 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I'm your host, Josepha Hayden-Champosie. Here we go. I have with me today Sarah Norris. She is the core tech editor in the WordPress 6.4 release. Welcome, Sarah. Hayden, thanks for having me. First, I should give everyone kind of a concept of what we're doing. So this is the WordPress 6.4 sneak peek episode of our podcast, which means that we're going to talk a little bit about the stuff that we are excited to get into the release, stuff that we're hoping is actually going to make it into the final release, but also we're going to talk a little bit about stuff that we wish people knew that we were working on, things that are going to be really cool for users or developers or plugin authors, theme authors, things like that, that otherwise people would miss because it's just hard to see. And so, before we get started on all of that, is this your first release where you're part of a squad like this? So it's actually my second. I was part of 6.1 as well. I led the default theme since 23, but I am finding that the experience is a little bit different, so I'm still learning probably just as much. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and in 6.1 versus 6.4, for one, the themes are very different, like the default themes are very different, but also the tasks involved with leading a default theme are very different from like leading things happening in the core editor in that Gutenberg plugin. Yeah, yeah, there's so many different tasks. Yeah, I guess maybe there's such and there's maybe just like a set of tasks for every part of the release squad, but they're so different and much more involved. Yeah, absolutely. And as of the time of this recording, we're recording this on September 27th, it comes out a little bit later, but as of the time of this recording, like we just wrapped up Beta 1 for WordPress 6.4 yesterday, but I understand that like an hour ago, you wrapped up a final release of the Gutenberg plugin as well, so you're just kind of everywhere with us right now. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, we tried to make the Beta 1 for 6.4 and the latest release of Gutenberg quite close together to make it easier to merge those latest changes for Beta 1 and 6.4. So yeah, so that's why it's so close together. And think it's cross the class, but release, release. I'm really happy about that. Now we all sit around and watch the support queues and hope. That part, the sitting around and watching the support queues is both my most favorite and least favorite sometimes part of releases. Like it's a little bit my most favorite because I get to talk to our support folks. I'm like, Hey, is anything happening? But also it's my least favorite because it's like the Schrodinger's cat of releases. You're like, as long as I don't look at it, it could be all well or all bad. And I just don't know. Yeah, I hate it. I've just been doing something similar with watching test releases. Just waiting and waiting and waiting. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit about 6.4. So WordPress 6.4 is our third major release of 2023, which is kind of a big deal for one, because like three major releases a year, always exciting. But this particular one is on the one hand, much larger from a feature standpoint than we kind of expected it to be. Or so far it looks like it's going to be a bit larger than we expected. But also it is our second iteration of an underrepresented gender release squad, which I am very excited about. It's a way for us to kind of bring in a lot of voices that otherwise we don't see in the space. And so we're going to just kind of talk through both of those things today. But let's start with first, what are the things that are going into the release that you personally are most excited about, that you are most interested in making sure that we get all the way to the end of the release cycle? So one's what I am particularly excited for. So the first one on my list is the font library. This is looking really good to include as well. So it's going to DOAC uses to manage folks across their site, regardless of their active theme. So similar to how the media library works at the moment for images and other media. And if I recall correctly, when I was looking at the prototypes for that, like the early demos of it, that has a lot of local font management as well, which helps us with GDPR concerns that we have had with font management in the CMS for a while. One, is that still correct? And two, does it look like it's going to make it into the release? Yes. Yeah, it's both correct. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. So yeah, all the fonts will be managed locally. So including things like Google Fonts and any of the popular libraries and the way it's been built as it calls its files like this, it's been built with extensibility in mind. So yeah, hopefully the possibility should be endless for any number of font collections to be added. Yeah, yeah. I know for folks who are listening to this later, hopefully not much later, but if you are listening to this between when beta one came out and beta two is coming out, we didn't get as much of that into beta one as we expected, but beta two should have a good chunk of it in there. So get out there and test that. It's also just been released with Gimba 16.7 as well. So I guess the renewals that you just mentioned listening in between. I'm one of those folks that has not I don't run trunk because I'm not that good with like preventing WordPress from falling apart. I'm not a developer, but I do run the nightlies and for the major releases for core and I run also the beta of Gutenberg. And so I got both updates done this morning and started going in and looking at everything because I don't run trunk. I didn't have some of the weird edge cases that I saw reported over the last few weeks, which is probably good. But also if anyone's running trunk and is running all of the nightlies of anything, let us know where the problems are because there are not a lot of you. It feels like like a thousand people in the world that have that particular combination. What else is in there that you are very excited to see? I'm also looking forward to so we have a new feature called block hook. And