Exploring WordPress 6.4

Abha (00:00:00):
Hello, I’m Abha Thakor and your host for this very special podcast on the latest WordPress major software release 6.4 in the studio today and extra happy to have Anne McCarthy and Bud Kraus, people you’ll know of already in the community. I’m sure Anne was heavily involved in the release as well as the editor triage leads, and was invaluable in helping provide information to other areas. I know as documentation co-lead for this release, it’s always a pleasure to contribute alongside Anne and just discover how welcoming that environment is to new contributors as well as the people who have been around the community for a while. Our other guest is Bud, who’s been helping the Learn WordPress team with materials on 6.4, and we’ll have more to share on that a bit later. It’s been another release, which is, has a wonderful number of both new and existing contributors to the project at the last count.

(00:01:04):
And it keeps increasing. There were more than 600 contributors in at least 56 countries, and this release also welcomed 170 plus first time contributors. I, I never tire of seeing that figure and just being, just being blessed that we have that and that we hopefully can keep having more contributors. So if you’re listening to this, do the We podcast than you think, Ooh, I could join this. I could still help with 6.4 documentation and, and training team, but also with the forthcoming releases with 6.5, six and seven, then this is the place to stay and listen to all the things that Bud and Anne have to share. So, welcome Anne and Bud. It is so lovely to have you here. Tell us where you’re joining from today. Um,

Anne (00:01:58):
I’m joining from Seattle, Washington. Um, I’m sip and coffee and yeah, thank you for the lovely intro and I’m super excited to be here with you bud. Um, it’s just really lovely to hold virtual space together.

Bud (00:02:10):
Well, it’s such an honor to be with both of you. I mean, I, I am, uh, so over my head. Let’s just get that start right out the way. Uh, I am in, uh, Nutley New Jersey, 12 miles west of New York City where it is a little, uh, looking like November cold gray and the leaves are almost off all the trees. So that’s where we are.

Abha (00:02:30):
Well, I’m, I’m south of London in the UK today and this is the first time, um, uh, the new puppy has been around when a podcast is happening and I’m not in the office. So, um, if you heal little box, no , it’s that she just loves Do the Woo and she’s already got someone stitching her a do the woo little emblem. Um, ’cause the other one goes to WordCamps already. And so, you know, we, we’ve gotta have people involved and lots of ways of involving them, don’t we? So, um, we’ve got so much to share about 6.4. I really hope the people listening, if you’ve not used it before, then you really want to go and use it. And if you think I, there was something in it that I was hoping to see, but it’s not in there, don’t worry because it is being worked on for the next release. And Anne, I know you’ll have words of wisdom for people who have things that they want to see in a release. What is the best way for them to, to make that mark, to make the point and to just show why it’s so important?

Anne (00:03:32):
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to continuing to follow up on issues and advocating for as each release goes by. Like, there are honestly issues that I personally am like wanna see fixed and with every release, if it, if it hasn’t been fixed, I’ll go in and I’ll update it and say, just tested it with the latest release. It still doesn’t work. This is the current experience. So keeping issues current and up to date, um, and then if you can aligning it with the roadmaps as they come out and saying like, Hey, I think this fits into this focus, um, goes a long way because there are a lot of issues and we’re all human and we don’t always see all of them. Um, and it really helps continue to open folks and to understand the impact. Um, and I think people sometimes underestimate that, like how much it helps to see, you know, wow, this issue has a ton of traction and there’s a hundred people who’ve comment on it versus no one’s commented on this issue I opened. Um, it’s hard for me to know the impact. Was this just me or someone in the outreach program who found this? Um, or is this impacting, you know, tons of folks? So knowing the skill of impact is huge.

Abha (00:04:30):
I love that description and I think it’s really helpful to people if you’re, if you’re maintaining a component, I’ve got two of them and I definitely will go in the bugs job we’re doing next week down and look at exactly how you’ve said to explain it because sometimes it’s easy to feel disheartened and it’s a, that’s a great way of saying, this problem still exists or I experience it in this way. Can anybody else report as well? So I love that. Um, in terms of people who are listening to this who’ve not, who don’t know where tickets come from, from a release, and can you just share a little bit about how that works? And obviously we’ve got good, and Bud, we’ve got track just so that people understand where to look.

Anne (00:05:12):
Yeah, so we do have two different experiences in terms of reporting issues. I always say if you really don’t know, um, if you’re comfortable with Slack, like I go where you’re comfortable. If you’re comfortable in the forums, go to the forums. Like the, I think the thing is there are people in each of these spaces who can redirect you and help you find your way, which is one of the beautiful things about the WordPress community. But in terms of the different repos, we have folks in charge of both. One is on track and one is in GitHub. The Gutenberg GitHub repo, um, is the one I spend more time in because of my focus area with work. Um, and in that repo and in track, there are people whose whole job is to triage the stuff that’s coming in to look through it, to kind of get things in order.

(00:05:51):
Um, and then you have developers, you have specific, specific focuses that when, when the thing is triaged and labeled and all that sort of stuff, they can then go through and look at it, um, as it aligns with their work. So when people talk about opening issues or sharing things, you don’t need to get it to the right person on their desk. , there are systems in place that will, um, route it there. And so I hope I share that and hopes that it helps lower the barrier entry. Um, I also know another thing that comes up a lot is before like, well, what if I open an issue that already exists? That’s okay, we’d rather hear about it multiple times. Um, I open issues that like myself had opened an issue three years ago for, I just did that this week and had to close out an issue.

(00:06:28):
Um, it just happens sometimes. Um, and some of it’s phrasing and that’s not on you to know every single issue in every repo. Um, the aim is to lower, um, the ability to just share what’s going on in your mind and what, what you’re running into as you use WordPress so we can make it as good as possible. Um, and so basically you can fill out what’s like a bug form and it’ll give you step-by-step instructions, what’s required. Um, if you wanna open an enhancement, there’s a different form for that. Um, and so all of these things will kind of guide you through the process built into the form that you’re filling out. Um, and the best thing you can do is just make sure that whatever you’re, you’re filling out is using the most up-to-date software. Like that’s really helpful, um, because we can help identify where, where the issue is.

