Clicking on a plugin’s info, pressing the preview button, and there you have it—a plugin ready for testing. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, it is, but there’s more…
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Transcripción del programa
Hello, I’m Javier Casares, and you’re listening to WordPress Podcast, bringing you the weekly news from the WordPress Community.
You’ll find updates from October 2nd to 8th, 2023.
Great ideas often strike when you least expect them. Imagine this: on the WordPress website, beside the download button for a plugin, there’s another button labeled “Preview.” Pressing this opens a new window, revealing a freshly installed WordPress with the chosen plugin already activated.
This concept has been brought to life through a Meta ticket that has gained much attention for two main reasons.
First, it was implemented without prior notice. The buzz began on Twitter as users discovered that it doesn’t always work seamlessly because not all plugins are “install-and-go” compatible, especially within the WordPress Playground.
The second issue, contributing to what’s been dubbed “WordPress Drama,” is that plugin developers weren’t informed or given the option to opt-in or opt-out of this feature.
In the wake of this, other proposals and improvements have surfaced from the Community, including the idea of using plugin dependencies. For instance, if you wish to test an e-commerce payment gateway plugin, the main e-commerce plugin would also need to be installed. Other intriguing suggestions include having a preview option stated in the plugins’ readme.txt file, incorporating a “plugin.json” much like themes have their configuration file, and even including demo data in some cases to give users content to work with.
This slight “drama” encapsulates both the good and the bad within the WordPress Community. On one hand, you have individuals eager to create and launch something, even though it often begins without much initial response because the news doesn’t reach everyone. A bit of commotion follows due to unforeseen issues, ultimately leading back to the starting point: collective proposals to launch a product beneficial to all.
In other news, although it may not qualify as “WordPress Drama,” it seems like the Font Library—slated as a significant feature in WordPress 6.4—will have to wait until the next major release.
Upon a comprehensive review of the code, functionalities, and overall operation, there were elements found not entirely aligned with “The WordPress Way.”
While the base functionality of the project is intact and operational, it’s clear that the focus has been predominantly on making it work, not necessarily considering all implications it might have on WordPress itself, like issues with deleting a font, where files are stored, code quality, API structure, and managing collections. It’s crucial to acknowledge that this feature is included in the Gutenberg plugin, garnering substantial feedback from the thousands of users engaging with this innovative platform.
Meanwhile, the Test team has released a post detailing how to experiment with this new WordPress functionality and where and how to report any issues encountered. It will undoubtedly be worth the wait for a reliable, compatible, and extensible product, which we can expect to see in WordPress 6.5.
Speaking of new releases, WordPress 6.4 beta 2 is now available for testing, featuring Twenty Twenty-Four as the default theme—although some sample images are reportedly not working correctly. Additionally, WordPress 6.3.2 RC1 is set to launch on October 11th, addressing 19 core WordPress bugs and 22 editor bugs.
After the inclusion of the new Twenty Twenty-Four theme in the latest beta, the Core team is calling for child theme testing, particularly to validate the functionality of patterns.
In more updates, the Performance team has officially transferred the “Plugin Check” project repository to the official WordPress account. This plugin is designed to validate the code quality of plugins installed on a test WordPress site. Preliminary testing on WordPress 6.4 beta 1 indicates improvements ranging from 15% to 30% in the loading times of classic themes.
Finally, this podcast is distributed under the EUPL license. For more information and links, please visit WordPress Podcast .org.
Thanks for listening, and until the next episode!
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