Welcome to the official blog for the WordPress Support team.
Need help with a WordPress issue? You can find help with your WordPress problem by posting in the support forums or asking on the #wordpress IRC channel.
Want to get involved?
Answering a question in the support forums or on IRC is one of the easiest ways to get started. Everyone knows the answer to something!
We have a detailed handbook to help contributors learn how to work with the forums and IRC.
Weekly Meetings
As well as discussing support issues here on the blog, we use Slack for group communication.
We had a short and quiet meeting this week, folks are busy preparing for holidays and such, so this isn’t a surprise at all 🙂
Announcments
WordPress 5.3.1-RC1 is scheduled for this week, on December 11th.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from some of our international parts of the community, including Russia, Italy, India, Brazil, and Sweden, were available during this weeks meeting.
Open floor
Slowness on the forums
A question about the bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. update, and current slowness on the forums was brought up.
The current slowdown on the forums is relating to missing caching for certain actions. This is notably the case when moderators perform certain tasks, like approving pending posts, or when users post replies to topics.
The bbPress team are aware of the issues, and will be looking into this.
HelpHub role assignments
There’s currently a limitation in HelpHub, which means it’s not possible to add a HelpHub editor or manager to someone who has not previously participated in the forums in some way.
A ticket, #meta-4890, was made for this and can be watched for future updates on the matter.
As has become customary, our weekly musical marvel is by the wonderful Sigrid.
bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. 2.6 was released this week, and has been deployedDeployLaunching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. to the various forums. Please note that an upgrade notice will show up in wp-admin if you have the appropriate access, don’t click this, the metaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team will handle the upgrade routines accordingly once they’ve been tested in our large setup scenario.
WordPress 5.3
The new version of WordPress, version 5.3, was released this week.
As is customary after a major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality., the WordPress 5.3 Master List has been published, and is a living document being updated with anything we find that breaks WordPress for users.
Discussion on linking to off-site support platforms
A hot topic this past week has been linking to support-topics that are outside of 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/.
Some good conversations were covered during the weekly meeting, and a make/support post has been published outlining what we discussed, and allowing for input from those unable to attend the weekly meeting.
We had our final call for changes to the WordPress 5.3 Master List, along with a call for testing of WordPress it self, as the next version of WordPress is scheduled for November 12th.
We discovered that there’s a need for a specific page for Twenty Twenty that the feature theme team has already finalized (teamwork makes the dream work!), which will be linked up properly after the upcoming release.
Fair warning as well, that next meeting we will be utilizing the meeting-opener used by many other teams. The support team in general doesn’t use the /here command, as we wish to avoid notification burnout, but we will be using it for the first meeting after a major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. to make sure we can gather any important information that surfaces from users after a release.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of our community from Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, India, Russia and Spain were part of this weeks meeting, with some new members from a few of them stopping by!
We would like to improve the getting started documentation, so if you’ve ever held a contributor day and done support, input on what worked, what information you felt was missing, and what could be improved upon is very much welcome at any time.
First a reminder that we’re still working on the WordPress 5.3 Master List, to cover items that we foresee users being confused about, viewing as potential issues and so forth.
Representatives from Sweden, Russia, Brazil and the Netherlands took part in this weeks chat, mostly focused on the upcoming release.
Open floor
A question was brought forth on the process when requesting data deletion from 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/. Although we don’t know the exact procedure, the privacy policy does make note that historical data such as commit history for plugins, themes and WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. are all retained. There’s also a section on forum posts and topics being historical data, and removing them would cause holes that may destroy the overall understanding of information., As such the user profile is scrubbed and anonymized.
There’s been a few questions, and comments, about access to 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/ access being limited from the Chinese region of late, so we figured we’d give some information when possible.
There’s an ongoing issue with a lot of malicious traffic originating from the Chinese region. This is making the WordPress.org security systems limit connectivity from affected areas, and unfortunately also negatively affecting legitimate users.
