In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we look at the recently launched WordPress Learning Pathways, WP-CLI’s new release, WordPress Accessibility Day, and much more!
Pick a Path, Any Path
Learn WordPress has recently undergone a redesign, but the changes are more than skin deep. The new layout provides greater clarity when searching for particular resources, but an even more interesting change is the introduction of Learning Pathways. These aren’t just educational resources on a particular topic, but full-blown courses designed to take you from point A to point B via the most direct route.
Four Learning Pathways are currently available, with different courses to support WordPress users wherever they may be in their journey.
- Beginner WordPress User
- Intermediate WordPress User
- Beginner WordPress Developer
- Intermediate Theme Developer
More courses are planned for the existing tracks of User and Developer, and completely new tracks for Designers and Contributors are in the planning stages. For more information, please listen to episode 83 of the WordPress Briefing podcast.
First Look at Twenty Twenty-Five WordPress Theme
WordPress 6.7 will include a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-FiveLead Designer Beatriz Fialho has given us a sneak peek at what we can expect in a recent blog post.
“While ideating Twenty Twenty-Five, one recurring idea was that simple things should be intuitive while complex things should be possible,” she writes. “This concept of simplicity and complexity leads to a reliable foundation for extending a default WordPress experience to make it yours.”
The theme will include a robust set of patterns designed for various use cases such as services, about pages, landing pages, products, calls to action, and events. These patterns promote interoperability, enabling users to compose intentional pages quickly. Additionally, Twenty Twenty-Five features versatile blog templates, including text-centric blogs with sidebars, photo blogs that highlight featured images, and more complex blogs with diverse content.
The development of Twenty Twenty-Five is led by Carolina Nymark and Juanfra Aldasoro, with Beatriz Fialho leading the design. Contributions are welcome through the Twenty Twenty-Five GitHub repository.
For more detailed information, please see the full post.
WP-CLI v2.11.0 Adds New Commands
WP-CLI v2.11.0 is now available, bringing a host of exciting updates and improvements for professional WordPress developers. This release is the culmination of efforts from 61 contributors who merged 274 pull requests, ensuring a robust and feature-rich tool for managing WordPress sites.
WP-CLI v2.11.0 enhances the CSV reading functionality to properly handle multi-line values, ensuring that complex CSV data can be processed correctly. New commands have been added for managing signups on multisite installations, including wp user signup list, wp user signup get, wp user signup activate, and wp user signup delete. The wp site generate command allows developers to create multiple sites programmatically, which is useful for testing and development purposes.
The release also includes support for installing plugins and themes directly from GitHub releases, making it easier to manage extensions hosted on GitHub. The --recently-active option has been added to the plugin list command, allowing users to quickly identify and manage recently active plugins. Additionally, the --delete-unknown flag has been added to the wp media regenerate command, enabling users to remove files and image metadata for image sizes that no longer exist in the site’s configuration.
WP-CLI now supports command completion for the Fish shell, expanding its compatibility beyond Bash and Zsh. For a detailed changelog and to explore all the new features, please see the WP-CLI v2.11.0 Release Notes.
Keynote Speaker Named for WordPress Accessibility Day 2024
Lainey Feingold, a renowned disability rights lawyer, author, and international speaker, has been announced as the keynote speaker for WordPress Accessibility Day 2024. This 24-hour global event, scheduled to start on October 9th at 15:00 UTC, will feature Feingold’s keynote titled “Accessibility is a Civil Right: The Digital Accessibility Legal Landscape for the WordPress Community.” In her talk, Feingold will discuss the current legal landscape of digital accessibility from a human rights perspective, providing an up-to-date overview of existing laws, regulations, and agency guidance.
Feingold has worked with the blind community and dozens of companies and public sector organizations on accessibility initiatives since negotiating the first web accessibility agreement in the U.S. in 2000.
WordPress Accessibility Day aims to promote and enhance accessibility in WordPress, bringing together experts and enthusiasts to share insights and innovations in web accessibility. The event is organized by volunteers and relies on donations and sponsorships to support its mission. Sponsorship opportunities are available, ranging from Gold ($2000) to Micro ($150) sponsorships.
For more information and to get involved, visit the WordPress Accessibility Day website.
Gamify Your Coding Practice
There are plenty of ways to practice coding, but Artifacts might be unique. Billed as “the MMORPG for code lovers,” Artifacts is a sandbox RPG where you control your characters with scripts written in any programming language.
The game’s client includes an onboard code editor that lets you write JavaScript scripts directly, or you can use another language in your own IDE.
The Pros and Cons of Block WordPress Child Themes
Among other benefits, child themes allow you to make changes to your website without altering the parent theme’s core files, ensuring that your customizations are preserved and easily manageable.
In the latest episode of Press This, host Brian Gardner sits down with Nick Diego of Automattic to explore the nuances and benefits of using child themes with block-based WordPress.
Syncing WordPress Database Changes Between Environments
Database synchronization is often an issue when working on a local development copy of a WordPress site that also has a live version running. While you’re making changes locally, the live version is under constant change: new posts, new products, customers placing orders, etc., and you want to make sure you don’t overwrite any of these changes.
It’s a problem that affects all database-driven content management systems, and it’s one of the trickiest parts of WordPress site development. In this article, Iain Poulson breaks down the challenge, looks at some of the options to overcome it, and shares how we’ve dealt with data changes.
What’s the most interesting news you’ve come across recently? Pop by Twitter and let us know.