The WP Minute: Recent Episodes
Matt Medeiros
The WP Minute brings you WordPress news in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
Welcome to a special edition of the WP Minute! Rather than our usual five minute roundup of WordPress news, we’ve recorded an expanded episode this week. Matt Medeiros and Eric Karkovack got together to discuss their picks for November’s most interesting and impactful stories.
Here’s a rundown of links mentioned in the show:
The new WordPress Developer Blog seeks to bridge the information gap between developers and changes to core. Hopefully it proves to be a one-stop shop to learn about new features, deprecated code, and more.
Elegant Themes announced that their Divi page builder will undergo some major changes under the hood. Version 5.0 will eschew shortcodes and become more tightly integrated with Gutenberg.
WordPress 6.1 said goodbye to the venerable “Just Another WordPress Site” tagline. New installs will feature an empty tagline, though the phrase will live on as placeholder text.
Mike McAlister’s concept for an OpenPress plugin sparked a lot of discussion. It would turn WordPress into a microblogging platform and allow other websites to subscribe to your content.
When it comes to WordPress, Eric Karkovack has a few simple hopes for 2023. Hint: they’re more about community than fancy new features.
The WordPress community spoke up, and Meetup.com listened to concerns about its use of an accessibility overlay. Now, they’re working together in an effort to make the platform accessible by tackling problems at their roots.
If you’re a fan of the puzzle game Wordle, check out WordlePress. Ross Wintle’s creation mixes the fun of the original and challenges your knowledge of core WordPress PHP functions.
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- TweetGrab crawls your site and turns any embedded Tweets into screenshots with the click of a button.
- ZipMessage Record and swap messages asynchronously with clients and others using video, screen, audio or text + Embed video intake forms in WordPress.
New Members This Week
- Dennis Dornon, follow @dennisdornon, @MyMainWP
- WPMarmite, follow @wpmarmite_en
If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.
The annual State of the Word event has been scheduled for December 15, 2022 from 1:00 - 2:30pm EST. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will take to the microphone to discuss the year that was and what lies ahead.
The event will take place in New York City and will also be live streamed. If you’d like to attend in-person, there’s a survey available to fill out.
Meanwhile, you can also submit questions to Mullenweg ahead of time by emailing ask-matt@wordcamp.org or during the event via YouTube’s chat feature.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack has a wish list of things he’d love to see from WordPress in 2023. More than any technical enhancements, his hopes include better communication, collaboration, and more opportunities to get together for in-person events.
Tom McFarlin contributed to The WP Minute with an in-depth tutorial on working with multiple user metadata queries. He takes us step-by-step through the process of retrieving a custom set of user records.
WordPress.org is launching a blog aimed at developers. Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that the project is currently in beta testing. The focus will be on new features that impact theme and plugin developers.
According to WP Tavern, the Divi page builder will undergo some major changes in 2023. Version 5.0 isn’t slated to see new features, rather a complete rewrite of its underlying framework. The revamp will be built using React and aims to improve compatibility with the Gutenberg Block Editor.
Last week, we reported on Mike McAlister's concept for OpenPress, a plugin that would turn a WordPress install into a syndicated microblogging platform. This week, Alex Standiford expands on the idea and wonders if WordPress might one day have a bidirectional relationship with social media platforms.
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- Equalized Digital Get 50% off Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker November 20-30 with coupon code BlackFriday22 and start making your website accessible.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced that Tumblr will soon add support for ActivityPub, an open and decentralized protocol for connecting to Mastodon and other social media platforms. The announcement comes as more users are contemplating Twitter alternatives.
- Speaking of Tumblr, Nyasha Green at MasterWP looks at the platform’s recent resurgence.
- Sell Courses Online have
Lots has changed for the WordPress website building experience over the last 4 years and today's WP Product Talk has been on the frontlines of it.
Richard Tabor joins the podcast to talk about the major changes in Gutenberg, Site Editing, and the future of WordPress. Looking for a healthy dose of what's under the hood of your favorite CMS? Don't miss this episode.
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Richard Tabor
- Matt Cromwell
- Paid Memberships Pro
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
Hiring is probably the hardest thing to do in any business.
There's so much that needs to go into the interview process, onboarding, and we haven't even begun to think about the actual job description! Lucky for us, Kim Lipari joins WP Product talk to give us all the advice we need to become better employers in the WordPress ecosystem.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it on social media and say thanks to the hosts!
