WordPress Weekly News 020: Updates on WordPress 4.8, WordCamp Europe and much more

It’s that time of the week again! We are back with another edition of the WordPress Weekly News. A lot has happened in the world of WordPress over the past week and I am here to tell you all about it.

In this week’s roundup, we will talk about WordPress 4.8, WordPress.com’s confusing TV commercials, and the controversy surrounding WordCamp Europe!

Admin Screens More Accessible in WordPress 4.8

The admin screens has been  subject to change since WordPress 4.3 when the H1 headings were restored to the admin screens. Users saw another alternation in the admin screens in WordPress 4.4 with a change in the heading hierarchy.

WordPress 4.8, which is expected to be launched in early June, will have accessibility improvements in the admin screens. Currently, the header on the admin screens contain more than text. The 1’Add New1” button on the “All Post” page is included within the “All Post” header text.

This resulted in navigation issues for assistive technologies. The changes in WordPress 4.8 turn the headings on admin screens into their own elements.

Andre Feracia, WordPress core committer, has explained the importance of updating your plugins and themes with regards to the update in the admin screens.

“If your plugin or theme follows the previous WordPress pattern of adding extraneous content to the main heading, please update your plugin or theme to make the heading cleaner,” Fercia said.

“All you need to do is move the extraneous content outside of the heading. WordPress 4.8 ships with new CSS rules to take care of the new markup structure and in most cases, no additional changes will be required.”

WordPress.com’s Confusing TV Commercials

Recently, Automattic released five TV commercials that are a part of a series called “Free to be”. The series is about different business owners sharing the importance of success and what Detroit means to them. The commercials were created with the volunteer team of Automatticians who visited Detroit to participate in the Rebrand Detroit project.

All the commercials have a WordPress logo in the corner and the occasional placement of the logo on laptops and other devices. The commercials end with a WordPress logo in the center with the words “Websites, Blogs, and Domains” below.

However, the commercials were somewhat confusing. If you see the commercials, you would find it difficult as to what WordPress.com is trying to sell through these commercials. Yes, the business owners have achieved success but it is unclear that the success is achieved through WordPress or through the team working with them.

In another commercial, WordPress’s market share is used as a USP. Now it must be noted that WordPress’s market share is majorly due to self-hosted WordPress and not WordPress.com. Eric Mann, a WordPress developer, shares the same point of view.

“I do have a problem with advertisements conflating WordPress and WordPress.com by subtly suggesting that the ‘27% of the Internet run on WordPress’ is due to Automattic or is somehow because of WordPress.com.”

Majority of these 27% users use the self-hosted WordPress, according to W3Techs, and not WordPress.com. The commercials are a good step towards portraying a more positive image of WordPress.com but they have left me with more questions than answers.

WordCamp Europe To Stop Ticket Sales by May 31st

The organizing team at WordCamp Europe will not be continuing their ticket sales come May 31st. Previously, the event has sold out well in advance but this time around, the organizers have decided to end ticket sales two weeks before the event. This is mostly due to the hefty task of managing the budget for 3000 attendees.

“As WordCamp Europe is a community event, we have to be extra careful with every penny that’s spent. We are invested in things that improve the event’s accessibility and inclusivity, and we’d like to have the precise number of people attending to avoid unnecessary costs (for example, ordering extra lunches – something that we need to do two weeks in advance).”

Majority of the people willing to attend have already purchased the tickets since the tickets have been on sale for a year. Some of the already purchased tickets will also be on sale since attendees are having difficulty acquiring visas. So far, 10 attendees have been denied visa for the community summit, according to Rocío Valdivia, an organizer of WordCamp Europe’s Community Team.

“A lot of them were from India and one from Indonesia,” Valdivia said. “100% of them were from Asia.”

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That’s all from this week’s WordPress Weekly News. If you come across a WordPress news worth of being mentioned then do let me know in the comments. You can also email us at [email protected].