Hello. How do you see
WordPress integrating with voice
AI and 3D publishing on the web
in the future?
>> Abha, thank you very much for
that question. I haven't thought
too much about voice AI or 3D
publishing, but the good news is
that I don't need to for it to
be possible. WordPress has so
many great APIs. I have seen
demos before of people using
WordPress to power content
embedded in sort of virtual
worlds or things like Oculus,
and I have seen people use
WordPress to build kind of like
-- kind of like a voice menu
system for I believe it was
Alexa. So I know it's possible,
but we're probably a few years
away from that being in core.
And if there's anything that
I've missed that I should check
out, please send it my way.
>> I'm Christina Workman from
Calgary, Canada. I'm a designer,
developer, enduser and
contributor. We saw with the
release of WordPress 5.6 that
over 600 people contributed to
track tickets and GitHub pull
requests, all mentioned by name.
As well as numerous volunteers
contributing in the support
forums and translating to make
5.6 available in 38 languages,
although unnamed. There's no
doubt these volunteers are doing
great work which is supported by
thousands of other contributors
volunteering their time outside
of core releases throughout the
year every year who don't get
any recognition outside of their
inner circles. Publicly
acknowledging the variety of
contributor roles available goes
a long way to increasing our
community's awareness that these
roles exist for them to
participate in. What plans are
there for recognizing
contributions made by those who
contribute to any team
throughout the year, even those
not involved in a core release?
Thank you.
>> Christina, this was an
excellent question, and I do
agree that recognition is a
fantastic way to get more people
contributing to the things that
we're doing. The WordPress
release post and of course the
core itself is probably better
at recognizing core itself and
contributors there than anything
else. One thing we did build to
improve this was the badge
system on profiles. So if you go
to profiles.wordpress.org/Matt,
you'll see there are a number of
badges there at the very top
that show all the different
things that I've done and
contributed to the WordPress
community. I think there might
be a bug there, because it shows
that I am a translation editor
and I am unable to speak any
language besides English. And
even English I struggle with
sometimes, so -- but I noticed
that on these badges, there's no
way to click on them and see all
the other people that have the
same badges. So that could be a
really nice start to having
pages that recognize folks,
particularly folks whose work
isn't just tied to a single
release within WordPress.org and
it could have some sort of
natural decay function so, you
know, if you haven't done
anything for an amount of time,
maybe you drop off the list.
That would be, I think, a very
natural place to start to add it
and we'll look into it.
Excellent suggestion and thank
you very much.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Courtney
Robertson with the training
team. You recently shared an
article from ZDNet that
indicates an 834% rise in PHP
developer jobs since January of
2020. It's fair to assume that
some of that would be WordPress
developer-related jobs. W3Techs
indicates that WordPress powers
over 39.3% of all websites
online, surpassing 38.5% of
websites that have no content
management system at all. Given
those stats, what role do you
see for employers in the
WordPress.org ecosystem as it
relates to the
learn.wordpress.org website? How
do you think that the learned
platform can address hiring,
skills and ongoing professional
development needs?
>> Thank you, Courtney, for
highlighting those stats, and
also thank you for the awesome
WordPress swag you have in your
background. One cool thing about
this format is it's really neat
to see people where they are,
not just us all being in the
same auditorium. You know, for
Learn, I think the first step is
really just organizing and
getting really high-quality
educational material up there.
The equivalent -- like if you
were going to take a university
course on WordPress. How do we
walk you from just learning the
basics all the way up to being
able to be able to customize and
basically be a WordPress pro, so
you could build sites for other
people and be kind of like an
expert. Down the line, it would
be great if this platform could
have some sort of
self-certification or perhaps
even some sort of administered
certification that could show
people that, you know, you
mastered a certain skill. That
you, you know, went through --
either you went through lessons
or you didn't need to, but you
were able to, like, take a test
at the end and show that you
were competent in this. It
wouldn't be a perfect system,
but it could be a nice way for
people to learn more about
WordPress and hopefully as they
go through, since WordPress is
open source, improve the
materials as we go through it,
both from the point of view of
making it more intuitive or
easier to understand, and then
also translating, as well.
Because there is huge demand for
WordPress really all over the
world now.
>> Hey, Matt. Dan Maby here from
Big Orange Hearts, a charity
providing well-being and mental
health support for remote
workers. To support our mission,
we deliver events to help reduce
social isolation for those
working remotely. With more than
12,000 attendees through our
virtual event platform built on
open source technologies this
year, I wanted to ask about your
vision for events within the
WordPress community through
2021. As a regular WordCamp and
meetup organizer myself, I also
wanted to ask your thoughts on
responsibility towards safety of
attendees and fellow organizers
as we start to take steps
towards a vaccinated era. And,
finally, with virtual events
offering a great level of
accessibility for attendees, do
you see the potential for a
hybrid approach towards
WordCamps in the future? Thanks
for your time.