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Kim Lipari
- Matt Cromwell
- Paid Memberships Pro
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
The 6th episode of WP Product Talk featuring Zach Tirell of WP Events Calendar.
Listen in to find out how to hire and manage contractors for your WordPress product (or agency!) business. If you're a WordPress freelancer, this is a fantastic episode to listen to and reverse engineer to better position yourself with employers.
If you enjoyed this episode, please say thanks to the hosts and consider sharing this on social media!
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Zach Tirrell
- Matt Cromwell
- Paid Memberships Pro
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
The idea of using WordPress to power a social networking site isn’t new. The BuddyPress plugin has offered this functionality since 2009. But Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter (and the ensuing chaos) has WordPress community members taking another look at what’s possible.
Mike McAlister recently shared a concept for OpenPress, a plugin that would turn your WordPress install into a microblogging platform. Your site’s content can then be connected with, and followed by, other sites using OpenPress.
The aim is to build a network of related content that allows creators to maintain ownership. As McAlister puts it, the network “is powered by individuals, but connected as a community.”
Who knows where the OpenPress concept will go. But it’s an interesting proposition for those looking to ditch Twitter and other corporately-owned communities.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack is intrigued by the potential of managed WooCommerce hosting. He took a look at what it can and can’t do to simplify the eCommerce platform.
In an effort to decrease the barriers to contributing to WordPress core, project lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí has proposed using GitHub Codespaces. The tool allows for the rapid setup of a development environment. Sarah Gooding has the details at WP Tavern.
In a tongue-and-cheek effort to compete with Twitter’s new account verification system, Tumblr is selling two “useless” checkmarks for a one-time fee of $7.99. Yes, that’s one penny less than Twitter’s service. The microblogging platform is owned by Automattic. To paraphrase CEO (and WordPress co-founder) Matt Mullenweg’s tweet, two checkmarks are cooler than one.
What’s your top WordPress-related story for 2022? The WP Minute wants to know! Share your thoughts with us on Twitter.
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- Equalized Digital Get 50% off Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker November 20-30 with coupon code BlackFriday22 and start making your website accessible.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- WordPress 6.1.1 was released on November 15 and fixes a total of 50 bugs.
- If you missed out on WordCamp Italia 2022, a nearly 9-hour recording of the event is available for viewing.
- How would you like the WordPress Site Editor to work? What pain points would you like to see resolved? The project has put out a call for user feedback.
- It’s been a long time coming, but WooCommerce 7.1 is finally adding the ability to store orders in a custom database table. Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern reports that it’s currently an experimental feature, but should become the default sometime in 2023.
- Podcasters using Automattic’s Pocket Casts platform can now embed their episodes on WordPress.com via a custom block.
- WordPress marketing firm Ellipsis has announced a new web tool from their SEO product FALCON AI. It aims to help content creators conduct more accurate keyword research through machine learning.
- WordPress.org’s Showcase section is undergoing a redesign and you can take a peek at what’s in store.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
The advent of WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) has sparked plenty of discussion within the community. But it’s not just the technical aspects that have received attention. Giving the feature a more user-friendly name has also been a hot topic.
On November 4, 2022, WordPress project Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that the feature will be simply referred to as the “Site Editor”.
Simplicity was only one consideration, however. Haden Chomphosy notes that the term can also be effectively translated into hundreds of languages. Given WordPress’ considerable international user base, a consistent name is desirable.
Paired with the Block Editor, the Site Editor name should provide users with a clearer distinction between editing environments.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The phrase “Just another WordPress site” should be familiar to anyone who has installed the software. It’s been the default setting for the Site Tagline for years - but no more. Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern reports that, as of WordPress 6.1, the tagline is now blank. For the sake of nostalgia, the phrase does stick around in the form of placeholder text.
In the wake of WordPress.org’s removal of active install growth data from the plugin repository, developers are still looking for relevant information. In response, the folks at AyeCode have launched wp-rankings.com. The site scrapes the repository’s popular plugin data and shows historical comparisons for active installations. WP Tavern has more details on the project.
If you couldn’t make it to Spain for WordCamp Sevilla this past weekend, the event has published a virtual tour using the Spatial metaverse platform. Visitors can create an avatar, walk around the space, and access a stream of the event.
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- See your ad in this space!