for anyone who follows Gutenberg, you might have heard it's called auto inserting blocks, but we've renamed it to block hook. And yes, that this is another powerful feature that expands the the extensibility of block themes. And so it allows plugins to automatically insert blocks into content relative to another block. So a good example that we've been using is automatically adding a like button to the post content block. And so yeah, I think it's maybe a more developer centric feature. So like it detects what block you have and suggests bits and pieces that otherwise would make sense there that other people are usually using in those blocks? Yeah, yeah. So you can add all three Jason as well. You can add a block that will automatically be added. All right. Excellent. That was part of the interactivity API or is is early parts of it rather, I guess. Yes, that's right. Yes. Yeah, it's the stop song. Yeah. Another thing that is a part of the interactivity API, which we've been working on folks. I think everybody knows for like a year or two. The other part that is shipping in 6.4 is I think the light box for images. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Yes. And yeah, that seems to be included with 6.4 as well. I'm going to just tell us all a weird story. So for maybe my entire life, like I understand what a lightbox is from a image and photography standpoint. But for the majority of my life, I thought that lightbox referred to those like big initial letters in old manuscripts. I don't actually know what those are called if not lightboxes, but in my mind, that's what they were. And so when we first started talking about this, I was like, that's what we're shipping is like the drop capital letter, like the big one. But it's not in case anyone else also was confused about what a lightbox is. It's the image based concept of a lightbox. I think it's an important one because previously you would have to install maybe as a body plugin or build lightbox yourself. So it may sound like a tiny feature that's been included. But it's actually pretty awesome. You don't have to include even more extra code. Speaking of things that we have been working on for two years or so. I think that every sneak peek for the last year, the folks of WordPress have heard me say that I was super excited about navigation and how we're managing it. But it turns out that is a very complicated thing. We know that managing menus, managing navigation on a site is complicated from just like a philosophical standpoint when our users of WordPress, when consumers of WordPress, like go through that process, that is the hardest one to explain. And therefore very hard to manage as well. We have had like a requirement that you know three different admins in order to manage your menu, manage your navigation on your site. But we shipped some early components for it in 6.3 and in 6.4. I believe that we are planning. I'm crossing my fingers. No one can see it crossing my fingers. We're planning on getting an updated treatment for the toolbar out. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah, that was a little bit worried because I didn't know that too much into detail. But I didn't know about the toolbar. So yes. Yes, I believe that is plans given to 6.4. Yeah. So and the point of that, because for folks who have not tried this out yet, the point of that is that the navigation is kind of when you look at it individual components, it's like a bunch of little blocks together. And then we wrap it as like a collection that shows up as the navigation block. But because it's a bunch of little blocks and each of the little blocks has their own like toolbar that goes with it. It took a lot of work to kind of figure out how to get all of those toolbars to have a primary expression with the navigation versus like every single thing that you put into your navigation has its own toolbar. And good luck to you. Yeah, it's a really, really complicated problem. And I guess maybe it always has been and hopefully we just keep improving and all the time. We probably never will stop improving because it's just such a complicated thing to edit. And I think particularly in an analysis without using any code. Yes. Yeah, we're getting that. It always is getting better. Yeah. Before we move into the question of like things that you wish people knew about the release that maybe they're not going to know. I do want to stop and talk about the default theme a little bit. Everyone loves the default theme at the end of the year. But every year, Matt and I talk about like, what would it look like if we didn't have a default theme? What if we just were like, all themes are great. Just do whatever you want, which seems too difficult, frankly. But the way that this default theme is envisioned is so different. It's got basically three different focuses. Do you know much about this year's default theme? Yeah, Elizabeth. Yeah, I know. I think it's shaping up to be a really good starting point for so many different types of project. So I know that that is maybe the aim of every default theme. But we usually show off a lot of the features that are going into the release like via the default theme. I know we did that last time as well. But this time we're doing that still. But we're also creating like a great baseline for so many different types of projects. And I think maybe in the past, we've maybe only hit like one type of project. And like, this is a good example for this one very specifically. But yeah, this time, I know that that's always like, especially working with other theme is like, what's the best base theme for this type of thing? And I'm hosting to instance four is going to be the new answers for so many people. Yeah. Yeah, I looked at the early designs for that with the because what it has and these we'll put a link to this in the show notes to the repo about it and the figma file and all those things. But what it has is like a really robust set of default patterns for anyone who's wanting to have like a big commercial site with a lot of things that are required really complicated site. Then we have a suite of default patterns that are shipping so that artists and people who are focused primarily on visual assets on their site have the specific patterns and blocks