The WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
Found a bugbugA bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.?Create a ticket in the bug tracker.
The coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. performance team recently conducted an in-depth i18n performance analysis. It showed that localized WordPress sites load significantly slower than a site without translations. The blogblog(versus network, site) post presented and compared multiple solutions to this problem, and now the team would like to test the most promising approach at a wider scale using a dedicated pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
Introducing the Performant Translations plugin
What it does
The Performant Translations plugin uses a new approach to handle translationtranslationThe process (or result) of changing text, words, and display formatting to support another language. Also see localization, internationalization. files in WordPress, making localization blazing fast. The primary purpose of this plugin is to allow broader testing of these enhancements, for which the goal is to eventually land in WordPress core.
This plugin helps to make localized WordPress sites faster by replacing the traditional MO translation files with PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher files, which are much faster to parse. Plus, PHP files can be stored in the so-called OPcache, which provides an additional speed boost.
If your site is using a language other than English (US), you should see immediate speed improvements simply by activating this plugin. No further action is required.
The Performant Translations plugin is available for download on WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ or directly from your WordPress adminadmin(and super admin).
Since the Performant Translations plugin requires no configuration, all that’s needed to benefit from its speed improvements is to activate the plugin.
To verify that something has changed, you could use a tool like Query Monitor or an external tool for testing server response times. In Query Monitor, the page load time and memory usage should drop quite a bit after plugin activation:
Page load time and memory usage beforePage load time and memory usage after
In Query Monitor you will also see how translations are loaded from PHP files from now on:
While the plugin is mostly considered to be a betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. testing plugin, it has been tested and established to a degree where it should be okay to use in production. Still, as with every plugin, you are doing so at your own risk.
It’s also worth noting that the plugin has been successfully tested with common multilingual plugins, such as WPML, Weglot, TranslatePress, MultilingualPress, and Polylang. It also works fine with Loco Translate and the Preferred Languagesfeature pluginFeature PluginA plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins..
Should you choose to stop testing the Performant Translation plugins, uninstalling it will remove all of its traces.
The performance team’s goal is to get as much feedback as possible and further refine the approach so that it can ultimately be proposed to be merged into WordPress core 6.5. That means testing will last for a few months at least.
This proposal was merged to coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.CoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. in [36532]. Download the latest nightly build and give it a try!
The customizer is a framework for live-previewing changes to WordPress sites. And by now, nearly every WordPress theme/site features responsive designs intended to look good on any device. Previewing site changes is just important on mobile as it is on desktop, to ensure that front-end user experience is exactly as intended.
Bringing these ideas together, #31195 proposes a new feature in the customizer that allows users to quickly preview their site on various device sizes. Here’s a quick walkthrough:
The proposed feature focuses on simplicity. The device previewer is in the customizer controls footer, near the “Collapse” button. Only three options are available by default, and they’re intentionally ambiguous. Rather than looking like specific devices, the intent is to understand what a site may look like on a roughly tablet-sized, portrait-orientation device or a roughly phone-sized device, in addition to the standard desktop view. A further extension in #34051 may allow larger screen sizes to be previewed on smaller devices with forced horizontal scrolling; for now, the feature is only available on larger devices.
For Developers
Along with this feature would come a couple of ways to customize the behavior. Please keep in mind that these are proposed and subject to change.
The new customize_previewable_devices filter lets you customize the devices available for preview. One use case may be to turn off this feature entirely:
Or, developers can add additional custom device preview buttons. The button element will be rendered and the appropriate JS applied to custom devices when the button is clicked; however, developers need to provide CSS to add an icon to the button and to react to the preview size changing.
In JavaScript, themes and plugins can react to changes in the device size being previewed with:
wp.customize.previewedDevice.bind( function( newDevice ) {
// Do something to adapt to the new device being previewed.
});
This is particularly useful if your theme requires a JS trigger for responsive elements to apply, instead of using CSS solely.
Summary
Any feedback and testing is much appreciated. Device previews in the Customizer can be tested with the latest patch on #31195.
Comments are welcome on this post, the ticket (#31195), or our continuous chat in #core-customize on Slack.
With the stated goal of “Hiding the The Bleak Screen of Sadness”, the shiny updates team is working on bringing a smoother experience for managing plugins and themes to WordPress.