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- Designer Anders Norén has released Oaknut, a WordPress block theme that lets users create a profile page similar to that of Linktree.
- Big Orange Heart have announced that their WordFest Live event has been rescheduled to Friday, December 16, 2022.
- If you run a WooCommerce store and use Stripe for payment processing, be on the lookout for fraudulent orders.
- Wordfence takes a look at a security flaw in the Blog2Social WordPress plugin.
New Members This Week
- Jamie Marsland, follow @pootlepress
If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Michelle Frechette
WordPress 6.1, “Misha”, was released on November 1. The new version features more than 120 enhancements and fixes over 240 bugs.
Performance was a focus in this release, including increased efficiencies within WP_Query and the REST API. Query caching is said to provide a significant speed boost. WordPress core contributor Jonny Harris has tweeted test results to back up the claim.
Also of note are multiple accessibility enhancements, a myriad of improvements to the block editor, the ability to use block-based template parts within “Classic” themes, the introduction of the Twenty Twenty-Three default theme, and a whole lot more.
Check out the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide for a full rundown of what’s new. And if you’re interested in who contributed to the release, Jean-Baptiste Audras has put together some detailed contribution statistics.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The 2022 Web Almanac reports that 72% of WordPress-powered mobile pages may be overusing native lazy loading on images, resulting in a negative impact on performance. Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern offers more details and some possible reasons for this surprising number.
Gutenberg project lead Matías Ventura recently highlighted some improvements to the block editor’s writing experience. Meanwhile, a blog post at Make WordPress Core has further details and demos to check out.
eCommerce platform (and WooCommerce rival) Shopify saw rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of the online stores opened during that time didn’t last.
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- See your ad in this space!
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- Eric Karkovack and Dan Knauss discussed ideas for improving the WordPress user experience on the Post Status Excerpt.
- The Bertha AI Writing Assistant has introduced the ability to generate images based on artificial intelligence (AI) from within WordPress.
- Elon Musk’s controversial purchase of Twitter has been finalized. And while some people have vowed to leave the platform, Sarah Gooding reports that many WordPress community members are planning to stick around.
- The new Missing Menu Items plugin adds hard-to-find block and site editor links to the WordPress Appearance menu. WP Tavern recently took a look at what it does.
- Matt Mullenweg shared thoughts on why Tumblr’s previous policy on adult content no longer works on the modern web.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Andrew Palmer
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Eric Karkovack
The saga of WordPress.org active install data continues as more details trickle out. At WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reported on an appearance by WordPress contributor Samuel Otto Wood on the WPwatercooler podcast.
Wood says the decision to remove the data originated from a private Slack conversation amongst contributors that was started by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg back in May.
It has also been revealed that the removal was not due to security or privacy issues, as previously indicated. According to Wood, the data chart was removed because “by and large, nobody was using them”.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the decision or worthiness of the data, no official outreach appears to have been made by project leadership to the developer community.
Meanwhile, WordPress community members continue to voice concerns via a Trac ticket started by RebelCode CEO Mark Zahra. The ticket was created on September 30 and has over 100 comments.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The first ever WordPress Documentation team Contributor Day took place on Tuesday, October 25. The virtual event was held to help team members catch up on tasks and onboard new contributors.
Development agency Human Made has published 1001 ways to implement Gutenberg blocks. The guide includes a handy flowchart for determining what blocks to use and when to use them.
The inaugural WPWealthBuilder Summit has put a call out for speakers and sponsors. The virtual event focuses on building personal wealth through WordPress and takes place on February 3, 2023.
Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that the Openverse Audio Catalog now boasts 800,000 files that are available free of charge. Formerly known as Creative Commons Search, Openverse is now part of the WordPress project.
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- WebDevStudios WebDevStudios is seeking a full time, remote Engineering Manager candidate interested in joining our growing team.
- Sitewide Sales Are you literally losing sleep on Black Friday? Schedule your WordPress site's Black Friday sale so you can sleep off Thanksgiving dinner.
- GapScout Sign-Up for Early Access - AI that scans reviews (on WordPress.org or elsewhere), revealing to you the most profitable opportunities!
- WP Mayor Reach a larger, targeted audience of WordPress users with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. Get them listed on WP Mayor.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- Automattic’s Pocket Casts podcasting platform has announced that their mobile apps are now open-source.
- Gutenberg project contributors released a video of a streamlined “browse mode” concept for the WordPress Site Editor.