and things required for that. And then one that is specific to people who focus on the content in their site. I am one of the people who specifically focuses on the content in the site. I was delighted to see that but it kind of has three different levels of varying complexity based on what it is that people might want to have to. Oh, not want to have to might want to be able to do on their sites. I think that's kind of cool. Yes. Yeah, it's super cool. And I think while we're still in the development cycle as well. This is a default theme is a great way and to jump into contributing if people are looking to good ways to jump in. Yeah, it runs in a separate repo. And so it has a little bit of a different process but also it feels like a little bit of a faster process. It kind of runs independently of the release cycle that we have for either the plugin or core. And so kind of goes a bit faster. Just yeah. Excellent. So then obvious next question. What is happening in this release that you wish people knew about? Yeah. Okay. So I think maybe things that are difficult to shift into the bigger categories that will be easy to shout about when we talk about the release when it's been released. There's a lot of accessibility enhancement that are going to be included. So there's things like better button placement and upgraded spoken messages, especially in site health. There's also so many performance improvements that they're scheduled to be included. So I know there was many performance improvements included as 6.3. We are continuing that 6.4. There's many more improvements to block themes and classic themes in the way the templates are loaded. And we're including the usage of the new FIFA and async loading strategies as well as script. So these are the sort of like nitty gritty detail sort of things that will be included that don't sound too exciting but are actually really, really cool. Yeah. I understand the whole like this is not very exciting. This doesn't sound interesting but trust me it is. Like sometimes it feels like half of my job is that I'm like I know that nothing I'm about to say sounds cool but trust me it's amazing. We've been working on it for a long time and it's cool. That's great. That's great. And so for those things it sounds like a lot this is going to particularly be of interest to folks who are developing for other people using WordPress. But also obviously a little bit of benefit, maybe invisible benefit but still benefit for our end users as we go. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Well, those are kind of the sneak peek items that we've got going into the release. As always with this particular episode, we're not promising that any of those things will 100% for sure get in there. There is part of being a release squad that kind of doesn't really get talked about outside of WordPress but is probably worth mentioning, which is that the release squad has the really unpleasant job of saying, no, it wasn't good enough. Sorry. Thank you. Come again in the next release cycle. And so like all of these things are things that are currently in and being tested. But in the event that we discover it breaks 10% of the sites that we have on WordPress, like we're going to we're going to pull it. So right now that's all in there. We hope and if listening to me for a whole year, get excited about the changes in navigation and then also not getting them in didn't teach you anything just because I wanted it doesn't mean that I get to have it in either. Yeah. Yeah. So that's exciting. The other exciting thing about this release squad is that it's really exciting. And so this is the second one. Did you participate in the first one? No, I didn't. No. Yeah. But I have read some of them. Yeah. So that's exciting. The other exciting thing about this release, we mentioned it a bit at the top of the discussion is that it is a gender, gender underrepresented release squad, not up presented because that is not a word. And so this is the second one. Did you participate in the first one? No, I didn't know. Yeah. But I have read all about it, especially in preps was to this release as well. Oh, did you learn anything from it that you brought into this one? Or was it just like, I need to know what I'm getting into kind of reading a lot about it? Yeah. Basically, yeah, I was trying to prep myself. Yeah. Ever since I was involved in 6.1, I've tried to be, I've tried to follow along closely with the releases. But sometimes there's just so much going on for all the time. Sometimes it's a little bit much. But yeah, I just wanted to see if there's any big differences. But yeah, it's all good. I think all of the differences were in that boring part where people don't, they're like, that sounds so unfun. We're going to just stop listening. But it was like in the planning and preparation for it and the way that we did all the training, like the initial one had like an 18 month period between like, we're going to do it. And now it's done where we did a lot of additional work to get everybody in there. And this time we were like, get in here. That's all we did. So how has your experience been on the release squad? I know that you did one before you did one in 6.1. But is this particular squad any different compared to your last experience of it or what you expected? So I would say everyone is equally as amazing as every release and including the resources involved with it. I think that the biggest difference for me, and maybe this links to what Nija said, is that I knew I was going to be involved in the release squad a lot earlier, especially compared to me for 6.1. But I think I've heard other people say that as well. So I think that's a great thing for this release. So we all had some time ahead of the release and including during the 6.3 release as well. So I was able to watch particular people and not in an uncreepy way, and make sure I knew which like what the processes were. Yeah, to try and get my head around when I'd be doing it. And obviously the big help was that I'd be doing it immediately after they'd just done it as well. And the previous release squad have been a massive help as well when they've come across either very, very complicated issues or like super silly issues that can right there and answer