>> Hi, Dan. Andrea here. Thanks
for asking this question. It's
been inspirational to watch
WordPress community organizers
rise to the challenges that this
horrible pandemic has brought,
especially since so many of us
love this work because we love
seeing each other in person and
we know how powerful those
face-to-face, in-person
interactions can really be. And
like other WordPressers, I am
really eager to get back to
those in-person events, just as
soon as it's safe. All that
said, and as you point out,
moving all of our events online
has made them much more
accessible, especially to those
who either can't travel or don't
wish to travel to our in-person
events. When I think about our
return to in-person events, I
think that some sort of hybrid
element will be necessary,
especially in those first
stages. But I also know that
hybrid events are much more
expensive, and so yet again
we're gonna be hoping and
looking for WordPressers who
want to take the opportunity to
really look for innovative ways
to make our community events
accessible at scale. I don't
know all the answers here, but I
know that some of the smartest
people -- that I know, at least
--
are in WordPress, and I'm really
looking forward to work on this
together with the global
community team. I hope that's
helpful. Thanks for all that you
do for WordPress and the
WordPress community. I hope to
see you soon.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Dave from
Belgium. Almost 15 years
building sites professionally
with ten years on WordPress
websites. Hope you're okay and
Happy Christmas in advance for
everyone listening. Well,
WordPress is in its nature a
very clean, no-overkill-on-
options kind of software, and
thankfully this created our
beloved WordPress ecosystem. It
also created momentum for page
builders like Elementer to arise
with enormous success. And the
reason for that is simple: The
user got all the options. Just
to mention a few to make my
question more specific, I'm
talking about layout, padding,
margin, desktop versus mobile,
and tablet and so on. Now, the
Block Editor is right now also
that kind of no-overkill-on-
options kind of software. Some
like that. I totally understand
that, but some don't. The
question is, how far do you
think the core blocks must go in
those kinds of customization to
please the mass non-tech
audience because if you look
back, honestly, that's what they
want, that's what they choose.
Or would you rather keep that
WordPress simplicity again to
leave the door open for the next
block page builder plug-in to
arise.
So how dependent on a
third-party layout plug-in do
you want the WordPress block
user to be? Thank you.
>> Hello, Dave. You bring up an
interesting point, which is that
we're trying to walk a very fine
line between creating something
which is intuitive and easy to
use, and also providing the
customization that people
clearly want in WordPress. While
also trying to do something
which has never really been done
before, which is provide a "what
you see is what you get"
WYSIWYG-style interface that,
again, is intuitive and easy to
use in lay out, but that also
creates really semantic markup,
structured data, and is fast and
performant.
I don't know if you've seen any
of the comparisons on the web
between WordPress with Gutenberg
versus other page filters or
other proprietary CMSs. That
page building and functionality.
Gutenberg blows them out of the
water. It is really fast, really
clean markup, really lean. This
is taking a little longer to do,
right, to do it right, it's
taking longer, but I believe
it's the right long-term
investment in both the future of
WordPress and the future of the
web. In terms of customization,
I believe there will always be
space for not just one plug-in
but many, many, many plug-ins to
extend Gutenberg. And that is
really the idea, that by --
where before we had, you know,
lots and lots of different page
builders kind of having their
own data structures, their own
way to do essentially the same
thing from a user point of view,
and themes would have to build
to one, SEO plug-ins would have
to build to each one. We're
trying to provide common rails
or framework that every vision
for how page-building could work
on top of WordPress can leverage
these blocks.
In fact, blocks are even built
so that other CMSs can leverage
them, too. So that is the path
we are on.
It's the way WordPress is going.
I believe it's the future. I
hope that as many people get on
that train as possible, but if
not, I do believe it is
inevitable.
>> Hey, Matt, this is Doc from
"Torque" magazine. I'm wondering
what features for core are you
targeting to make WordPress a
better headless experience in
2021?
>> First, I have to say, I don't
love the term "headless."
I like called it "decoupled
WordPress" because who wants to
be headless? But by and far, the
thing that's been driving the
most improvements to our APIs
has been our first-priority
usage of them. So, with
Gutenberg, built on and using
the REST API, and, of course,
our mobile apps, both Android
and iOS, you know, a million
active users, all running
through the APIs. So that has
helped expose a ton of bugs and
a ton of other areas where we
can improve it. I'm keeping my
eye on the GraphQL plug-in. I
think that that is an
interesting possible next step
after REST to support either as
a more official plug-in, or just
something that we point people
to because it seems to be doing
well. You know, I was actually
-- I don't think that a
decoupled architecture or
"headless" sites are right for
everything. I think they're
right in certain situations, but
as I am quoted with saying, they
are probably a regression for
many of the people adopting
them. I actually had a really
good debate about this at the
Netlifly JAMStack Conference
with Matt Billman, but I guess
it was too good because they
elected not to post it, but
perhaps you can track down a
recording or something, and hear
some more of my thoughts about
decoupled architectures and
WordPress there.
>> Hi, Matt. My name is George
Alger. I've been a WordPress
user since 2007, and I've been
watching State of the Word for a
number of years. My question has
to do with Gutenberg versus page
builders, and more specifically
regarding page load speed. I'm
wondering, as Gutenberg in the
future adds more and more
features, do you anticipate that
the page load speeds for
Gutenberg will also slow down to
support the new features? All
right. Thanks for all you do.
Bye-bye.
>> So, George, my name is Riad
Benguella. I am a developer on
the Gutenberg team. It's an
interesting question you bring
here related to performance. As
you can see with the different
WordPress releases since the
initial release of the core --
the Block Editor in WordPress,
the performance of the editor
have been improving, even if we
were adding features at the same
time. So, it's definitely a big
priority for us, and for the
front end and the page load
speed, we've been approaching
that in a few different ways.
The first one is the block
markup. We are trying to make
sure the block markup is as
clean as possible, and also the
interesting thing is that
Gutenberg brings semantics to
the content that is being
rendered. So WordPress can know
exactly what blocks are being
rendered, what assets they need,
what CSS, what JavaScripts they
need, and, in fact, recently, we
landed the pull request that
allows us to only load the CSS
of the blocks that are actually
in need in the currently
rendered page, and this opens a
lot of possibilities. For
example, in the future, we may
do the same for JavaScript and
lazy-load blocks. When we expand
that to full site editing where
a theme is basically composed
entirely of blocks, you can
imagine that the CSS and the
JavaScript provided by the teams
themselves won't be as necessary
as today.