- WordPress Accessibility Day takes place from November 2-3 and has released its speaker lineup.
- The WordPress.org support portal, dubbed the “HelpHub”, is set to be redesigned.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Michelle Frechette
- Eric Karkovack
In today's episode of WP Product Talk, we'll explore the methods organizations go through to level up entry-level WordPress developers on their team.
This is a fantastic discussion with your weekly hosts Kim Colemen & Matt Cromwell. Today's guest is Courtney Robertson, Web Design Dev Advocate at GoDaddy Pro.
If you enjoyed this episode, please re-share it on social media and follow the hashtag #wpproducttalk on Twitter.
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Matt Cromwell
- Courtney Robertson
- Paid Memberships Pro
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
Discussion rolls on within the WordPress community regarding the removal of active install growth data from the WordPress.org plugin repository - but still no firm resolution is in sight. As we reported last week, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg said that adding some form of stats for plugin developers is “doable”. We’ll have to wait and see where the discussion goes from here.
Meanwhile, The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack wrote about what plugin developers should realistically expect from the WordPress project and its leadership. It might be that the project simply isn’t there to help developers make money. Instead, their focus is likely trained on providing us with a platform to build upon. How a developer monetizes their product is ultimately up to them.
And Alex Denning of Ellipsis argues that WordPress.org is an ineffective place to distribute plugins. He provides some key data to back up this point. On the other side of the coin, Liquid Web’s Matt Cromwell respectfully disagrees.
Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Matt Cromwell discusses distributing plugins via WordPress.org
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
Security is the focus of WordPress 6.0.3, which was released on October 17. Be sure to update your websites, as this release patches several vulnerabilities.
If you’d like a rundown of the vulnerabilities involved in WordPress 6.0.3, Patchstack offers a full analysis.
Users of the Shortcodes Ultimate plugin will also want to update to the latest version. Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that a fix for an undisclosed security issue was recently added.
Registration is now open for WordPress Accessibility Day. The 24-hour virtual event will take place from November 2-3 and will feature a bevy of presentations that aim to demystify the subject.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available for testing.
- Designer and software engineer Mike McAlister announced his new project, Ollie - an educational hub for WordPress creators.
- Development agency 10up has published a guide to Gutenberg Best Practices.
- Sarah Gooding provides details on the new Plugin Dependencies feature plugin that is available for testing. It’s an effort to help developers specify plugin dependencies via WordPress core.
- Devin Walker introduces himself as the new General Manager of iThemes, and hints at some changes coming to the longtime WordPress development company.
- Jetpack Social has added a paid tier to their automated social media sharing function. Free users will now be limited to 30 shares per month.
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- WebDevStudios WebDevStudios is seeking a full time, remote Engineering Manager candidate interested in joining our growing team.
- Sitewide Sales Are you literally losing sleep on Black Friday? Schedule your WordPress site's Black Friday sale so you can sleep off Thanksgiving dinner.
- GapScout Sign-Up for Early Access - AI that scans reviews (on WordPress.org or elsewhere), revealing to you the most profitable opportunities!
- WP Mayor Reach a larger, targeted audience of WordPress users with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. Get them listed on WP Mayor.
New Members This Week
- Nate Finch, follow @n8finch
- Zack Katz, follow @zackkatz
If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Amber Hinds
- Eric Karkovack
- Justin Ferriman
- Matt Cromwell
Have you started a WordPress theme or plugin that didn't quite succeed like you had hoped it would? It might be time to sunset your WordPress product.
There's 2 major things to consider: your mental health & your existing customers/users. When I spun down my first go at WordPress themes, it was embarrassing. The crazy thing was, the embarrassment was only in my head. I didn't want to give up, I wanted to keep going. Shutting it down felt like a failure. It took me years to realize that shutting down, provided me more clarity and the best lessons in marketing I've ever learned.
But how do you relay this to your customers? Especially if the recently paid you? Today's episode of Product Talk featuring Kim Coleman, Devin Walker, and Matt Cromwell will touch on all the points I just mentioned.
Be sure to follow them and tune in to their Twitter Space every week!
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Devin Walker
- Matt Cromwell
- Paid Memberships Pro
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
The recent pushback regarding WordPress.org’s removal of active install growth data shouldn’t be too surprising. It’s not the first time that a decision made by WordPress leadership has ruffled some feathers.