Abha (00:07:13):
And I think as the core team rep for this year, and I couldn’t just really support that, but also at the bottom of every new ticket that comes up, it has little thing about encouraging people to show welcome. So someone’s first, um, report. And I think that really is about the spirit of the, of WordPress that if you are worried about it, there are ways to to do it. There is a brilliant new contributors meeting every two weeks. There is the weekly dev chat on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM UTC and you can raise things as well in those if you’re not sure where to where to raise them. But also if you’re not sure how to learn about a new release, there is so much information and I’m gonna come to Bud on that because Bud, you’ve been working on something that’s gonna help people understand 6.4 with a Learn WordPress team. Can you share a bit more about it?

Bud (00:08:10):
I did. And I, uh, there is a video of the presentation that I did oh, about two weeks ago that really went through soup to nuts, the main features and the enhancements and so forth of 6.4. But can I digress for a minute and ask a question or two to, to Anne because there she said a couple things that I thought were really interesting.

Abha (00:08:29):
Absolutely.

Bud (00:08:30):
One of the things, uh, that I always have a problem with when I’m looking at something I’m saying and thinking about reporting it, which is, oh, I I’m sure they know about this already. There’s no reason to report it. But now what you’re saying is no, report it anyway. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself that you didn’t read through every ticket. You know? Oh, they be, you know, and the other thing is, I don’t know if people know this, but Anne, didn’t you, did you, didn’t you do a video a couple years ago about how to use GitHub? And I thought that was, so that’s something I, I’m assuming it’s still in the Learn WordPress area.

Anne (00:09:06):
It is. It was the first one I ever did and it was very early days. So the quality might not be up to par with what we’re doing now, just as Uh, I think things have gotten better since I did that three years ago.

Bud (00:09:16):
But that was so instructive because like, I’m looking at this like, I don’t know how to use GitHub. Remember Let it, you know, there might be somebody who wants to report something and I get it, you can, you know, report any way you want, but it’s preferred that you go to GitHub. I did not really know how to use it. And Ian’s video was very helpful to get me, you know, feeling more comfortable using it. Absolutely. Which I have on a couple of occasions,

Abha (00:09:44):
and we have, we have two, two places that people can report. One is on on Track the core things and one is on GitHub. So, and there are videos for both, which is even better. There’s videos to help you actually report a report in. And there are videos to and, and Step-by-step instructions too. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna have a lot of these links in the, on the webpage when it gets published as well. So, so don’t worry if you think I really want to be able to do this, but I dunno where our link is. We’ll be sharing all of those with you too. So, so bud, the, um, thank you for, for those questions because I think it’s really valuable for people who haven’t used it before and, and even track, you know, if you’re not sure what to do and you don’t know how to, to update it, there is a video there to help you and lots and lots of people available to help, which is the, which is the key thing.

(00:10:40):
So as Anne said, testing is one of the main things too that um, and a lot of our new contributors, a lot of our contributors I’m seeing now from Woo are actually coming along and testing and because the testing handbook is just amazing. It has so many things I know, and your contributors of that too, it’s got really good step-by-step instructions, it’ll cover different environments. There’s also now a test environment that you can set up for four hours that is available and people can help you share that. And it just makes a big difference to what people can do. And we know that where people tested that for we, it did make a big difference.

Bud (00:11:22):
Yeah. Isn’t in the Gutenberg plugin now a a link to report a bug or something like that, if I’m not mistaken, or there’s a way right from the plugin to report a bug or a, or an enhancement. And am I right or wrong about this

Anne (00:11:41):
? That’s a great question. Let me look it up. There is an experiment section and there I did have a recent conversation with some folks about that and so that was the last time I did a deep dive, but I wanna make sure I’m not, uh, misspeak. I’m pretty sure they’re in the support. Yeah, so there is actually a link to the support forms from the Gutenberg plugin. So if you have a Gutenberg plugin installed and then go to support, um, the other thing that I do wanna mention is that, um, you don’t need to use the Gutenberg plugin to open issues. I think that’s another point of confusion that comes up. Um, so Gutenberg is what involves the editing experience. So anytime you’re writing or creating content, it should go into the Gutenberg repo. Anytime you’re basically in the rest of the admin interface or using default themes, there are track repos for that.

(00:12:28):
Again, asked and someone will point you in the right direction. Um, I don’t think there is an issue or a way to open an issue directly from the Gutenberg plugin. I just am double checking and I pretty sure that’s intentional, um, based on what I remember from the experiments page. So we were talking about adding that to the experiments page as something to evolve and that conversation basically ended. And I think that’s the last time we talked about where to put that because we could overhaul Gutenberg experiments, which is pretty, that’s a whole niche. Other discussion, , um, talking about using experimental features for that. And so, um, yeah, ’cause you wouldn’t really wanna put it in the Gutenberg plugin. If anything, you’d wanna put it the entire interface, like folks using the Gutenberg plugin, um, or folks using WordPress in general should be able to open issues in general. So I, I think having two different experiences there might be kind of confusing.

Bud (00:13:20):
Now one other thing I’d like to mention too is, uh, Anne, I don’t know, I, I know that you have a lot of, uh, you’re involved with this, um, at least on six four and maybe prior releases this source of truth document, which I found very helpful. Is that something that was new in six four? Why don’t you talk a little bit about that? Because as someone who is trying to follow what’s going on and doesn’t have time, you know, to, to spend a lot of time figuring it out, going to this one document was a huge help. Okay, so what’s up with that?

Anne (00:13:57):
Yeah, so actually starting in WordPress 5.8, so I think I had been on a, I had watched a couple of releases happen and I noticed the same thing across the community and across Automatic. Automattic is my employer. Um, and so we have folks like VIP, WooCommerce, Jetpack, who’re, all trying to keep up to date on the next WordPress release. And then the community, I noticed we have marketing, we have docs, we, it was like, everyone’s like, what’s going on? What’s happening? And I started kind of, I was on the edge of where things were going and talking to a lot of folks and reading a bunch of GitHub issues. So I started for my own sanity pulling stuff together and created an initial source of truth. And at first it was like internal for folks at Automatic and then I would curate a list of educators and influencers and WordPress space where I was like, this seemed like it could be helpful, which is how I found you bud.