So I think we have a big
opportunity here to actually
improve the performance of all
the WordPress websites and not
decrease it as we add features.
Thank you.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Hitha from
India. I'm a project manager,
mainly working with a group of
WordPress developers. My
question for you today is a
simple one. In the recent
releases, we have a lot of new
features and advancement in
WordPress, but as an end user or
maybe a content manager, have
you ever felt like it would be
good to have a more modern
design for the back end, and if
it would have been good if we
had more customization options
just for the back end? Have you
ever felt so? Thanks.
>> Hello, Hitha. I'm Joen from
Denmark. I worked a little bit
on the Block Editor design.
Thank you for your question.
I'll try to answer it as best I
can. As you suggest, WordPress
has landed many features in
recent releases, but very few
changes to the dashboard
visuals. If you're asking
whether that's gonna change, my
answer is I'd like to see that
very much. One of the challenges
to making that happen is that
the dashboard as it exists has
been customized by a great deal
of plug-ins and developers, and
although it is complicated to
new users, the fact that it's
been unchanged for so long means
that it's familiar to existing
users. That means whatever
changes we make have to be
rolled out carefully and in
small iterations. But my hope is
that over time those iterations
can add up. For example, the
Block Editor, we have a new icon
set and a new set of components,
user interface controls.
Although technically
challenging, if we could roll
those out to the rest of the
dashboard, it would bring a
great deal of improvements to
both accessibility and visual
simplicity. So I'd like to see
that happen. You also ask about
customization options, and the
thing is, WordPress is a lot of
things to a lot of people, and
customization options beyond
color schemes might help tailor
the interface to each group. I
would suggest, though, that the
first step to take would be to
make general user interface
enhancement because that would
benefit everyone, but after
that, absolutely, we could look
at customization options. I hope
that answers your question, and
thank you again for your time.
>> Hey, Matt. Jeroen here from
Belgium. Thank you for taking
the State of the Word online
this year. I'm using WordPress
for all of the websites I
develop with my company Site
Fly, and I'm an active
contributor to the WordPress
project. You mentioned before
that in Phase 4 of the Gutenberg
project, that multilingual
features are coming to WordPress
core. I know this is in the
future, but is there any public
roadmap of all the features and
functionalities we want in
WordPress? And is it going to
include a language fallback into
core so we can configure
multiple locales and the
fallback when a translation is
not on wordpress.org?
Currently as a contributor to
the polyglots team, I find it
very difficult to translate
thousands of plug-ins and
themes, and I would love that
fallback to another locale would
be there before it goes to
English.
Currently, I'm using Preferred
Languages as a plug-in for this,
but it would be very cool if
this would be included in
WordPress core. Thank you for
answering my question.
>> Hello, Jeroen. I'm Matias
Ventura helping lead the
Gutenberg project forwards.
Thank you for your question and
for contributing to the project.
Regarding the roadmap, there is
a public roadmap published in
wordpress.org/about/roadmap that
has sort of like an overview of
the next immediate steps, and it
touches upon the four phases of
Gutenberg as well. And what it
doesn't contain, though, is a
detailed plan on Phase 4
specifically, multilingual,
because it's fairly further
ahead for us and we're in the
thick of Phase 2. However, like,
there has been some
conversations around the
implications of localization
and some of the multilingual
aspects, specifically around
patterns and block themes and
how those could be built in the
Gutenberg repository. Nothing
substantial yet, but if you are
interested in those
conversations, that's a good
place to engage with and start
looking at. But, yeah, like as
we approach -- as we get closer
to Phase 4, we will have a more
detailed overview of what's
needed, what requirements and
what we want to do. Regarding
the other topic about fallback
languages, that's a very good
point. For me, I'm very
sympathetic to that,
specifically because I speak
Spanish, but of the Washo
variant. That means that in most
cases I would benefit from a
fallback to Spain's Spanish
because there is not much
translations going on for where
I am. I'm not even sure if we
have a locale, honestly. Yeah,
so that's something that could
-- I don't know, personally, I
think it could happen before
Phase 4. I think it could be,
like, a small step towards a
significantly better experience.
So it might be good to discuss
it before Phase 4. But in any
case, if that happens -- if it
doesn't happen before, it would
surely be a part of the phase
four conversation. Thank you
again and hope you're doing
well. Bye-bye.
>> Hello, everyone. Good
morning, Matt. This is Joe
Simpson in Castilla, California
in the Santa Clarita Valley,
just north of Los Angeles. I'm
the lead organizer for WordCamp
Santa Clarita online and I run
two WordPress meet-ups in the
area as well. As you can tell,
I'm a big WordPress fan. I'm a
big advocate for accessibility
as well, and I've done quite a
few events this year in that
space. What I wanted to reach
out to you today about was a
matter that's pretty important
to me. When we had our event in
the spring, we had volunteers
from Bangladesh, we had
attendees from Europe, from
Africa, volunteers from South
America, and it opened up my
eyes to WordPress as a worldwide
entity and a community that's
global in nature, but my concern
was these online presentations,
these online events, Wordcamps,
workshops, et cetera, I was
really wondering whether they
could be more accessible. What
is WordPress doing to make its
online presence more accessible
to everyone? I'm really big on
inclusion and diversity, and I
would love to hear what
WordPress plans to do moving
forward with online events.
Thank you. Have a great holiday
and a good New Year, everyone.
Take care.