Shiny Updates v2 is an effort to continue the shiny updates effort from WordPress 4.2. The original shiny update feature only includes shiny pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party updates. The new version aims to extend this to all aspects of updates, installs, and deletes for plugins, themes in WordPress.
There are numerous screens in the Adminadmin(and super admin) that allow you to install, update, and delete themes, plugins and WordPress itself. Shiny updates is exploring ways to improve their design and especially to offer a better user experience by improving perceived performance and limiting confusing notifications.
Deleting single plugins, bulk updating and bulk deleting plugins from the plugin page.
Shiny plugin installs from the plugin install screen: multiple actions can be queued up.
Shiny theme installs, updates, and deletes, multiple queue-able, including multisitemultisiteUsed to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site.
What is still being worked on?
Currently the team is brainstorming a complete rethink of the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. updates page (update-core.php), working to improve clarity and enable easier Update All functionality. Work on that is happening here: https://github.com/obenland/shiny-updates/issues/5
Another round of user tests to get more feedback on the new flows.
How can I help?
Anyone can help by testing the plugin! Download and install the plugin, then test out all the shiny features: try installing, updating, and deleting plug7ins and themes, including bulk actions, on both single and multisite. Does everything work as expected? Are there any jarring flows? Missing notifications?
Please report any issues on the Github repository, or drop in the #feature-shinyupdates channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. to ask questions or give feedback. It’s also where we have our weekly chats, on Tuesdays 19:00 UTC. Thank you!
P.S. Props @adamsilverstein for ghost-writing this post.
First, thank you so much if you help out by taking the time to test new features!
Customize > Menus will be one of the new features in WordPress 4.3. It is being added in addition to the Appearance > Menus page and the Appearance > Menus page will not be changed as part of the new feature.
How to Setup for Testing
Always backup first or test on a site that was made for testing (see warnings below).
Go to Plugins > Add New and search for “WordPress BetaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. Tester”
Click the “Install Now” button for the WordPress Beta Tester pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party
Go to Tools > Beta Testing
Select the “Bleeding edgebleeding edgeThe latest revision of the software, generally in development and often unstable. Also known as trunk. nightlies” option
Click the “Save Changes” button
Go to Dashboard > Updates
Click the “Update Now” button
You should see the a message similar to this in the footer in wp-adminadmin(and super admin) pages: “You are using a development version (4.3-alpha-123456).”
Warning!
Do not use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin with a production siteProduction SiteA production site is a live site online meant to be viewed by your visitors, as opposed to a site that is staged for development or testing..
How to Test CustomizerCustomizerTool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. Menus
Test creating menus including adding, removing, and editing menus. You may just poke around and test on your own to see if you can find any bugs, or you can use the following checklist as a guide:
Before you begin:
Create and publish some pages on your test site.
Consider an export/import from an existing site to get some unique data to test with.
Sample testing checklist (time estimate: ~20 minutes for new users):
Make sure you have installed the latest nightly WordPress release (see setup steps above).
Go to Appearance > Customize and then click on Menus.
Add a new menu named “Main Menu.”
Add all of the pages already saved on the site to the menu.
Save the changes you’ve made so far, exit the Customizer, then navigate back to the menu you just created in the previous step.
Set the “Main Menu” as the primary menu so it shows in the live preview.
Reverse the order of the menu items.
Add the “Travel” categoryCategoryThe 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. to the menu.
Move “Travel” so it is a child of the first item in the list.
Add a link to Twitter and make it a submenu item next to Travel.
Move Travel and Twitter from the first item so they are submenu items under the About page. Save changes.
Create a new menu for social media with at least one social media link in it and find a way to make it show up in the live preview on the right.
There is a way to use advanced menu settings to enable descriptions for menu items. Try to find it and add a description for the “About” page.
Other testing ideas:
Test using a very large menu with a lot of items. (Also see #32769.)
Test using a menu that is 10 levels deep.
Test with various themes and other types of menus.
Comment on this post with any other testing ideas!
If you want to dig in deeper and get involved with usability testing with others, that would be so cool! Please comment on this post or in the #core-customizeSlack channel if you’re interested in doing more.
What to Look For
Look for blockers! A blockerblockerA bug which is so severe that it blocks a release. is a very bad bugbugA bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. that blocks people from using the feature. At this stage, the biggest problems are the top priority and you should look for those first and foremost. Be aware of the known issues (see below).
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