But perhaps the people most directly impacted by the move – plugin developers – were a bit unexpected. After all, a thriving plugin ecosystem is key to keeping WordPress growing and relevant. It’s fair to wonder why anyone would want to upset this particular apple cart.
Logic tells me that you’d want to do everything possible to keep this group happy. That in turn encourages developers to continue to invest in the platform. By contributing their products, and perhaps being part of the Five for the Future program, there are numerous opportunities to make a positive impact.
However, it’s not quite that simple. The above assumes that: a) everyone’s on the same page, and b) all involved parties have purely altruistic motives. That’s just not the reality of WordPress – or any other community on this planet.
There’s always going to be some push-and-pull between plugin developers and WordPress. The question is: what should plugin developers realistically expect from the platform and its leadership?
The Limited Partnership between Developers and Leadership
On the surface, the partnership between plugin developers and WordPress leadership is mutually beneficial. At their best, these entities can help each other thrive. And each deserves gratitude for the role they play.
But there are limits. Even though the WordPress project is open-source and not-for-profit, money is still at stake. Many plugin developers and service providers (including Matt Mullenweg’s Automattic) are for-profit businesses. And while most want to provide benefit to others, they’re still obliged to consider their needs first.
This brings us to the issue of active install growth data for plugins. In a competitive landscape, entrepreneurs will undoubtedly use available data to their advantage. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s just the way business works.
Yet sometimes how that data is leveraged will go against the grain. It could impact the WordPress community and project in ways that leadership isn’t comfortable with. Not everyone is interested in a level playing field. And we’ve seen instances where companies have used dark patterns and questionable marketing tactics to get ahead.
Meanwhile, WordPress.org has made these stats publicly available for years. Plugin authors have made it clear that the data is useful to them. However, no rule says WordPress must continue doing so. Fair or not, they can add or subtract metrics as they see fit.
The optics of the decision were decidedly unflattering. And there has been plenty of debate on whether removing the data was justified. Still, this friction is a prime example of the relationship’s limitations.
WordPress Doesn’t Have to Help Developers Make Money
Whether you’re a plugin developer or a freelancer serving clients, it’s possible to make a good living with WordPress. The software provides a solid foundation on which to build your business. Odds are that this narrative describes many people’s journeys to some degree.
We can also admire the WordPress community’s history of being relatively open and its willingness to share knowledge. It’s something we see at WordCamps, on social media, and within walled gardens such as Post Status and The WP Minute.
Indeed, the software is wonderful and so are many of the people involved. But we shouldn’t confuse them with the goals of the WordPress project and its leadership.
The project provides us with a tool and documentation that demonstrates how to use it. It encourages us to add customizations to the mix. It also asks that we give back to keep the lights on and the software relevant.
But maybe that’s as far as it goes. Perhaps WordPress leadership wishes us well while maintaining its distance. They’re not necessarily concerned with what business owners want. Could it be that we’re in this together – but only to a certain point?
For someone who was attracted to WordPress because of its “everything is free” vibe, I think that’s disappointing. At the same time, it may also explain why leadership doesn’t seem eager to communicate its reasoning behind controversial decisions.
WordPress Plugin Developers Must Make Their Own Way
In a perfect world, both the WordPress project and plugin developers would walk hand-in-hand. But their interests diverge at some point along the way. Thus, there’s an inevitable parting.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for collaboration. It’s still in everyone’s best interest to get along and make WordPress the best it can be. But perhaps we shouldn’t have any false illusions about this relationship.
For what it’s worth, I’d love to see leadership step out of its comfort zone and provide in-depth details about its decision-making process. I think so much of the frustration and mistrust we see could be avoided by simply talking about the issues of the day.
In the meantime, the plugin developer community must come to grips with the hand they’ve been dealt. There will always be some level of disconnect between the needs of WordPress and its ecosystem. That isn’t likely to change.
That means developers may have to learn to rely on each other more than the platform they use.
The conversation regarding the removal of WordPress plugin active install growth data has continued this week. The data chart was officially removed from the WordPress.org plugin repository back on September 29, 2022.
Even as plugin authors and other community members have asked for the chart’s return, no formal reason has been given for its removal. The possibilities of privacy and security issues have been brought up, but there’s been no official announcement from WordPress leadership.
