This is the summary of both meetings in #hosting-community on Slack on Wednesday, March 4, 2020, at 0900 UTC and Wednesday, March 4, 2020, at 1800 UTC Here is the Slack archive for this week’s meetings.
The 0900 meeting was led by @mikeschroder and the 1800 meeting was led by @amykamala!
The following team members attended this week: @fahimmurshed @pfefferle @xkon @mazeheld @passoniate @mike @javiercesares @hristo-sg @skithund @clorith @pbiron @brettface @mazzomaz @carl-alberto @mikeschroder @amykamala
WordPress Highlights
5.4 Changes That May Affect Hosts
Some CSS and markup changes may affect the look and feel of a website, particularly if the theme isn’t following coding best practices. A few notable changes are:
- default padding in blocks will be removed
- legacy editor- class names are being removed
What this means for hosts is that because websites might look a little different after updating to 5.4, hosts may need prepare support staff or update their product systems to compensate. Developers may want to rework CSS to compensate. More information on CSS changes in 5.4 can be found here.
Gutenberg 7.6
Theres a new version of Gutenberg and it will offer a number of bug fixes and enhancements as well as some fun options for developers, such as new blocks! Check out whats new in Gutenberg 7.6 here.
Community Happenings
WordCamp Cancellations
Due to the coronavirus epidemic a number of upcoming WordCamps and MeetUps may either be cancelled, rescheduled or moved to online. The community team has released some guidelines for organizers for handling event cancellations.
Hosting Team Happenings
Daylight Savings Time
Daylight Savings starts this month. Time zones are shifting for Daylight Savings on the following dates:
- March 8 – US starts DST
- March 29 – UK/EU starts DST
- April 5 – AU ends DST
Traditionally, the hosting team adjusts meeting times a few weeks after all of the regions have shifted times. Should the hosting team adjust the meeting times again this year to stay inline with Daylight Savings Time changes?
09:00 meeting attendees stated that although many folks don’t participate in Daylight Savings, the group is comfortable with sticking to 09:00 UTC for the meeting time even if that means a shift in local time.
18:00 attendees also favored adjusting to Daylight Savings time, keeping the meeting at 18:00 UTC.
SimpleXML PHP Extension
The Core Sitemaps feature plugin team is looking for information from hosts about the availability of the SimpleXML PHP extension.
- Do your hosting systems offer platforms that do not support the extension?
- Would customers be disadvantaged of the core sitemap feature “failed gracefully” with an error message if the extension is unavailable?
@pfefferle mentioned that IONOS does support the SimpleXML extension.
@mazeheld also stated that their teams support the extension.
@hristo-sg stated that SiteGround has SimpleXML enabled across systems.
@skithund linked to trac #48116; a proposal for tracking php extension usage.
Thank you to all hosts who have provided information!
Team Contributor Badges
The following are ways that a volunteer currently can earn a hosting contributor badge:
- Accepted PRs to the distributed tests
- Contributions to the documentation for best practices
- Helping to lead meetings or write up notes
- Actively participating in meetings regularly and giving feedback on things discussed.
- Helping out at a contributor day
@xkon recommended that if a hosting representative has implemented and/or is maintaining the phpunit test runner and reporter on their hosting systems, that they should be eligible for a badge.
@mikeschroder agreed that should be included.
Team members are in consensus that any contribution that meets these requirements, big or small, is a contribution worth recognition.
@mikeschroder pointed out that smaller contributions are great ways for new contributors to get more involved, also stating that the handbook can always be updated if this criteria changes.
@pfefferle suggested that folks have the ability to nominate each other for a contributor badge, and @xkon thought that idea “is a nice touch”.
Next Meeting
The next meetings will be in the #hosting-community channel on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 0900 UTC and Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at 1800 UTC. Hope to see you then!