We’re actively monitoring the situation, and are looking into ways to remedy this for real users, but due to how internet traffic is routed it’s not something that is likely solved quickly.
The Master List is a forum thread created by the support team for every major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. of WordPress where we pre-emptively gather information on what users may face and be confused by, mistake for bugs or need ot be aware of. It’s a living document, and as the release lives on the thread is populated with information of broken plugins or themes that impact a larger amount of users, bugs that are discovered etc. This allows us to have one location to reference for information, and to link users towards for troubleshooting steps.
@bethannon1 will be leading the Support Desk (aka Happiness Bar) at WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US, and is looking for potential volunteers to help staff it. If this sounds like you, feel free to reach out to her!
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from our international parts of the community in Italy, Sweden, India, Brazil, Portugal and Russia were part of this weeks meeting.
We also looked into if the Master List could be made more easily available for translations for our international crew. @tobifjellner has some good insights on utilizing HelpHub/SupportHub once it’s ready for synchronization between locales, and we will revisit this at that point as it becomes more viable when those systems are in place.
Open floor
A question about process with user management was brought forth, in relation to theme submissions on WordPress.org.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough information to make informed recommendations on the scenarios mentioned, but we invited those responsible to return to #forums with more details for a more thurough check.
First up, the draft for the 5.3 Master List. I didn’t see any feedback on the make/support post on the preferred location for this, so I’ll go ahead with the GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ as a start, with a make/forums post in addition pointing towards it (and letting folks who are not familiar or unable to use GitHub a place to participate). We’ll be using the shiny new Master List repository for this as well, so looking forward to that, and the post should go up some time tomorrow.
The coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. field guide isn’t released yet, which is a great asset when picking items to highlight or cover, so once that is out we’ll also be in a much better spot to filling out our own stuff.
Next on the agenda, some updates from the land of IRC.
The website that powers the WPBot IRC help bot has been updated and now also provides a handy REST APIREST APIThe REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. endpoint for the pre-defined replies that are commonly used on that platform.
Along with this, the bot it self was updated to use modern PHPPHPPHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php., giving it a deeply sought after performance boost, and also allowing the log viewer connected to it to be updated in the same run.
WordPress 5.3 progression
For those keen-eyed individuals out there, you may have noticed that RC1 (Release CandidateRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 1) is available!
As mentioned earlier, the field guide isn’t quite ready yet, but RC1 is when we start working on the Master List for the forums, and it’s roughly 1 month from release at this time, give or take a couple of days.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from our community in Sweden, Russia, Portugal, Brazil and Italy were part of this weeks discussions, with some great conversations about our check-in process, and also with updates on the HelpHub rollout.
Speaking of HelpHub; Russia, Brazil and Italy have all been added to the HelpHub lists, and have started getting these populated in their respective languages, great work team!
We had a chat about our courtesy pings to named individuals, and although the meeting leader is not a fan of the /here command, it sounds like it might not be a bad idea in some scenarios.
In light of that, we will utilize it on our first meeting after a release, both to gauge the effect, but also broaden the reach as we try to gather information on how a release went and what we should be keeping an eye out for.
With WordPress 5.3 nearing, please keep thinking of Master List items, we will start working on this once WordPress 5.3-RC1 is released, and the field guide from coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is posted.
In the meanwhile, the historical reference to Master Lists is being gathered at https://github.com/wporg-support/master-list, which will allow for easier referencing, especially relating to discussions around core auto updates of late.
Some interesting insights indicating the quality of plugins, themes and core it self have gone up massively, and we are seeing fewer and fewer issues with each release, when looking at the history of our Master Lists.
With WordCamp US nearing, a call for volunteers for the Support Desk (also known as the Happiness Bar) was put forth by @bethannon1
Feel free to reach out to either for information and idea-sharing!