>> Well, first of all, Joe,
thank you so much for your
contributions and leading by
example, which is, well, many
would say the only type of
leadership. I do believe that as
anxious as I am to get back to
our in-person events, I do
believe that much like your
experience of hosting a, you
know, a more local WordCamp and
people from all over the world
joining, I think if we can move
more and more of our community
engagement to be really rich and
interactive online, we get the
benefits of the metaverse,
right? That people can choose to
represent themselves however
they like or not. They can be
treated for their -- and
perceived by their
contributions, their words, how
they participate. Not
necessarily who they are, where
they're from or any of that. You
know, when I first got started
contributing to open source, I
didn't have any of the
background, or there wasn't
really a community in Houston
where I was or anything like
that, to see. But I appreciated
so much that people would look
at, for me, my code and say,
okay, this isn't just some young
kid in Houston who is not a real
engineer. They were able to look
at it for its own merits. And I
think that, you know, almost 20
years later, we can do so much
more than that in terms of
creating a truly, truly
inclusive community. The other
thing that's really, really
important to me there and that I
do see demonstrated throughout
WordPress, but I just want to
emphasize it again, is what you
mentioned, that idea of always
being welcoming, always being
kind, always being friendly,
particularly as more folks from
around the world get involved,
it's important to remember that
not everyone's first language is
English, and so there might be
communication barriers or
misunderstandings. And so just
-- we have a saying within
Automattic that I think is
fantastic for any sort of
distributed work or
collaboration, and it's a
different kind of API. It stands
for Assume Positive Intent. Find
that if you can -- this isn't
something you can ask of anyone
else, but if you can remind
yourself of it, it allows you to
see other people's interactions
through a lens which, you know,
allows you to put your best foot
forward and allows them to
regain their best foot, if they
didn't put it forward probably
on accident with whatever
interaction or communication it
was. So, I keep all those things
in mind. Just to recap, more and
more online. Again, leaning way
more into the online education,
online engagement, online
mentorship, online, you know,
everything. Which is kind of
funny because it is a little bit
back to our roots before we ever
had events. Remembering that
great ideas, great contributions
can come from everywhere and
anywhere, and then making sure
that people regardless of where
they are, the background, the
language they speak, their
economic ability, anything, feel
fully included in the WordPress
community. Everyone has a place
here. We are trying to
democratize publishing and
commerce. We are -- and
democratize means it's for
everyone. It's not just for the
few or the elite or the
technical. That's our mission.
It's a lifelong mission. We'll
never be perfect, and I plan to
keep working on this the rest of
my life, and I hope that -- to
see you and others alongside in
that mission for many years and
decades to come.
>> Hi, Matt. My name's Laura. I
am a member of the WordPress
community in Montclair, New
Jersey, and I have used
WordPress every day of my life
since January of 2006. So I'm a
really early adopter and a
longtime user. I'm also somebody
who doesn't code. I'm a content
creator, and I love doing that
and getting all kinds of
messages out there in the world.
Primarily I've created content
for non-profits, for
entertainment industry websites.
So I guess my question to you,
Matt, is when I go to Wordcamps,
I frequently don't see a lot of
tracks for fellow content
creators like me. What could you
say to the folks who are running
WordPress events, specifically
WordPress meet-ups and
Wordcamps, that might encourage
them to embrace content creators
and think about creating more
tracks for users that were less
technical?
>> Hey, Laura. I think this is
an excellent question and one
that's really important to me. I
think that content is the thing
that gives your website power
and meaning. It's wonderful to
have a well built, well
constructed, well designed
website, but if you don't have
anything for your users once
they arrive, I'm not certain
that your website is really
doing its best job for you. And
so to encourage event organizers
to embrace content creators and
make sure that we have provided
content for them to up-level
their skills, I think the thing
that's most important to
remember is that writing for the
internet is a specific and
different skill. It's not the
same as technical writing, and
it's not the same as writing
prose. So when we want to have
very good websites that are
engaging to our audiences but
still get the point across, I
think the only way to do it is
with excellent content, no
matter how that looks for you,
and the best way for us to help
WordPressers do that is to
provide training throughout our
Wordcamps, meet-ups, et cetera.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Lax here. Using
WordPress more than ten years.
And congrats for growing up to
40% of the web. That's nice. So
my question for you today is, do
you have any plans to optimize
WordPress performance? I mean
WordPress it's like, you know,
we have Jetpack, we have caching
plug-ins, but I found not only
me, my clients, and I see
bloggers and everyone struggle
with the performance, and also
like optimizing the database
queries -- like, to get a simple
tag or category, we are running
too much of subqueries, right?
I'm sure you are a programmer
yourself, so you might have some
plans for the future. And good
luck with our motto, like
democratizing the web. Thank
you.
>> Howdy, Lax. You hit on one of
my favorite topics, which is
performance. I was really
excited that we were able to get
some performance improvements
into WordPress 5.4, as I talked
about in the talk, but there's
always more to do. That's the
beautiful thing about
performance, is it can always be
better. For the issues that you
describe, I would encourage you
to perhaps check out a different
web post. If you're running into
that frequent of performance
issues, there might be something
where, you know, they have you
on a server with too many other
clients or they don't have SSDs
in the servers or whatever it
is. But any modern performant
WordPress web post, primarily
the ones we recommend on
wordpress.org can really handle
a ton of traffic to even an
un-cached, unconfigured site.
That's always great. In terms of
things in core that we could do
to make it better, our queries,
I do believe they're pretty
optimized. They run in a lot of
places, but who knows, maybe a
new future got introduced, maybe
something regressed. So,
please, if there is something
out there that you have noticed,
either open a track ticket or,
you know, share it with someone
or if you, you know, debugging
queries is actually one of the
ways I learned the most about
programming and engineering,
just spending hours and hours
inside the mySQL command line
was -- was actually an amazing
sort of way I developed as a
developer and progressed as a
developer. So it might be
something -- you can discover
something new within WordPress
that then could save millions
and millions of server hours
someplace. So, let me know what
you find or let me know if that
-- if you make a ticket there.
