app.
A recent tweet from Matt Mullenweg reveals there are plans to make Tumblr open source.
Congrats to WebDevStudios! They manage the free Custom Post Type UI plugin, and it has reached over 1 million active installs. The premium version, Custom Post Type UI Extended, now has a block that displays custom post type content.
The Nielsen Norman Group has a new report on the best fonts for online reading, but they also mention a fact that’s even more interesting: “People read 11% slower for every 20 years they age.”
If you have a plugin in the WordPress.org repo that you offer support for, do you handle support requests there or outside the .org forums? Steve Stern summarizes a recent discussion about the appropriateness of fielding support requests elsewhere.
Chris Wiegman reminds us there is an RSS solution for keeping track of your Twitter followers if you decide to leave Twitter. It’s a useful tool even if you don’t plan to leave.
JSONhero.io looks extremely helpful if you need to search and parse big JSON files.
Jason Coleman from Paid Memberships Pro outlines his company’s mission and how it aligns with both the GPL and “the WordPress Way.”