Over at WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reports on a Trac ticket discussion started by Mark Zahra. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has chimed in and said that adding relevant statistics for plugin authors “...will take some work but it’s doable.” Mullenweg also responded to a tweet from Zahra stating, “We’ll add something new for small plug-in devs.”
Meanwhile, the community continues to express concern. Investor and artist Jean Galea wondered if WordPress is entering a “death spiral”. And MasterWP’s Rob Howard says WordPress may be turning away its biggest fans.
Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute!
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
MasterWP’s WordCamp travel sponsorship program plans to keep on rolling in 2023. It aims to enable a diverse group of people to attend events by defraying travel costs. This year, the program helped seven recipients head to WordCamp US in San Diego, California.
Rob Howard wrote about the reasoning behind and the impact of the program. There’s also a form for anyone interested in receiving a travel stipend to attend WordCamp US 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland.
Howard also put out a call for potential sponsors. For our part, the WP Minute has made a $1,500 contribution.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- A hosted WooCommerce package will be coming to WordPress.com in 2023.
- Carl Alexander took a look at the ups and downs of contributing to WordPress outside of the official project.
- Matt Cromwell and Kim Coleman sat down with AccessAlly founder Nathalie Lussier to discuss outlining a WordPress product roadmap.
- WordPress 6.1 will see a performance boost, thanks to the addition of database query caching.
- A familiar name is listed in Newsweek’s “America's 100 Most Loved Workplaces 2022” rankings. Automattic, owner of WordPress.com and founded by Matt Mullenweg, came in at #31 this year.
- Open source search engine Meilisearch recently announced $15 million Series A round funding.
Classifieds listings buy yours
- WebDevStudios WebDevStudios is seeking a full time, remote Engineering Manager candidate interested in joining our growing team.
- Sitewide Sales Are you literally losing sleep on Black Friday? Schedule your WordPress site's Black Friday sale so you can sleep off Thanksgiving dinner.
- GapScout Sign-Up for Early Access - AI that scans reviews (on WordPress.org or elsewhere), revealing to you the most profitable opportunities!
New Members This Week
- Dominyka Mikšenaite
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Lesley Sim
- Dave Rodenbaugh
- John Locke
- Angela Bowman
WP Product talk is back with co-hosts Matt Cromwell and Kim Coleman sitting down to discuss outlining a WordPress product roadmap. Nathalie Lussier joins the crew to chat about how she and her team plan the AccessAlly course software development.
Follow Matt & Kim on Twitter to participate in the weekly WP Product talk Spaces. Stay subscribed here to catch the edited recording!
Links
- Kim Coleman
- Nathalie Lussier
- Matt Cromwell
- Paid Memberships Pro
- AccessAlly
- GiveWP
- Support the WP Minute
The WordPress plugin ecosystem has been a big topic of discussion recently. WP Mayor’s Mark Zahra started things off with an in-depth article regarding deceptive marketing practices. Zahra provides specific examples of questionable tactics used by WordPress plugin developers. He also calls on the community - himself included - to think about the potential harm to WordPress’ reputation.
Zahra didn’t stop there. He also noted that the WordPress.org plugin repository has removed the active install growth chart. This feature allowed plugin developers to gauge how their products performed over time. Over at WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding reports that there’s been no clear indication of why the metric was pulled. Zahra also expanded on the topic over at MasterWP.
And if you’re interested in learning how to monetize your own WordPress product, be sure to listen to Kim Coleman and Matt Cromwell’s WP Product Talk Twitter Space.
Links You Shouldn’t Miss
The WordPress themes team has decided to delay the inclusion of locally-hosted Google fonts in legacy default themes until version 6.2. As Sarah Gooding reports at WP Tavern, the move was originally scheduled for version 6.1. This has some community members concerned, as a German court recently ruled that remotely-hosted fonts are a violation of the European Union’s GDPR laws.
The 2022 Web Almanac was released by HTTP Archive. The report aims to point out trends in the industry. As you may have guessed, WordPress once again has the top spot in CMS usage, with a reported 35% market share.
Last week’s story covering the controversial, racially-tinged remarks on a now-removed episode of the WP-Tonic podcast continues to spark discussion. WP Watercool took on the topic of microagression, while Allie Nimmons and Michelle Frechette of Underrepresented in Tech looked at the idea of reverse racism.
From the Grab Bag
Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.
- WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 is now available for testing.