I'll make sure to bump it with
the developers and that it gets
the proper attention.
>> 2020 brought new and
unexpected challenges, and I'm
proud to be a part of a
community like WordPress,
willing to step up, act quickly
and offer solutions in times of
need. Which emerging web
technologies are you most
interested in following in 2021
and how would you like to see
groups like MSP Media within the
WordPress ecosystem innovating
and solution-building using that
technology?
>> Hi, Meg. First of all,
congratulations for getting
SchoolListIt in the Call for
Code Top Five. I believe the
WordPress power tool to make it
the furthest. I know that wasn't
easy, so congratulations on
that. In terms of emerging
technologies, more broadly, I'm
excited that 2020 looks like
it's a year when more mainstream
adoption of cryptocurrencies is
really coming to bear, and that,
to me, you know, as someone who
is a big supporter of open
source and cryptocurrency is
kind of like open source applied
to money, the finance system.
Excited about that. Still very,
very early days. Probably, like,
you know, we're 10 years into
something that's going to take
30 years to happen, but it's
exciting to see steps. Closer to
home in the WordPress world, the
most emerging technologies --
not new, but they'll be new to
us when we adopt it for Phase 3
of Gutenberg will be Web RTC,
which is essentially like a way
for browsers to connect to each
other in a peer-to-peer fashion
that we can use for real-time
communication, so, for example,
the real-time co-editing that we
want to put into Gutenberg, and
we want to do it without a
centralized server so that, you
know, clients will be able to
connect to each other directly.
A little simpler, and I guess
don't know if you'd call it
emerging, but it's something we
need to do a lot better at, is
native development. So both the
mobile apps on iOS and Android
and native desktop apps for
WordPress, I think have a lot of
potential for just creating a
really slick, highly integrated,
ultra-fast application-like
interface for WordPress. We've
got the APIs for it now. We've
got some good starts, including
some of the code that's based on
Calypso, which is the
open-source React framework that
runs with WordPress.com. So
there is some good stuff there,
but I would like to see a lot
more, so, thank you for your
question.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Michelle
Frechette, Head of Customer
Success at GiveWP, volunteer for
WordPress and Big Orange Heart,
and podcaster at WP Coffee Talk.
We've seen the WordPress
community grow and morph over
the years and it's been amazing.
This year changed a lot of the
way the community meets and
interacts due to the pandemic.
Some of it has been
heartbreaking, like not meeting
in person, but so much good has
come from it, too, like people
connecting from outside of their
areas on meet-ups, online
conferences and more. My
question is, what do you see for
the future of the WordPress
community as we move forward in
still uncertain times? What
initiatives should we be looking
forward to and what kind of
support can we expect for our
communities? Thanks for
providing the online State of
the Word and an opportunity to
contribute with questions.
>> Hi, Michelle. Thanks for
taking time to send in a
question. Andrea Middleton here.
Gosh, the changes that we have
weathered this year have been
immense, haven't they? I agree
with both the heartbreak and the
unexpected benefits that you
pointed out. When I think about
what the future holds for of the
WordPress community, though,
especially as we move out of
2020, but potentially into more
uncertainty, I'm really
optimistic. I know that
WordPress enthusiasts are
incredibly resourceful and
resilient in the face of
adversity, as we've proven this
year in many ways. The
initiative I'm most excited
about moving into 2021 is the
Learn WordPress platform, which
formally launched this week.
This on-demand WordPress
training platform has the
potential to build more bridges
and paths to WordPress and
success in WordPress than we've
ever seen at a time when more
people than ever are looking to
move their businesses online or
shift careers and become
WordPress professionals. I hope
to see a great deal of support
for this effort from
WordPress-based businesses as
well as individual contributors
who want to help others to help
WordPress as they themselves
have been helped. The support we
in WordPress provide to each
other is all about how small
kindnesses build into great and
interdependent, powerful
organizations. And I don't see
that changing any time soon.
Thanks so much for asking.
Talk to you later.
>> Hello. I'm Milana, a
freelance WordPress developer
based in Serbia and also an
active member of the
documentation team, and that is
the subject of my question
today. So as I see it, there are
two major problems which are not
unique only to the documentation
team. All teams seem to be
suffering from same conditions.
So the first one is we are
heavily understaffed. We don't
have enough active contributors
to cover all documentation
areas, and the second one is we
don't collaborate enough or at
all with other teams. And this
goes that far that sometimes we
don't even know who is the
person doing documentation for
release team, you know, the dev
notes. Also, there was this huge
gap between Gutenberg and the
documentation team and it's
getting bridged this year, but
it shouldn't even happen with
such a project as Gutenberg is.
And I'm not saying that anyone
here is doing anything wrong. We
all do as much as we can. I'm
just stating how it is. So, my
question is, how can we, as
global community, recognize this
need to connect teams, to work
more closely with each other? In
documentation team, we are
working right now on two big
projects, external linking
policy and documentation style
guide. Now, these will have
impact beyond documentation
team, and I'm not even sure how
many people are aware of the
fact that we are doing it. So,
from my perspective, WordPress
as a project is getting more
complex, and the way we were
doing things in the past and the
way we are doing things right
now is not sufficient anymore.
So, I guess it comes down to
rethinking what is the role of
making teams in WordPress
project.
[ Sound effect ] And how can we improve our
activities to make our work more
efficient in this situation that
we are all in, that we don't
have enough people and we don't
communicate. We need to
communicate more. So what is
your opinion on that? Thank you.