WordPress 5.3 progression
WordPress 5.3 Beta3 was released this week, with Release CandidateRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 1 planned for October 15th. That’s not much time left to get things wrapped up, so if you can, please do help with testing.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from our communities in Russia, Serbia, India, Netherlands, Brazil, Portugal, Sweden and Urdu were present during this weeks discussions.
We also had a quick chat about early release knowledge within the communities outside the deeper WordPress developer circles.
Open floor
A discussion should be had on how and when to re-evaluate flagged users (users marked by moderators so that their posts need manual approval before being visible to the general public).
We’ll also look to get some new pre-defined moderator replies written up about flagged users to explain what it is and why the individual was flagged.
Should we look into doing some tag cleanup on the forums? There’s almost 600 000 “unique” tags on the international forums at this time, many of which are watered down variations of others. Tags serve various purposes, and are useful, but they lose their effect when they’re this diversified.
As we are nearing the release candidateRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. for WordPress 5.3, it’s time to start thinking about the Master List which we post for every major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality..
A separate post will go up regarding it, but we’ve already started collecting some items for it;
There is a new screen asking a site admin to confirm the administrator e-mail when they sign in (and once every few months, 6 by default, but this is filterable)
There is an ongoing effort to improve contrast and give better identification of in-page hierarchy for elements which may seem odd at first (this may not be included in the final release, as it is being discussed).
There’s a new default theme, Twenty Twenty, how to use it, as it’s pretty much all blocks, and some users may find them selves lost at first.
There are changes to some block markup, and removal of inline styles in the blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor which themes may need to account for. This will not affect existing content unless the user goes to edit that content.
Feedback is desired on how we should be gathering the items for the Master List, as it can be hard to keep track of blog post comments, one option is to use a GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository, but input is desired on what is best for the majority here.
WordPress 5.3 progression
The release is currently scheduled for November 12th.
Representatives from the communities in Russia, Italy, India and Spain helped flesh out this meeting with more details, thank you!
Open floor
Although technically an item that came in after the meeting, it seemed like a good one to tack on to the end to ensure we’ve all picked up on it;
I’ve seen a few reports lately of script code (adware, malicious, etc) showing up in people’s post editors and them not knowing where it came from. Investigation in these cases has revealed malware on the user’s own system, either in a browser extension or just on their PC, but not on the server or website itself.
Seems it is becoming popular for local malware to start injecting script code into forms, and the WP editor is just such a form. Such code appears when they make a new post and gets saved with the post, so it will seem to be a server-side hack, but it isn’t in this case.
So, if you see any questions along the lines of “where did this script code in my editor come from”, have them do local PC scans using anti-virus as well as auditing their browser extensions by turning them all off until they figure out which one is doing it.
The community team is looking for input on the user/pro survey over at https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2019/09/20/wordpress-user-pro-survey-11-questions-and-a-script/
Support members from Italy, Netherlands, Russia and India took part in this weeks meeting, although there was nothing out of the ordinary to report, we do love seeing the engagement, so keep up the good work!
As this wasn’t a very eventful week, we’ll be closing off with a musical piece.
A new forum moderator tool, Stop Forum Spam, has been made available. This allows moderators, at the click of a button, to check a users online reputation, as in, have they been caught posting spam recently, and if so, how often and how recent. It’s a helper, but not a definitive tool, in our battle against strange user behavior
The WordPress 5.3 development cycle is now available at https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-3/
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of our wider community from Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, India, Russia and Sweden.
Our Russian friends reported a larger than usual amount of issues on older sites with backported fixes in 5.2.3. @macmanx iterated that although security fixes are backported, it’s even harder to test for all scenarios for them, and this is likely why there may be more of them. It’s also worth noting that 5.2.2 was not a security release, and as such had no backports so it’s not a clean comparison.
Open floor
A reminder that it’s ok for 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/theme developers to ask their users to email them directly, but if you see an employee of a company (let’s say TransactionBuddy) ask people to email them personally (at let’s say a Gmail address), please let someone know.
View upcoming meetings