your questions. So I think that we could carry that forward to the future releases as well. Yeah, absolutely. So this time around we had almost 50% new folks that like let us know that they were participating. Probably quite a few more than that. But like of the people who let us know that they wanted to participate in this release, we had like 28 out of 50 people, something like that, who are brand new to contributing to WordPress in some cases. But certainly all of them are brand new to contributing to a major release like this. Have you, because this is not your first time doing this, but it is your first time in this type of release, have you found that like you're feeling able to help new people see what's happening also? Like do you feel seasoned enough for that? Or are you just like, nope, I'm also new? Maybe a little bit of both. I guess, yeah, I'm fortunate to have at least experienced maybe like how the deadlines rolled. Actually, especially the point we're at at the moment where the weekly beat is like full tap. Last time it took me by surprise. I was like, oh wow, okay, we have a week until the next song and then a week until the pitch. And so yeah, I feel a bit more psyched up for that this time around. And hopefully I can top that all to the new folks as well. But yeah, I also noticed we have a lot of new people. We have, especially from a core editor tech lead. I think we have nearly 30 people who are sort of officially following this along or shadowing us. So yeah, it's really cool. I hope we can teach so many more people if they want to get involved with the next release or even just contributing in general. Yeah, it'd be amazing. Yeah, if you are listening to our podcast and you think to yourself, well, I'm here and I wonder if anyone knows because I'm just watching everyone in a non-creepy way. Like feel free at the next meeting that you're watching to raise your hand and say I'm new. We want to know that you're there. Not because we feel creepy otherwise, but also because we just want to celebrate that you exist. New folks that are scared of us. Don't be scared of us. Oh, man. I feel compelled now to tell everybody about the first time that I led a core chat. So the core chat, I watched that without telling anyone. I was watching it for like a year before I had to actually lead it. And I just didn't tell anybody I was there. Like I didn't even participate in the waving part at the start where it's just like, hey, everyone, I exist. I was just silently watching it all go by. And so like when I got announced as part of a release squad, it was shocking for everyone, I think. And there is a public record of a moment where I was panicking. I felt like everyone was asking me a thousand questions and I didn't know the answers to any of them. And I just told all of them like there are a million of you and one of me and you're kind of scaring me. So would you stop? And so there's a public record of me calling out every developer that existed in WordPress at the time. I felt bad about it in the moment, but also like, ooh, that was, I don't think we have experiences like that for new contributors anymore, but it was, it was quite a moment. I remember distinctly, so Jeffrey Paul, he's like one of our, I think we have three or four like self-declared project manager people. He is a project manager person in WordPress that I really rely on. And I was DMing him in the background in a full panic. I was like, I don't know the answer to any of these questions. What am I supposed to do? And he was like, no is also an answer. So like just tell him no, tell him you don't know. That's fine. And I was like, oh God. So I think that we maybe don't have too much of that happening anymore, but I also understand that I wouldn't see it if it were happening. No one's coming to me to be like, is this normal? Should I panic? They're probably coming to you with that. I think it's a sort of good, I'm not good for you maybe, but good for observers, especially, you know, to see you go through that as well. I can really relate to like not even showing like a wave emoji, because I've totally been in that situation. I think maybe we're similar in that regard. Like sometimes I just feel really nervous even just showing an emoji. And I think, again, shouting out about that. And so those people who also feel like that, who are watching, yeah, wave if you feel like you won't see. And don't wave, it's also fine just to watch. Once you've been to 52 meetings, then you can wave. It's so hard working in open source that way, because like there is a lot of like basically faith in other people, because trust comes with like experiencing things together. But initially you do just kind of have to have faith that no one's going to laugh you out of the room or say that your ideas are stupid, or that you are like even remotely understanding the problem. And so that's it. It's a part of the new contributor experience that I always find so interesting. I used to routinely give presentations about like, this is how you get started. First, get ready to be uncomfortable. I don't give those presentations very often anymore, but probably I should ask someone to get out there and be like, it's scary for everyone, including you. Come be scared together, because I think that's important to normalize. Fear is normal. When you first started contributing to WordPress in general, let alone like being on a release squad, what is the team that you first joined through? So I guess full-time contribution. It was themes. I was very involved with themes, and I still am as well. I really love themes, officially block theme, and also with the editor. But like years and years ago, I guess it was still themes. I used to build themes, but that was very much, I was a forum user, and well, actually, I guess it goes back to like me and very nervous and not wanting to admit the question that I wanted to ask. So I would hunt the forum, but they were just so helpful. I know this is a lot of people's story, but the forums and just chatting amongst other community members is so, so helpful. So yeah, when I became a full-time contributor, I really, I love talking to other people who are trying to get help or reaching out any way they can, because I was like, I feel like I was