>> Hey, Milana, it sounds like
you have two big questions, and
I have two big thoughts about
them. Firstly, on the question
of recognizing how connected we
are, I agree. WordPress teams
frequently don't understand how
connected they are, a little bit
because it's hard to know how
your actions affect others when
you just barely have enough time
to focus on the contributions
that you want to make to the
teams that you're participating
with. Myself, I think that
sharing the internal workings a
bit better from my side can help
us all to know who we might need
to collaborate with during
projects, and I'm working up a
podcast for 2021 to share
bite-sized insight for
contributors who want to know
more about how their
contributions fit into the
larger picture. But I also
understand that part of the
solution is getting more
contributors into the space, and
I don't necessarily have a
solution for that outside of our
in-person events, which, of
course, in 2020 we haven't seen
a lot of. But it does kind of
lead us into your next question,
given that WordPress is so
complex and there aren't enough
people, not enough
communication, what can we do? I
have been on the more-
communication bandwagon for a
long time. But I actually think
that one of our short-term
problems as a project is how to
take our efficient communication
and make it more effective. I'm
gonna quote for you now the 19th
lesson from The Cathedral and
The Bazaar, our kind of source
material for things that we've
learned about open source in
general. To quote it, it says,
"provided the development
coordinator has a communications
medium at least as good as the
internet and knows how to lead
without coercion, many heads are
inevitability better than one."
And later in the document, later
in this -- in this piece of
writing, it's noted that open
source at scale can't
necessarily function very
effectively by constantly having
chaos all the time. It's hard
for human beings to work in that
sort of space, and so I think
that one of our short-term
questions for the project as a
whole is to make sure that when
we ask people to communicate
about what they're doing, why
they're doing it and where they
are doing it, we have made sure,
as leaders in WordPress, that
the plans for the product are
clear, so that everyone makes
good use of their time.
>> Myself, Monika, I'm working
with WordPress since 2015 and
regular contributing to the
WordPress. My question is about
the automation testing in the
WordPress ecosystem. As we know,
people are very much concerned
about the securities and the
other issues before upgrading to
the new version. So what are the
things we can implement in our
WordPress ecosystem to deliver
100% security? So, basically,
what are the automation things
we can integrate in our
WordPress ecosystem? Thank you.
>> Hi, Monika. I'm Jonathan.
Thank you for asking this
question. Security is always
evolving and changing, and
moving targets are very
difficult to reach definitively.
It's also a process that
unfortunately cannot be 100%
automated. Everyone needs to
learn to practice a
security-first mindset, but,
thankfully, there are some tools
that can help us in our
projects. For example, the
WordPress security team has
several automated testing
processes behind the scenes.
Every change to WordPress core
is run through these processes
to protect against known
security vulnerabilities. The
processes are continually
changing and expanding as new
security issues are discovered
and fixed. I'm being a little
intentionally vague, because
often security practiced will be
tailored to a certain project or
organization. Being ambiguous
will help you keep your project
more secure. There are also some
code analysis tools like the PHP
code sniffer that can be used to
identify potentially insecure
code in your project. Adding
these tools to your project and
requiring them to produce a
passing scan is a great way to
ensure the quality of the code
that you release. In WordPress
itself, several user-facing
features have been introduced in
the last few major versions that
make it easier for site owners
to be more aware of their site
security. The most recent one is
the ability to opt in to auto-
updates for plug-ins and themes.
Turning these on is a great way
to make sure your sites are
running the latest and most
secure code automatically, all
the time. Site Health is another
great example of a user-facing
tool. There are over a dozen
security-related checks included
in WordPress core by default,
and when they don't pass, site
health educates the user and
provides them with a recommend
way forward to fix the issue.
Any plug-in and theme can add
their own test to Site Health.
If there are any
security-related checks specific
to your project, adding them at
Site Health is a great way to
make a site owner aware of a
problem automatically. A few of
the tests check that you are
running secure versions of tools
installed at the server level.
Using PHP as an example, you
could set up an email alert
whenever a new version of PHP is
released. This would help you
automatically become aware of
security releases so you could
reach out to your host and
request that they update you to
this new version. Because of our
strong community, we have the
opportunity to work together to
continue educating site owners,
users and developers about
security best practices. If
everyone is more aware of
insecure practices, the entire
ecosystem will be elevated as a
result. I hope that that's
helpful and answers your
questions, and thank you for
choosing WordPress.
>> Hey. My name is Robert
Anderson. I am a WordPress
co-contributor living in Sydney,
Australia. Seth Miller wrote in
with this question: As Gutenberg
becomes more modern and feature-
driven, how do you approach
onboarding of new contributors
and other curious types - think
novice theme developer - to look
into block building with the
existing complexity of WebPack
and other build tools? Great
question, Seth. Thank you for
asking it. So, before I get into
the meat of Seth's question,
there's two quick things that I
want to note. Firstly, one of
the aims of the Block Editor is
to make it so that users can
create really ambitious websites
without having to be a theme
developer. So as an example, if
you insert a custom HTML block
and then save that as a
reusable block, you've more or
less created a new block without
having to write a single line of
code, which is really cool.
Secondly, tools like WebPack are
totally optional. Developers can
write a block using plain old
JavaScript that all web browsers
will understand, and, in fact,
if you load up the Gutenberg
handbook, you'll see that all of
our code examples there come in
two flavors, ES Next, which has
all the bells whistles,
including React's JSX, and ES5,
which doesn't. But, yes building
blocks and working with React,
is a lot easier if you are able
to use React's JSX syntax, so
setting up some kind of build
tooling is often worth the
up-front effort, and, yes, I
100% agree that this is very
challenging and can be pretty
off-putting to new developers.
