WordPress 5.3 was released yesterday, featuring block editor refinements that deliver more intuitive interactions and improved accessibility, new editor features that give designers more control over visual design, and the block-based Twenty Twenty WordPress theme. Several 10uppers contributed to this release during its development cycle, including Jeffrey Paul and Adam Silverstein, who are recognized as Noteworthy Contributors.
Thank you for helping make WordPress:
Ashar Irfan, Christian Chung, Helen Hou-Sandi, Mario Aguiar (emeritus), and Ryan Welcher.
Contribution to the open web is one of 10up’s guiding values. The sharing of expertise, like our engineering best practices, and the creation of our open source tools like Distributor, ClassifAI, and ElasticPress, along with our hundreds of commits to open projects like WordPress, reflect 10up’s position as a leading contributor to open source platforms.
Following 10up’s mission to make a better web with finely crafted websites and tools for content creators, our Open Source Practice brings forth deep experience in the long-term stewardship of open-source projects. Beyond pushing code to a public repository, effective open-source management requires thoughtful consideration of licensing, defining maintenance procedures, and proactive communication with participants. By releasing our best practices, we hope to provide a guide for the establishment and ownership of open-source projects.
Each year, we participate in dozens of industry events around the world. One highlight is WordCamp US, the largest official WordPress conference in the United States. This year, we’re heading to St. Louis, Missouri for three days.
Speaking
We’re proud to have two speakers leading off this year’s event. In the presentation Open Source, Open Process, Open Web, Helen Hou-Sandi, Director of Open Source Initiatives, will examine the histories of open source and the open web, and discuss how they apply to WordPress.
Jeffrey Paul, Open Source Practice Manager, will answer the question, “I’m not a developer, how can I contribute to WordPress?” in the presentation Contributing to Core, No Coding Necessary.
10up aims to make a better web through finely crafted websites, innovative tools for content creators, and open-source contributions that drive growth. As a leading contributor to WordPress and the greater open-source community, the creation and sharing of open platforms and tools is a large part of our identity.
The establishment of an official Open Source Practice within 10up demonstrates our commitment to advance open-source technology, lead by example, and grow the community of which we are proud to be a part and upon whose shoulders we stand.
We have long utilized employee downtime between client projects for open-source contribution. Earlier this year, I joined the team as Open Source Practice Manager. I work most closely with Helen Hou-Sandí, our Director of Open Source Initiatives, and Adam Silverstein, a Lead Open Source Initiatives Engineer, both of whom primarily focus on open source and contribution. That core team is augmented by additional 10uppers, some of whom have dedicated recurring time carved out for open source initiatives, and some of whom join our efforts for discrete projects. Collectively, 10up invests more than 350 hours every month into our open source initiatives.
Last week, we released Insert Special Characters, a plugin that brings a special characters menu to the new WordPress block editor.
The new WordPress editor (aka Gutenberg) introduced a modern, block-based paradigm for visually authoring content. For all of its advancements, a button to insert special characters was not carried over from the classic editing experience—a feature critical to writers and publishers frequently using mathematical notation or other symbols. Feedback concerning its absence and some client questions inspired our Open Source Practice to take action.
Distributor—our plugin that makes it easy to syndicate and reuse content across WordPress-powered websites—was released in beta last year. Since that time, 10up has shipped several point releases, representing significant and continued investment in Distributor and delivering improvements in performance, smarter media syndication, and enhancements to the content “pull” feature.
From its conception, 10up has worked with vital publishers and content creators to improve storytelling across the web. This week I’m in Columbus, Ohio to participate in the third annual WordCamp for Publishers—a conference bringing together content creators using WordPress to manage and grow publications of all sizes. Thursday, I’ll be delivering the lightning talk “#NoStalking,” about the challenges of delivering advertising that drives revenue but also respects user privacy.
The News Project has launched its first customer on its new SaaS platform for small to mid market publishers, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.
You may have read about The News Project—and our involvement—earlier this year on Axios. As a long-time digital partner for publishers and news organizations around the world, 10up is proud to be the technical strategy and implementation partner for The News Project, helping bring to life its vision for a “news business in a box”. In engineering the core platform atop WordPress, we worked closely with its first customer—CALmatters—to provide customizations and ensure a successful launch.
Last year, WordPress 5.0 launched with an entirely new, block-based content editing experience—previously codenamed Gutenberg—and along with it, a new paradigm for developers to extend the editing and content publishing experience.
SlotFills enable developers to extend WordPress’ new editor interface.
Jeff Paul
Jake Goldman
Thorsten Ott
Taylor Lovett
Helen Hou-Sandi
Ryan Welcher