(00:14:50):
Um, and Abha eventually marketing, I was like, oh, marketing should have access to this. Like, it was just kind of this evolving ad hoc, um, I don’t know if this is helpful because there’s the field guide as well and I didn’t wanna conflate efforts there. Um, but for me, honestly, when it came to preparing for podcasts like this, which is something that I was doing when I was doing developer relations, I needed a one place to go and read everything and then I just decided to share it. And then with each release it, it’s gotten more and more. Um, I started sharing it with more people. I started getting more feedback. I started carrying the format. I tried to bring some folks in. Different folks will help at times. Um, so I might bring some designers in to help create some design assets. Um, but the whole point of it is exactly what you said.

(00:15:28):
You go to one place, you have access to like what’s happened. It’s very bland. It’s not meant to be super marketing-y Um, it’s not meant to be copied and pasted . Um, it should read kind of like documentation. It has links to GitHub issues if you wanna learn more, make core posts, if you wanna learn more, it has, um, design assets. You can see what’s changing and see what’s going on. If it’s applicable, you can have gist or like code samples if it’s a code related thing. And that’s often something I get help with. Um, but yeah, it’s meant to just basically summarize and package the release in a way that’s like pretty detailed. So then you can go create your own content, you can create documentation, you can know the priority items that are changing. You can, um, you know, if you’re writing a blog post for your company, you can do so.

(00:16:12):
And so eventually, I think, I can’t remember which release it was, I think it might have been 6.1. Um, I decided, I was like, let’s just see what happens if I post this on my blog. Like every, you know, WordPress folks do. I was like, let’s just post, put this out here completely public. My biggest fear is people would, were gonna just copy paste wholesale. And that has happened. Um, I’ve had that happen with like, some of the main release assets, which was kind of nerve wracking. ’cause it, you know, it just is not, it’s not meant for that, um, content that copy. Um, and so it’s gone really well. And so now people, I got a question, I think this last release being like, why is this like not an official WordPress thing? And I was like, I don’t know, I’ve just been doing it by myself for hours.

Anne (00:16:53):
It takes a lot, it takes like probably 20 or 30 hours . Like it’s a lot of work.

Abha (00:16:57):
Yeah. And I think, I think definitely it’s gonna be a, a good asset for to develop on within the project too, because it’s amazing. And we certainly couldn’t do the documentation or marketing or training stuff without it. Um, but as, but I think as Anne said, it is, it, it needs to be understood for what it is because it is a, it is a snapshot at that time.

Anne (00:17:18):
It’s insider, it’s not like yeah, end user. It’s like very insider baseball.

Bud (00:17:25):
Yeah. Um, also what you also do is you note you’ll make a point and you’ll say, this is directed towards end users or devs or designers, which is really good. So you know what the point is, what audience that point is targeted to. I love that. I think that is just spectacular. The whole thing is spectacular. How do you keep this up? I mean, you do you do this constantly

Anne (00:17:49):
Yeah, it’s really difficult. I do, I do have like an end point, but I’ve started getting really good with each Gutenberg release. Like basically I’ve already have a draft, like an early, early, early draft for 6.5. And part of what helps is honestly, I’ve started raising my hand to help write the roadmap post for the release, which then helps me, like I’m already looking across the project, I’m already bringing stuff together and then I’m, I can already kind of have a shape of the source of truth just from like, where things are as we start writing the draft of like the roadmap. So it’s, if you place yourself at the beginning and end, it helps , but it’s a lot of work. Like I’m, I’m in the midst of that right now. And it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of talking to folks, a lot of reading super technical things and trying to make sense of it, but it’s worth it. Like it’s super impactful and I think people really appreciate it and it makes me, it makes no one a blocker. It’s like here, everyone’s empowered, everyone go forth. No one has access to secret information. Like no one’s having to dig through GitHub. It’s like, here you go. And so to me, I see it as like an equability thing and like a, um, inclusion thing. Like more people can get involved in talking about these releases and feel empowered, which is ultimately like my goal, you know?

Bud (00:18:52):
Oh, it was spectacular. I mean, I thought it’s so good.

Abha (00:18:56):
It also has the benefit that where we need more people involved because it WordPress will be as good as a number of people we have and who are able to give time and, and help. And as Bud said, things are are labeled end user, they’re labeled, you know, what the target audience is. And those, those, that information then gets translated into actual tasks that people can come and help with. So for, for example, we have a help hub for end users in addition to what we have for developers. And a lot of those things that Anna’s been talking about in the source of truth are available for people to update. And it can be as simple as updating a screenshot, updating an alt, um, attribute to something a little bit more complicated about updating a video maybe. And, and all of these things really make a difference because the more information we can collectively help people use wherever purpose they need to use WordPress, the better the the product, the better the community, the better the outcomes for everybody.

(00:20:00):
And also you will get so many new ideas for, oh, we could do this maybe next time or we could have this feature. You know, just like in this conversation Bud suggested something that could be in GitHub experimental for Gutenberg. You know, all these ideas are wonderful. I’m gonna take us actually deep into the release now ’cause I think they can share some wonderful insights about what’s available. And the, I think the thing that is getting talked about the most, um, and also I’ve seen it a lot in the WordPress community, is the new default theme 2024. And it is, it is amazing for, for what it brings together. And a lot of people that I’ve been talking to in preparation for this today said it has a business option, but it allows me to also use the portfolio for, fulfill my pages and then I can add the WooCommerce gateway to the bits that I want to. This is gonna be so much easier. I can concentrate on my product that I’m making rather than actually all the bits and details of creating those patterns and things in the first place. Um, I’m gonna go to Anne first to say, Anne, what is, what are your favorite things about the, about the 2024 theme? I have the same question for bud. After that,

Anne (00:21:18):
Um, I’m gonna say the patterns, um, and that aligns with like the 35 plus patterns plus I think the new ability to set categories with patterns, create your own patterns. Um, a longstanding bug was fixed around alignments, um, with synced patterns. Um, where if you have a really wide sync pattern and you, or you have a really wide, um, cover block, a full width cover block, and then you make it a sync pattern, um, the width doesn’t change. Um, which was a longstanding bug that was fixed in this release. Um, and so to me the patterns and the ability to filter by the patterns, um, I think is is definitely the, the coolest feature. There’s also a new option to swap your template out with different starter patterns. Um, so if you want a template with like a sidebar or with image, um, it’s very easy to switch between those when you’re, um, creating content.

