Items discussed at yesterday’s support meetup:
a11y access to Slack for the #forums channel
Or any Slack channel. It really irks me that Slack is not yet a11y friendly, though I do believe that is being worked on.
Focusing on Windows, Jose and I played with Instantbird for Windows to see about either getting the IRC gateway working. It should work, the IRC gateway works for other IRC clients easily. The XMPP gateway was also tested or as I like to refer to that gateway as BLAMO! I can’t get it to work with any XMPP client on Mac or PC.
The IRC gateway complains that Instantbird isn’t sending a password. It was pointed out to me that Instantbird does post contact info and this weekend I’ll send an email to them for help. There may be a “/about config” setting that I’m missing.
Get ready for the pending 4.3 beta
If you look at the 4.3 project schedule then you’ll see that the planned date for beta is July 1st. Please start looking at the nightlies. There was some discussion about changes to 4.3 and the customizer but with every release there will be people who dislike change and the support team should be ready.
Before anyone reading this thinks “The Support Team is being arrogant and presumptuous against users!” just be aware: hardly anyone ever posts to the support forums or IRC with topics like “I just wanted to say how awesome and well received this latest version is.” That has happened but it’s rare.
Reviews
If you are a plugin author and you’re not happy with or think a review should be deleted then do not contact the plugins team about that. Do not. That is not what the plugins team is for. Reviews are sometimes deleted but that’s a judgement call for the moderators.
Regarding people leaving reviews in exchange for anything, this is the verbiage that should be used.
We truly do welcome honest reviews. But offering something in exchange for them is unlikely to lead to honest reviews. It leads to only positive reviews, and this we see as an attempt to game the system.
Which is all that needs to be said about that. If it’s not in the predefines yet then I may add that.
Plugin security updates
The recently patched Woocommerce security issue was discussed. As always, keep your WordPress installation, plugins and themes up to date. It’s the best and easiest way to remain secure.
Take the 2015 bbPress survey
Please take a moment and fill out the bbPress survey. It’s important to gauge the response from the user base and your input there will help.
View today’s meetup transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)