you, I'm still on here as well. I mean, the good thing about it, like we will always feel like we're learning something because we are. But in my experience of folks in WordPress, and I haven't been new in a long time, obviously, been doing this for like eight years now, which is ancient by technology standards. But like my favorite thing about folks in WordPress is that they are wanting to like learn enough to probably not break it forever. Like it's the probably is in there and the forever is in there. Like I want to, I want to know just enough to be mildly dangerous and then bring everybody with me. Let's go be dangerous together. And I think that is really charming in a way, because it's like, we know enough to sort of break it, but not break it a lot. So let's go see how we break it a little bit to make it better. I think that's such a charming attitude for some reason, because then we all just to get to kind of learn and be a little bit messy together, which is the nature of openly collaborating on a half written software all the time. But yeah, I think it's going to need. Yeah, exactly. It's exciting too. Like if you're staying, you've got the enough red pitch and edge that you're just like, I might break something, but then there's so many people that helped you out that just before you could actually break something important. Exactly. The one time when I did a very breaking thing, because I didn't know to ask about it and I fixed it immediately, was that I mentioned in the middle of a core chat that we were about to have a security release, but it wasn't about, it wasn't like in the next 15 minutes, it was like three weeks away, which is not what you're allowed to do. Like you are not allowed to mention that you have a security release coming in three weeks and then hope that nobody figures out what it's patching. Yeah, I got so many messages in such a short amount of time from it felt like every lead developer of WordPress. That was my worst moment. And I fixed it immediately, so that was good. But also, I don't remember if we had to like move up the timeline for that release or what. I don't, I have no idea what the outcome was because I was just in an outright panic about what I had done incorrectly. Anyway, so that's the, just going to tell everybody my most embarrassing early contribution stories today. That's what I'm doing. Excellent. Well, Sarah, before we head out of here, is there a final thought that you would like to share with either our listeners here or future potential contributors to WordPress? Please help test 6.4, especially through the next few cycles of beta. It would be amazing to have everyone and anyone who would like to help. That is one of the best ways you can help is to test. And then, yeah, if you want to get involved a little bit further than, yeah, I guess please reach out wherever you think you fit, which I know sounds a bit fake, but there are a lot of different places. And I'm sure there will be some ways as well. I will leave in the show notes a link to the page that has all of the upcoming meetings on it. You can probably go to almost any meeting and say, I think this is where I would like to contribute, but also this is the kind of thing I can contribute and they will be able to head you in the right direction if you're not already in the right direction. But also, like, sometimes your skills that you have are going to be applicable in places where you're not aware of yet. And so go to any meeting, wave to the friendly WordPressers that are around, the Sarah Norris's that exist in the project. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a delight. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. That brings us now to our smallest of big things. First thing to know is that tomorrow, we have beta two for WordPress 6.4. This is our final release of the year, as you know, because we've been talking about it for the entire episode. But just like Sarah said at the end of our conversation, we absolutely need people to help us test it, make sure that it is working in as many places as possible so that we can have the best release possible. So keep an eye out on the core channel and the making WordPress Slack. And of course, keep an eye on WordPress.org slash news as those releases get packaged and ready to go. So the second thing is a proposal for documentation translation, localization process update. This is an initial step to consolidate all of that documentation into a single easy to reach location. So we need some feedback on it. Head on over there, leave a comment to share your feedback about where that should possibly go, where is most useful and valuable for you. The second proposal that I have is actually sort of a tangentially related one, but so it's not specific to WordPress, but does need some WordPress input. There is a call for proposal for interop 2024. There's a post that has a lot more information about it than I do, but we would like for any WordPress developer who is interested to head over there and submit a proposal for what they could speak about at interop, I believe, that you can leave your thoughts on the post itself as a comment, or there's also a GitHub repo where you can interact as well. The next thing on our smallest of big things is that the WordCamp US Q&A, the questions that we didn't get to because there were something like 87 or something in the queue, the questions that we didn't get to, the answers have been posted. They're over on make.wordpress.org slash project, but I'll include a link to those, to that post in the show notes. And the final thing on the smallest of big things, I'm actually quite excited about, we are hosting now accessibility office hours in an effort to improve accessibility knowledge in WordPress project in general. The accessibility team will be holding office hours every Wednesday at 1400 UTC, that started on September 20th, and so it's been going for a couple of weeks now. And the purpose is to make sure that we have a dedicated space and time to discuss accessibility principles and best practices as we go through those things. And that, my friends, is your smallest of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I'm your host, Josepha Hayden-Champosi, and I'll see you again in a couple of weeks.