(00:22:05):
So that, that stands out to me. Um, for sure. I, there’s a lot of, I think one of the things that’s hard to explain with this, uh, theme is that a lot of it is built in a way and this release is built in a way that helps show off those features too. So like image lightbox, if you wanna turn that on, you can, if you wanna have enhanced pagination, you can, um, if you wanna use these patterns, you can, if you wanna have aspect ratio in the images, you can. It’s like there’s all these beautiful things that the theme, um, brings out, um, in a really beautiful way in centers, um, that I think is just really exciting. Um, so yeah, I I, I’m cheating and seeing patterns ’cause that touches on all sorts of other aspects of the release. But I’m curious, bud, what do you, what do you say to that?

Bud (00:22:45):
I can’t , I can’t top that. Patterns is definitely what 2024 is all about. But I think more important or as important, it really points to way it, it points to where WordPress has been pointing to and going to for the last couple of years and where it will continue to go and grow in the field of patterns. Um, all part of obviously the Gutenberg project. And for people who are not designers and wanna put up something fast, you now have the ability to do it by taking a pattern and making it yours and doing whatever you want with it. Creating your own patterns, importing and exporting the whole bit. I mean, my goodness, you know, somebody asked me about child themes the other day and I said, well, that’s an old term. I mean, because we now can do, I mean I, yes, I know child themes are still around, but when you’re talking about black themes, wow.

(00:23:38):
I mean it’s, it’s extraordinary what, what has been accomplished. Now. I will, I I do wanna say one last thing about 2024. And this was where I was disappointed and they because there’s always disappointments and, and I’m sure you can talk more about this, which is the font library wasn’t included in the release and I was disappointed. I, ’cause I really thought that was the sexiest thing that you could do was give us the font library. So where are we in terms of when we are likely to see all or part or all of it? Hopefully in six five?

Anne (00:24:16):
Yeah, that’s a great question. That was a really hard decision. Um, I have two minds about it, but I’ll just, I’ll leave it there. I think it’s a, ultimately those decisions are always done by collective input and also experts who are working on it. Um, and so I always trust that their, their sense of it. Um, what ultimately kind of broke it down was related to, I’ll get briefly into the weeds and then come back out. Was rest API, um, related problems and interactions. So at this point, I actually just checked in with some folks who are working on that around the 6.5 roadmap. It is very much slated for 6.5. Um, it, this has been bumped across multiple releases and I think everyone’s been working really hard and I really think we thought we would land it in 6.4. Um, I do feel very confident in saying it will end in 6.5. Um, right now we have the user interface, we have, you know, the, the base experience is all there. Like all of it is like basically there. Um, I think the main thing is

Bud (00:25:10):
I’ve seen it, it’s phenomenal. Yeah, yeah,

Anne (00:25:13):
Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s really cool. I I think it’s great. Um, you know, I wanna use it too. And so yeah, I think that will be a major feature in 6.5 and barring anything wild happening, um, I can’t imagine it not released being released. This is also a great call to help test. So this is where testing is crucial. We need people involved. Um, it’s every step of the way to test these things and find stuff because ultimately we don’t, um, it’s a failure not to ship something. It’s also a failure to ship something that’s not good enough. And so we need to avoid both those outcomes . And part of doing that is testing and feedback. So,

Abha (00:25:49):
And I, I think also one of the things that came very much at a forward this release is that some of the issues that people had didn’t come up in the testing in the environments that the people who were testing were finding and it came up in other environments. So it is really important just because you might be using a different version and you’re updating it from that or you’ve got a different test set up. The more different environments and the more case uses that we can have and, and been trying these things, that is how these things are then spotted. Um, and I think, you know, it, it was a, I, you know, being, seeing all that change, and particularly when you’re trying to do the field guide, it was like, okay, is that in, is it not in? Um, but I think it goes back to Anne’s point that the source of truth is a fantastic document, but it may not be everything in there that will actually land.

(00:26:42):
So if you are using this through your clients with your understanding, it may land another release so that that learning isn’t wasted. But check the field guide, check the dev notes, check the the news page, which actually has all the information on. Um, it, a lot of people contribute to all that to make it happen. And, and quite often they’re having to follow the speed of the release too. So you know it, and it could be that you find something and you go, actually this is how I use it, that people may not know how to use that feature. So, you know, come in and say, can I help with docs? Can I help with a dev blog? We’re always looking for case studies of how people are using things because it inspires others, but it also finds out what might not work somewhere for some particular users.

(00:27:36):
So, you know, it’s, I think collaboration and all working together is really important. It was a very short release cycle this year, um, for 6.4. And we have three releases in six point in in 2024 to look forward to, which, we’ll, we’ll come back to. But before we, we do, I wanna go touch on what a couple more things in the, in the release, the, the command palette. Um, and if I come to you first on that, at least obviously a very powerful tool, we got it in 6.3 initially, but it does have some major benefits to how people can perform tasks efficiently, speed up that building workflow. And I, I think also for people who use WordPress to actually have a a WooCommerce site, that’s gonna be a big benefit for them. I just really wanted to, to to hear how, how you think about the command palette and then I’ll go to, to um, to by what, what a similar question but with a different angle.

Anne (00:28:37):
Yeah, I think the command palette is super impactful in terms of if you are zeroed in and you know what you wanna be doing and you’re trying to switch between the different modes, like I honestly use it a lot to turn on distraction free mode for when I’m writing and creating. I use it a lot to open up styles whenever I’m in the site editor and I’m just feeling, you know, quick if I wanna create a new post, I also do that as well. It basically limits the, the need to click a a bunch of times to drill down and drill back. And it allows just like a really easy breezy switching between different situations. Um, I have been talking to more folks about this and a couple of folks are like, ah, I don’t, I don’t, I haven’t found a good use case for it.

(00:29:12):
And I’m like, what, what would you wanna use it for? So again, I say open up issues, like if there’s something like one person brought up that I need to open an issue for and consider is like, well, adding a featured image, it’d be really neat if I could use the Command Pal when I’m writing a post to just be like, add featured image, it pops open the media library, you can select and move on. Um, so there’s, there’s different, uh, there’s a huge opportunity to basically extend this and make it more valuable, but the command palette in of itself can just be invoked both. I wanna note this in the site editor and in the post odor, I think there was some confusion, um, and I felt up on this actually on the doc side that it can only be done and only be used in the site editor and that’s actually not true.

