Items discussed at yesterday’s support meetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.:
a11y Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) access to Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. for the #forums channel
Or any Slack channel. It really irks me that Slack is not yet a11y friendly, though I do believe that is being worked on.
Focusing on Windows, Jose and I played with Instantbird for Windows to see about either getting the IRC gateway working. It should work, the IRC gateway works for other IRC clients easily. The XMPP gateway was also tested or as I like to refer to that gateway as BLAMO! I can’t get it to work with any XMPP client on Mac or PC.
The IRC gateway complains that Instantbird isn’t sending a password. It was pointed out to me that Instantbird does post contact info and this weekend I’ll send an email to them for help. There may be a “/about config” setting that I’m missing.
Get ready for the pending 4.3 beta A 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.
If you look at the 4.3 project schedule then you’ll see that the planned date for beta is July 1st. Please start looking at the nightlies. There was some discussion about changes to 4.3 and the customizer Tool 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. but with every release there will be people who dislike change and the support team should be ready.
Before anyone reading this thinks “The Support Team is being arrogant and presumptuous against users!” just be aware: hardly anyone ever posts to the support forums or IRC with topics like “I just wanted to say how awesome and well received this latest version is.” That has happened but it’s rare.
Reviews
If you are a plugin A 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 author and you’re not happy with or think a review should be deleted then do not contact the plugins team about that. Do not. That is not what the plugins team is for. Reviews are sometimes deleted but that’s a judgement call for the moderators.
Regarding people leaving reviews in exchange for anything, this is the verbiage that should be used.
We truly do welcome honest reviews. But offering something in exchange for them is unlikely to lead to honest reviews. It leads to only positive reviews, and this we see as an attempt to game the system.
Which is all that needs to be said about that. If it’s not in the predefines yet then I may add that.
Plugin security updates
The recently patched Woocommerce security issue was discussed. As always, keep your WordPress installation, plugins and themes up to date. It’s the best and easiest way to remain secure.
Take the 2015 bbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. survey
Please take a moment and fill out the bbPress survey. It’s important to gauge the response from the user base and your input there will help.
View today’s meetup transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)
#weekly-chat