Broadly speaking, I think that
there's two things that we can
do to make this easier: Tooling
and education. On the tooling
front, we now have some really
neat tools that make getting set
up with block development a lot
easier. The first, which is
developed by the core team at
WordPress, is WordPress/scripts.
This is a NPM package that hides
away all of the complexity of
WebPack and gives you a single
command that turns a source
directory of JavaScript, which
has all the fancy syntax, into a
build directory of compiled
JavaScript. The second,
developed by the WordPress
community is "create Guten
block." This one gives you a
single command that instantly
creates an entire block plug-in
for you. It does all the work of
configuring the build
environment and generates, like,
the necessary PHP to load things
into WordPress. It's really
quite straightforward. On the
education front, we have some
really great tutorials in the
Gutenberg handbook which cover
how to get set up with block
development using WordPress
script and you can see them at
wordpress.org/gutenberg/handbook
and, lastly, the WordPress
training team has just recently
learned learn.wordpress.org
which is a new home for video
workshops about WordPress. And
one of the video workshops there
by Jonathan Bossenger is all
about how to develop a block, so
definitely check that out and
definitely watch that space. I
hope that was helpful. I hope I
answered your question. And
thank you for choosing
WordPress.
>> Hi. My name is Sudar Muthu.
I'm from a city called Chennai
in the southern part of India.
I've been involved with
WordPress for about 15 years
now, and for the past six years,
I've been working as a full-time
WordPress developer. In short,
WordPress is what puts food on
my table. So here's my question.
So, it's been about 17 years
since the first version of
WordPress has been released, and
all of us know where WordPress
is there right now. So my
question is, where do you see
WordPress in the next 17 years?
Thank you.
>> Sudar, 17 years is such a
long time! Sometimes I feel
amazed that I've been doing
WordPress for this long. I think
my hope is the same as many
others in the WordPress
community, that by 2037 we've
gotten the vast majority, maybe
as close to 100% as we can get
of the web on open source
software. I'd love to see
Gutenberg used not just by
WordPress, but by all of its
competitors as well, by everyone
who is accepting text in a box
on the internet or on native.
I'd love them to build on
Gutenberg Blocks, because then
that allows us to work together
on something that we all used to
have to rewrite and recreate a
million, million times, and I
believe that's how humanity
moves forward, is when we
collaborate, not when we
compete. In terms of, you know,
freedom and the open web, it's
hard to imagine what
technologies will be relevant.
One thing I always say within my
company at Automattic is that
the particular change will be
impossible to predict, but the
fact that change is going to
happen is inevitable. It is 100%
certain. And so as long as we
can stay adaptable, flexible,
not become too ossified in our
beliefs and always keep that
beginner's mind, the ability to
learn new technology. I've been
really, really impressed,
particularly in the past year or
two, post-Gutenberg, how so many
folks across WordPress have been
picking up JavaScript. You know,
taking where they were probably
PHP pros and JavaScript novices,
they've really invested the time
to become incredible JavaScript
developers, and now the entire
WordPress community is
benefitting from that. There
will be new generations of
technology. I imagine 17 years
from now, there will be
something after JavaScript that
will be the most important thing
to WordPress. I don't know what
that will be yet, but I'm
looking forward to finding it
out, and I hope that you're a
part of the journey as well, so
see you around.
>> Hi, my name is Tobi or Tobi
Ffjellner, as my handle is here
for WordPress. I'm one of the
people in the biggest
contributor team, polyglots. We
have almost 60,000 people who
have contributed at least some
translations to WordPress to
around 200 different language
versions, and out of those,
between 40 and 60 are actively
maintained, so that you can use
them right now if you want. And
a lot of people do that. 55% of
all WordPress sites around the
world that we know about use
some other language than U.S.
English. My question is about
multilingual WordPress. It has
been mentioned a couple of times
that in a future phase,
Gutenberg will cater for
multilingual content. I would
like to suggest that we already
now make decisions on what
storage structures we are going
to use and procedures, and
perhaps even already now go
forward to make WordPress
multilingual. There are already
solutions, and we could probably
reuse some of those, and by
doing this we open the
possibility for a lot of new
solutions to come up that could
support procedures around
translation, handling the
multilingual content, and so on.
And that part is where Gutenberg
actually would need to develop
something, but for the storage
procedures and so on, I think
we're talking more about PHP
development, where we could
reuse already existing plug-ins
to a large extent. Thank you.
>> Tobi, thank you so much for
your question, and, of course,
thank you for your contributions
for -- with translations and
that entire polyglots team. Much
love to the polyglots team. I,
like you, am very anxious to get
multilingual into Gutenberg,
whether we do it as part of
core, as part of an official
plug-in, TBD, but part of the
reason we made it Phase 4 is I
know that we can only do so many
things well at a time. And it is
supremely important that we
really execute super well on
these first phases of Gutenberg
Blocks. That's why also, even
though I'm super excited about
it, we haven't officially
started anything with the
real-time co-editing yet, for
Phase 3. If we don't get Phase 1
and Phase 2 to be the best
experiences in the world for
editing, bar none, of any open
source, any proprietary
competitors, any builders, Phase
3 and Phase 4 just won't matter,
right? Because it just --
WordPress won't be relevant a
decade from now. So I do believe
that that is the most important
problem that we're facing. And
part of why, even though we do
have a wide breadth of
contributors, and like you
mentioned, some plug-ins that do
solve multilingual already, I
don't want to dilute sort of the
core contributors' focus away
from the initial phases of
Gutenberg, because that's just
how important I think they are.