(00:29:49):
Um, you can use it in the post editor as well, um, to do a wide variety of things. Um, and so it’s just using a keyboard shortcut command K on Mac or Ctrl K on Windows to activate it. Um, there is a known issue around Command K being a duplicate issue or a duplicate, um, shortcut for something else that eventually will need to solve. Um, but that’s neither here nor there. Um, another one I always like to point out is like if you wanna preview your content in a new page, like you can use that using the command palette, um, and kind of just, yeah, there’s a whole list of things. I’ll make sure there’s a link to a corridor improvement post I wrote about it, um, back in I think like August or September. Um, and also for plugin authors, it’s a great way to extend, um, I think Will has one command right now and is probably looking to add more. Um, but it’s a great extension point, um, depending upon what your plugin does. So does that help answer your question? I like, I rant about this

Abha (00:30:47):
Definitely. And it’s, well, the very many performance improvements in this release, um, as well. So, um, but my, my question to you is, is, is is linked to that, but there’s a lot of design things that can be done more easily in, in this release. Do you have any, any favorites that you highlighted in your workshop?

Bud (00:31:07):
You know, I, I mean Anne’s already mentioned several of them aspect ratio and you know, and some of the uh, uh, light box and, you know, pagination, uh, on the Query Loop stuff. Um, I didn’t think there was, uh, I mean, so that’s some of the obvious ones that come to mind. Um, can I just make a comment, uh, briefly on the command palette and that, and, um, and that is, I, I, as I’ve never looked at it as like, God, this is a must have feature. That’s me. Okay. So, um, maybe it’s a matter of like, I have to retrain my brain, you know, I i, if you do something like three or four times, uh, I mean if you click three or four times, I don’t, it’s a matter of you, you have established a certain workflow and now, and I know that, you know, it will save me time, but now I have to learn how to use the command palette. I don’t know if I’m going to, I suspect I will if I only knew what commands I should be using or could be using to improve the workflow. And I think that’s the key. Um, but you know, I mean also I, I just like going back to the design, I just like all those, like the ability to categorize your own, uh, your own patterns now is, you know, it’s just really helpful.

Abha (00:32:32):
And I, I think that’s a, a really good question is that sometimes people don’t know how to use it or why to use it and might need a little bit more in terms of information to help them do that. And I, we’ll, we’ll share it, we’ll share it in the, in the post on this podcast. But there is now a very short learn WordPress tutorial on working faster with the command palette, which does answer a couple of those things. But actually also some of the things that you’ve mentioned, I think actually that would be helpful to have a list of these are the kind of commands that might work and these might just for the people who have not used it before and in fact, um, but I do encourage you to, to, to um, add those comments to the documentation documentation tracker on the command palette for end users because I think it’s a valuable comment. But that is the joy of this project is that by talking to each other we can find better ways of explaining or find things that just don’t, we don’t know how to use. And then, you know, people can together bill something, but we’ll, we’ll help that.

Bud (00:33:39):
And I did not know until now that you could use the command palette on a, in the post editor.

Anne (00:33:44):
Yeah, this was a, this was a, yeah, I just found that in the documentation. I think it was just like a mis I think the focus when we were featuring the command palette for the marketing materials was around the site. I, because that, that context I think is where it’s like more powerful right now. But I think part of, I do wanna touch on your like, I don’t know what the use case is for this. Maybe it’s just me. Part of it is this command palette was actually a part of phase three. So if you imagine a world in which, like there’s editors all over the place, you have all these different things, like the command palette suddenly becomes, makes more sense. , it just was a very early release. We were able to get it in a lot earlier. And I think from there we can build with it in mind and, and kind of add value to it. So it’s one of those things similar to patterns that I imagine will continue to grow in value over time. And so I encourage folks to try it out and find things that they use it for and if not like report what would be useful. ’cause this is something that I will see us continuing to, to iterate on, um, similar to like patterns and styles and ions and, um, expanding the number of templates and all that sort of stuff. So

Bud (00:34:47):
Yeah, I’m not so sure also the name command palette is helpful because palette, you know, that’s kinda confusing.

Anne (00:34:54):
There’s a whole debate on that and I actually had to come down and just settle that. But there is a, there is, I think in the future if the command palette evolves into something else, I think it might make sense to, there was a name Wayfinder, which I think if it becomes a more general purpose tool, I think it might make more sense. But yeah, no one, no one is happy with any name that we pick for this stuff. But, um, I think the clearer the better

Abha (00:35:18):
And, and I think that that does touch on some of the, you know, some of the things that there are a lot of new terminology to, for people to, to wrap their head round. And um, I know in terms of documentation, the command pallet gets updated on the site editor page because it affects a site editor page. So it also will affect other pages and we need, we need to have, um, tickets for those too. But I think what is the, what’s your advice really and, and Bud to help people understand what these new terms being, we have a glossary, we have a codex glossary, and we have, we have a more, um, more understandable work that’s going on in terms of um, what these terms mean for the average user as well. But the names can be a lot to learn. But is there any advice to people who are saying, okay, I’ve just moved to blocks and I’ve got all this to learn, but I’d love to, to hear your answer first, .

Bud (00:36:18):
Well, this is tough because it, in learning anything, you know, when you’re talking to somebody it’s always like, where are they, where are they starting from? You know, what do they already know? And a, somebody that’s been working with the classic themes kind of thing, and now moving into this, if that’s the case, well then they already have some basic concepts, post page, custom post type stuff that’s been around for that you can build on as compared to somebody that’s brand new. In some ways that’s easier. ’cause you don’t have to deal with, you really don’t have to like talk about custom. I mean, you don’t have to really start with classic themes. It’s not easy. I say that, and this is really a conundrum when you try to give people more options, which obviously we now have this, you can make everything more difficult.

(00:37:12):
There are more, there is more complexity now to WordPress than ever before. I mean, there just is and there’s just, and it is for some people I’m seeing it’s a, I don’t know, it’s, you know, this is a very tough question for me to answer because, uh, maybe in the old days when we had a tiny mc editor, it was, you know, there was just not as many choices and you had to get plugins and you know, now there’s this host design structure in place that one really needs to, um, become comfortable with it. And it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, I I struggle with it, not learning it, but, you know, knowing now when somebody’s new to WordPress, what is in front of them compared to how it used to be, I think, you know, as they say, it’s not your father’s WordPress it, it’s very, um, and if people, I’ve talked to people who haven’t touched WordPress in five years and they come back and they go, wow, what is this? You know, this is, yeah. You know, so there’s, uh, and I don’t have any pat answer. This is the best approach. Um, it’s because like I say, it really depends on the individual who comes to the learning process and what they already know. It’s always about that, you know, I don’t know, what do you think about this?

Abha (00:38:37):
I think you are absolutely right and I think it is a challenge, but I think it’s a bigger challenge if you’ve already been using WordPress in, in an existing way for a long time to then get your head round the change. I know when I train people on using WordPress, that is the biggest obstacle I find, and it’s the biggest barrier because they think the learning is going to be so much different and everything is different. Whereas if I’m teaching it for the first time to users and we use a lot of the learn WordPress things, we use a lot of the, um, documentation that is written for end users who have never used these words out of a text or the things before, they cope a lot better. And I think it’s, there’s something about needing as a project to, to get through that period where we’ve had an enormous amount of change, which has a tremendous amount of opportunities and the software can now do amazing things even more so than it could before. But I think it’s how do we help people bridge that? And the to, for me, and this is why I contributed documentation and and on on release scores, is that if we don’t get that information right, if we don’t get enough material ready and available on learn WordPress dot org and on, um, the on documentation for end users, it’s gonna make that journey harder. And I know you have, you have thoughts on this too? Yeah,

Anne (00:40:12):
I’m also taking notes, so, um, just about this whole conversation. So I’d also just wanna, that was part why I wanted to, to hear what you all said, but, um, from my, from my point of view, some stuff is always gonna be hard, right? There’s both the technological shift and then that what I call like the process change and the change management of that. I’ve seen this with agencies, I’ve seen this with end users, I’ve seen this with theme authors. It is the same problem. And it’s both ways to new technology and changing how you do something. And both are in different, different things to overcome . Um, I do think from like the product side and from the way I am trying to work, like we should not put the burden of WordPress’s history on users to know. And that’s something I worry about with the template hierarchy.

(00:40:55):
That’s something I worry about with like, we’ve had, well we had usable blocks, patterns, template parts. Now we have patterns and you know, template parts. But like maybe in the future we can also perhaps, you know, like find a way to move away from template parts, like reducing the number of the cognitive load in a way that makes sense in a way that folks don’t really need to know. Um, unless you’re building a theme, like, let’s, let’s do that. And so I think feedback around around this from you all is super, super invaluable. Um, I also will say from my point of view, I do maybe like three to five times a year, depending upon the year and people messaging me, I do volunteer and build sites for folks. So in my experience, I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is like the whole point of what we’re building is to make it more visual.

(00:41:41):
And so because it’s such a visual system, um, I use that to my advantage. And so I show people, I don’t tell them all the terms, I don’t overwhelm ’em, and I try to go through a couple tasks, so I’m like, oh, you wanna create a new page? Oh, did you know there are these things called patterns? Here’s how you can use them. Here’s what it can look like when you’re using them. And try to kind of make it personal to a task. And then I, it’s kind of like, you know, I always think about it as like the video game, like way back in the day when I would play like Warcraft where it’s like you explore the map and then the map gets bigger, it’s like kind of doing that with folks. So like maybe they really explore one part of the map and maybe they don’t touch the other part of the map at all yet.

(00:42:20):
Um, and kind of slowly introducing them to, to stuff as they have specific tasks for it. Um, and that obviously comes with the, the qualifier of this is people directly talking with me. Um, I can make videos to them. I know it’s in their site, so it’s very different. Um, it’s more personal and, and easier to do that. And I’m not doing it at scale. But in terms of doing it at scale, I think we have to think about from the product perspective, what we’re introducing in each release, how we can consolidate those things, what burden we need to put on folks that’s actually realistic and what’s like, we can remove and like that’s like, for example, the layout controls right now are just so confusing and here layout, I, it’s just, it’s just a mess. Like the phrasing has changed tons of times. We need to improve it.

(00:43:00):
It’s on the list. We don’t have a good design solution, but it’s something that’s deeply on our minds, right? Um, same with the style hierarchy. You can style something globally and then impacts a local block and you don’t know why it impacts that. How do we communicate that? another one that we don’t have a good design solution for, but it’s a longstanding issue and something that I’m really excited to solve because it will, it’s done well, ease a lot of this stuff and a lot of that cognitive load, um, that right now, um, folks like yourself are very kindly teaching folks and documentation is so important. And it’s like, how do we make those, those moments of so need to go and read a doc, um, completely relevant and not unnecessary. Like I, I’m all about reducing unnecessary stress and unnecessary seeking out. So that’s, that’s how I think about it. It doesn’t really answer the question, but I do try to make it as visual as possible. That’s why I, I think I started getting into like YouTube videos and stuff. ’cause I’m like, let me just show you and you’ll see me do that and, and make core a lot of the times where I’m like, here, here’s what I’m talking about. Here’s the video. Here’s what I’m saying is, is kind weirder off

Abha (00:44:00):
Learn WordPress has got a lot more of these things now, and the, and the movement on it has has changed. So you’ve got five minute videos, you know, short bites, which we try to do that kind of example, building that kind of go, okay, follow me, have your site ready and do these same things. And I think that will help. And the more we can do like that, it will help. And it, but it, I think, I think, and you’re quite right, we have to not confuse people and there is so much change just in the names. I know every meetup I go to and I get feedback on, you know, how can we do this better? What can we do in terms of, um, getting you documentation that you need? And it is very much, you know, if you’re going to have documentation, can it be written for the audience that it’s meant to be.