Now, that said, much like
Gutenberg has innovated in
plug-ins and then it gets later
adopted and merged into core,
there is nothing stopping, I
think, you know, more innovation
or more investments happening in
the plug-ins. In fact, I think
it's interesting that the
plug-ins can take various
different approaches with
regards to data storage and we
can see which works the best and
what scales, and the pluses and
minuses of each. My hope is that
down the line, much like the
page builders are coalescing
around sort of Gutenberg as --
and Blocks as page building,
kind of primitive that they all
build on top of. My hope is that
using learnings and hopefully
contributions from all of the
folks currently during
multilingual plug-ins right now,
we can figure out what is the
sort of 20% that gets us 80% of
the way there and create a
common framework that all of
them build on and then, you
know, much like we are with
Gutenberg Blocks, that Rails
will, you know, work well with
every other plug-in and theme.
So that is the hope, that is the
plan. 2022 is what I am
personally hoping to begin
working and focusing on this.
That also gives me a few years
to learn another language. Thank
you for your question. I'll see
you around WordPress.
>> Hi, Tom. I'm Otto. You wrote
in with this question. It reads,
sorry I can't make a video to
ask my question, but what I
would like to ask is what you
think about plug-ins like
Wordfence and Security Ninja
which recommend removing version
information from WordPress
headers and changing file
operations for certain files. If
you agree with these
permissions, then I wonder why
they aren't implemented in the
WordPress core. Or if you
disagree, then why are these
plug-ins allowed to remain in
the plug-in libraries and
charged for making changes that
are not recommended by
WordPress. That's a good
question, Tom. Well, removing
version information is often
referred to as a security
measure, but on the whole, it is
kind of an ineffective one. You
see, the thinking is that
hackers search for versions in
things like the HTML of the site
before they run scripts on it,
but history has shown that to be
rarely the case. The most common
problem faced by sites is
essentially bots and scripting
attacks. From these kind of
automated attempts, the failed
cases don't really matter, so it
doesn't save a hacker any time
or effort to have sophisticated
code to check versioning first.
So, by and large, this kind of
thing is the same as hiding the
login screen. It's not for
security, it's mostly for
vanity. The problem really with
calling these kind of things
security measures is that users
who don't understand security in
the form of layers of protection
will think that doing these is
the only security they have to
have. I've seen people use bad
passwords simply because they
assume the login screen couldn't
be found in the first place.
Doing such things like removing
versions or hiding logins or
anything like that isn't
actively dangerous or harmful,
it's just not the first thing
you should be doing to improve
the security of a website in
general. So in that respect
they're allowed in the plug-in
directory the same as anything
else is. I mean, plug-ins are
allowed for people who want to
do such things, even if that
isn't the majority of users. I
mean, that's what plug-ins are
for, after all, it's to
customize your site the way you
want it. As for whether they can
charge for making changes, all
plug-ins on wordpress.org are
free. Any charges made by
plug-ins such as pro versions
that are sold elsewhere is sort
of outside of our purview. So in
that respect, I would say I only
use free plug-ins, so there's
probably a free plug-in that
will make the changes you want.
Thanks for your question, Tom.
Appreciate it. Hope that helps.
>> Hi, Matt. I'm Winstina. In
2017, I presented at Wordcamp
U.S. on how cities and towns can
work with their residents to
sell locally online. My question
for you is this: What more can
Woo achieve beyond the freedom
of empowerment and expression
for all to sell digitally?
Essentially, what's your vision
for Woo democratizing commerce
during this pandemic and beyond?
Thanks.
>> Hi, Winstina. My name is Paul
Maiorana. I'm the CEO here at
WooCommerce. Thank you for your
question and thank you for
everything you do to support
local businesses. We share that
mission, ultimately. So your
question couldn't be more
pertinent in a year like 2020
that has brought such hardship
to small businesses.
WooCommerce powers over 2
million stores on our platform,
and we take that role really
seriously.
One of the things that we've
been focused on this year, we
know that WordPress and
WooCommerce can often be - or
require a little bit of
technical knowledge, or even
just some courage to kind of get
up and running with if you're
less experienced with the
platforms.
And this year, especially this
year, stores may not necessarily
have the budget to go out and
hire that additional help. So,
we've been focused this year on
empowering merchants to be more
self-sufficient and removing
many of the obstacles that a
merchant might hit in getting
their store online and then
running and growing that store.
We've been focused on our
on-boarding for one,
streamlining the setup process
in configuration for Woo, such
that you can get to that first
sale that much more quickly.
We're redesigning the navigation
around WooCommerce to make it
that much more intuitive, again,
for folks who are maybe less
experienced with WooCommerce and
WordPress.
We've been investing big in the
Block Editor and bringing new
product blocks into WooCommerce
to enable our merchants to be,
again, more self-sufficient in
the way that they merchandise
their products and not have to
be reliant on a developer to
implement those promotions. And
we also know that it's not
enough to just get a store
online and kind of, you know,
operate the store. Our merchants
want to grow, so we need to help
them reach their customers, so
we've also been investing a lot
in improving the marketing
solutions that are available for
WooCommerce to help our
merchants grow their stores. So,
I hope that's helpful. Thank you
for contributing to WordPress.
>> Wow, that was a lot of
questions and answers. I really
appreciate everyone from the
community who helped answer the
questions. As always with
WordPress, these things are so
much better when we work
together, and it was exciting to
me to be able to do a
distributed and virtual version
of what happens sometimes at
Wordcamps when I'll pass the mic
to someone, usually in the front
row from the WordPress
community, who knows so much
more than I can and can answer
the question so much better. So
keep an eye out for these
recordings and captions and
more, which will be on
wordpress.tv and the WordPress
YouTube channel. With that, I
bid you adieu. Thank you so much
for tuning in. I am so
appreciative to the WordPress
community this year for being
just a place of stability and
strength. I really love and
appreciate you all. Thank you so
much and see you again online.