(00:44:49):
So if you have a developer, which you might need to help write end user documentation or review it on the command palette, for example, make sure that they’re writing it for the end user. And if we can do screenshots that explain that, and we can link back to the Learn WordPress video. One of my big things for the project is cross collaboration. That we need to be better at that. And we are, you know, I’ve been working on releases since, um, you know, since, uh, 4.8 and that’s been my mantra. I know Anne’s heard it a lot, that the more we can do with that, the more seamless it can be for the user and the less scary

Bud (00:45:28):
Both of you. I’m interested in what your, your comment on the following, which is in the beginning, or for me that means 2009 , uh, you know, WordPress was sort of, was marketed as, you know, easy to learn air quotes here, uh, do it yourself, all that kind of thing. I’m asking both of you, are you finding that, and and you mentioned that you do sites for others. Do you, are you finding that, um, more and more of those people are saying to you, I at least I, you know, starting to feel that They’re saying, why don’t you do it? I just, I don’t have time to learn this. I don’t wanna do it. It’s too hard. Um, I, I find that, you know, sort of, um, you know, and I’m only speaking very anecdotally here, I really, except for I really don’t do client sites anymore. At least I try to, I try the best I can to stay away from that kinda work. Uh, I only do it if I’m begged. Um, but I do see people saying, you know, I, I really don’t wanna learn this. I want you to do it. And I think 5, 6, 7 years ago, people were more willing pre Gutenberg to learn how to do it. Has there been a shift?

Anne (00:46:42):
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think there is a shift in terms of we are now in an age, I know Abbott, we’ve talked about this like two years ago, where people want things instantly. They’re on Instagram, they’re sw swiping through fonts, like, boom, done, move on, you know, add a filter, whatever. Like, um, I do think there is an element of that, and I think what we’re building today can, can get there. Like the style system, the patterns, like switching through patterns, like, ah, I wanna switch this up on my, on my site, like boom, boom, boom, boom, like that. And the, we are building the infrastructure for us to get there. But I, I do, I have a very bias group of people who come to me a lot of times where they’re like, I wanna build a site for myself.

(00:47:19):
So it’s, it’s different. I have worked with some nonprofits where they are very afraid and part of my job and part of what I see is my aim is to teach them. So, you know, I converted one to blocks from short codes. And so I, and I just took a video and was like, Hey, this is how you do this and this is how you make this a button. And and part of it was, I was like, what are common actions you find you have to take on your site? Like one of them was like, oh, we need to update our board of directors and where we need to update our sponsors. Like, can you help us know how to do that? Um, and as I’m saying this, I’m like, oh, aspect ratio on placeholder image blocks. Like that’s actually gonna be huge for them.

(00:47:56):
You know, like there are, there are things that, you know, we can, we can implement. But yeah, I do think there is an element of people, um, I think it is more split. I think there are people who wanna get in there and manage it all themselves because there is a premium on your web presence and you see that on social media and there is a premium of owning it. I think there is becoming more of an awareness on that of like, I don’t want anyone to take a cut. I wanna have like my full presence owned and managed. Um, at the same time, I think there are also folks where, um, they’re too busy. I’m running my business, I’m doing this sort of stuff. I know I need to have this, I don’t wanna deal with it, do it. Um, and I think that initial do it, in my experience the last time, you know, I did more serious client work was years ago, but I have done a number of these where when people come and they’re like, can you just build it?

(00:48:40):
Inevitably within like six months they come to me like, can you change the sentence to whatever? And I’m like, how about I show you so you never have to ask me again . And suddenly they don’t ever ask me again. , I very rarely will get paid later where it’s like, because they’re like, oh yeah, I can do this myself. So I think the initial build, yes. And then once I do a walkthrough, then they, a lot of times they’re like, oh, I can do this. Like, why did I have this person do this? I’m like, exactly. Like, that’s a good outcome in my mind.

Bud (00:49:06):
Yeah. I I got it.

Anne (00:49:08):
Yeah, it’s tricky. I have a different, I’m dealing with different, lower, lower end, smaller sites. So it’s, it’s, it’s inherently different. So Abha, I’m curious what you,

Bud (00:49:17):
But that’s the world. I mean, most of the world is what you just mentioned. I mean, in terms of numbers, that’s the world.

Anne (00:49:24):
I totally agree.

Abha (00:49:25):
And I, and I think it is really important to be able to do that. I think that, um, and also to highlight that there are meetups in many, many cities across the world that are helping people learn those basic, sometimes, sometimes they’re more complicated. Meetups are getting better at saying what their topic is aimed at. So if it’s for developers or for new people wanting to their own site. And I think that’s something that needs to be encouraged so that it is clearer. ’cause if you, if you turn up at your local meetup and it is high-end developer stuff and you don’t know, they also do sessions that are easier. You are never gonna go again. And I, I, I’ve worked on people of WordPress for, for a number of years and you will be surprised how many times that comes up as an example.

(00:50:12):
Um, and I know as, as a, as a trainer that if I’m building a site for somebody and I’m training them how to use it, it’s a failure point if they have to keep asking me to do the basic things because that isn’t a good thing. I believe in empowerment. That’s why I’m in tech is that you want people, and that’s why I use open source, isn’t it? So that you can want people to learn how to do it, feel great that they can do it and make it easier. But there is a resource challenge for that because every time it changes, they’re gonna come back to you and go, it’s now different. That video that you made for me doesn’t work anymore because there’s now these options and these screens are different. And I think that is a big resource challenge for people who are in the space and who do training for meetups.

(00:51:01):
Um, even just, you know, if you take a look at the documentation tracker, there was 63 items that today I need to review to go and see what they need to go and happen to those. And that’s an addition to everything else on the tracker that is just for 6.4. That’s a little scary. And that’s even when you’re, you know, you’re, you’re dedicated and you’re determined to make a help the project. But you know, a lot of the people who contribute, um, like myself, you know, they, they’re doing it because they believe in it. They believe that you can help others use it more easily. But this is not our full-time job. And it, we have to, we have to address that point at some point. And as Bud said, a lot of our users are at that lower end where they want to update their cat blog site, you know, the usual analogy, who, who want to write some poetry and they want it to appear on the web.

(00:52:00):
They want a family history site. Um, and it’s how we help them not get lost. And it is easier if they’re coming to it af fresh because you haven’t got that cognitive blow that we’ve all been talking about. Um, but it’s also to help the people at the other end, the developers who are going, right, okay, this is what I’ve built, but what I’ve built now doesn’t work because of all these changes. Well actually it probably does work. And a lot of the discussions I’ve seen on social are where people have said, well that was a waste of time for me building this. And people have come back and said, actually no, actually what you’ve built still works. You just need to change this, this, and this. And they’ve given five bullet points. The person’s come back and go, great, I can do that. So I think one of our responsibilities is to kind of help each other, but do it in a positive way.

(00:52:51):
Because otherwise we will lose people if they cannot see that they can learn something together. And, and also we have to get more volunteers and more people so that our material, our learn WordPress, our material for marketing, our material for documentation is up there much earlier so that people can have it from the get-go. And I know that’s difficult and as a, as this time I’ve really felt the, the impact of that. And I think if that’s something that, you know, we can take away from this and we can help. ’cause if they’re doing a WooCommerce site and it’s on top of WordPress, they’ve got all those aspects to do as well. So we need to make that as easy as possible. Things like you do bud things that you do, um, and all help that. Um, I’m gonna, I’m gonna bring us to towards a, uh, towards a, a close a bit more and ’cause we’ve got, we’ve covered a lot of stuff on the release. Um, and Anne, is there something that we haven’t highlighted already on the release that you think is super important, especially to people who, who are using WordPress, um, matched up with with

Anne (00:54:00):
Woo? Um, I think renaming group blocks, um, is a big one and I think that can be really helpful when you’re creating your own patterns. It can be really helpful if you have, you know, a long complex set of content. And I mentioned that partially because for 6.5 work is underway to help add that renaming feature to more blocks with some exceptions. So stay tuned to that. I think it’s a huge workflow improvement. I use it on a bunch of my sites now and I’m like, how did I never have this ? Um, so it’s just a really great way to organize stuff ’cause group block is used so much. So I just wanna call that out, especially for woo folks or block beers, um, folks who are dealing with a little bit more complexity so they can see the structure of their site, um, very quickly.

Abha (00:54:37):
Definitely. And hopefully if there’s any links on things like this, anything we’ve mentioned, do share, then we’ll make sure they’re on the post. But how about you? Is there anything on 6.4 that you think is fantastic and we haven’t called out?

Bud (00:54:49):
I left one out when you asked about design and, and uh, I mentioned this to Anne in Slack. I, I don’t know, which is the ability to create a pattern, put placeholders in for your images size up with aspect ratio and all that. Save it just like that. Okay. And then use that pattern on a page and populate your placeholders with actual images. How cool is that? Talk about a time saver that, I just love that. That was, I, that was one of the best features I think of six four, so.

Abha (00:55:22):
Fantastic. Um, but Bev, we’ve got a couple of people who might be listening who’ve never used this before. Can you just explain to them what the, what the aspect ratio they have to do and how hard that is to use?

Bud (00:55:32):
Um, the aspect ratio has been around for a while now, but the, it’s now been applied to, and, and correct me if I’m wrong ’cause I don’t always know the timeline like you do, but, um, that the aspect ratio is available when you use a placeholder, meaning just a, just a empty space, uh, when you’re building a, a template or a template part, correct. Am I, did I get that correct? So

Anne (00:55:57):
Basically, yeah, it’s for the placeholder. So whenever you just add an image block and if you click away, you’ll see it’s just like an empty placeholder and that you can now set in the same way, you can add a doit own filter and you can see the doit own filter reflected. You can now set aspect ratio, um, so that you can then just drop up an image in and it’ll match the exact dimensions you want. So it helps you preserve, um, the layout consistency that you’ve set. And before it was just added to image blocks, but you couldn’t actually drag and an image on and have that image adopt that aspect of ratio. So that’s the big change, um, is that aspect. And bud, you’re totally on point about all of this. Like, I’m like plus one .

Bud (00:56:32):
Yeah, so, uh, and it’s just fantastic because you can set these aspect, you know, to common like, uh, what, uh, four three and six nine, uh, 69 and you can customize and so forth. But once these, once these placeholders are set in place with their aspect ratios, you could just use that mold if you will. In other words, a pattern for any page that you, I think it’s, you know, any page or post that you wanna create. So I think it’s just a fantastic new feature and it’s sort of hidden. You don’t, you have to sort of look for it in, in six four, but it’s great. I love that one.

Abha (00:57:09):
I think I know when we’re gonna come to get that documentation written for end users, but I think that’s, that’s your task to, to do. And I love that concept of thinking of it as a mold really makes it sink in. You

Bud (00:57:20):
You know, I think, and I have to say one last thing and that is I really, when I hear about all the stuff that people do, I don’t do anything. And I just always feel so bad that I really feel guilty that I don’t contribute to the WordPress project probably the way I should. I do what I can, but I’m also, you know, working too. So it’s hard for me to have the time. Boy, I wish I could do more to help Anne, or IWI could do more for this. And I just do what I can and it just doesn’t seem it like it’s enough. That’s my field. It’s,

Abha (00:57:50):
I think every contribution is amazing and awesome. And, and I think that’s the, that’s the one thing that I’ve noticed about, about documentation this time is that there aren’t simple tasks like update the EL attributes or check the headings are in place, check that the screenshots are in place. Everything is so is, is dissected into small pieces. So you could spend five minutes on a piece and it’s the same for polyglots for translation. If your release hasn’t, is not already available in your local language, you can, you can sit down five minutes, you know, updates a couple of phrases, come back to it later on. And all of that helps because together, that will contribute to, uh, translating that release. And it is super important. We have 200 plus locales and having WordPress available and the latest release explained in a local language really makes a big difference.

(00:58:49):
Um, I think, you know, hopefully we’ve inspired people out there today to have a go with 6.4 to, to take part in some of the things that are available and we’ll put all the links on the post too. But also 6.5 is already recruiting. Um, there are ability for you to comment on the timetable for 2024. There’s a lot of work happening between Core and the, and Gutenberg working together more and we’ll be hopefully coming on doing something on that later on. I hope Annie will wanna come back and, and chat us a bit more about that too. And really, this is a community and do the Woo is, is trying to do that, is to help bring people together and say, Hey, how can we do this? What inspires you? What do you love? And let people go away and, and try some of these things that we are all talking about.

(00:59:38):
So it, it’s, um, falls on me to say very, a big thank you to, to Anne and to Bud for all you do and for coming here today and joining us. And we do hope that you’ll come and talk about future releases too with us. So thank you very much. And that’s, um, that’s a thank you to Bud kras and to Anne McCarthy who’ll see you over the project and I’m here at Abha hosting your show on 6.4, so come and get involved with it. Come and tell us on do the woo, what you’d like to see in 6.52.