- WordCamp Phoenix has been scheduled for March 24-25, 2023. Outside of WordCamp US, it's the only stateside camp confirmed for 2023.
- Jonathan Wold discusses Using The Loop To Grow A WordPress Product Company
- Dan Knauss at Post Status asks WooCommerce vs. Shopify: Why Do We Make It So Hard?
- WP Motivate explores Finding Inspiration in the Compost
- The WP Trends newsletter makes a triumphant comeback
- GoDaddy Pro hosted a Twitter Space on the Future of Contributing to WordPress
New Members This Week
- Nev Harris, follow @thenevharris
If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Mark Zahra
- Cameron Jones
- Eric Karkovack
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Paul Lacey
- Michelle Frechette
- Raquel Landefeld
- Abha Thakor
Matt Cromwell and Kim Coleman are back with their second episode of WP Product Talk!
They're joined by Lesley Sim, of Newsletter Glue, to discuss the decision-making around building a new product. You could be at the crossroads of launching a new major feature or pivoting your whole WordPress product business. Don't miss this episode!
There is a new demo to try out on make.wordpress.org where you can run WordPress directly in the browser without a PHP server. Although it is not fully stable yet, it is a major breakthrough that could transform learning, contributing, and using WordPress. Go check out the post to learn more about how you can test it out.
Jesse Friedman, Director of innovation at Automattic was interviewed on the WP Minute about the wp.cloud initiative. If you would like to know more about this, go listen to that interview.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce Blocks 8.6.0 was released with support for a new block that displays cross-sells for products that are based on the current product in the customer’s cart. Sarah Gooding covers the details over at the WP Tavern.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Nyasha Green, the Editorial Director over at MasterWP was further encouraged to write “Enough with this woke stuff: and other racist speech you can unlearn” after WP-Tonic’s co-hosts died on a hill attempting to deconstruct racism in the workplace, following an article regarding Twillio layoffs. The episode has since been removed from their podcast feed and YouTube channel.
To hear an archived clip, Cameron Jones shared an article from Tom Finley that discusses racism as a weed and this type of speech does not represent WordPress.
Further, Allie Nimmons has announced a “How to be an Ally” workshop. It kicks off on October 4th at 3PM.
If you want to try out a visual collaboration tool with your clients, the Atarim plugin is now available in the WordPress Repository. This is a great tool to use when you have more than one person making changes to a website that you are working on.
Have questions about WordPress? Daniel Schutzsmith shared a link for
Ask.wp. This is a project by Terry Tsang to act as a "Super Brain" for the WordPress community using a chat bot.
Want to start your week with a little motivation? Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette have teamed up with a new podcast called WP Motivate. You can listen to their first podcast to…get motivated.
Want to learn more about monetizing free WordPress products? Go check out the episode on the WP Minute with Kim Coleman and Matt Cromwell with their new WP Product Talk Twitter Space.
Canva is jumping into the website building game citing that 2 million websites were made with their beta release of their web builder software. Jamie Marsland recorded a YouTube video about this and It will be interesting to see if Canva impacts WordPress in the future.
Is there “angst” in the page builder community with the direction of Gutenberg and WordPress core? Paul Lacey shares an article from David Waumsley about how the direction of WordPress is forcing him to take a look at other products. David’s article on researching Jamstack is an area of website building to explore.
New Member:
This week we welcome Lesley Sim to the #linksquad crew.
Cape Dave has donated 3 coffees this week. Thanks, Dave!
If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Birgit Pauli-Hack
- Eric Karkovac
- Cameron Jones
- Andrew Palmer
- John Locke
- Daniel Shutzsmith
- Michelle Frechette
- Justin Ferriman
- Paul Lacey
Today's episode is a recording of Kim Coleman's and Matt Cromwell's WP Product Talk Twitter Space.
The duo share their professional WordPress updates and talk WordPress product pricing. The good, the bad, of offering free WordPress products. Make sure to give them a follow and tune in to their Twitter Space happening today with Lesley Sim. Listen here.
If you missed Matt Mullenweg's address at WordCamp US 2022, he snuck in a mention of the new hosting infrastructure without much context around it.
Could Automattic be building out the next WordPress hosting company behind the scenes? What if you wanted to launch a WooCommerce specific hosting company? Possibly a solution that end users didn't even know was running WordPress?
I reached out to Jesse Friedman, Director of innovation at Automattic, now leading the WP.cloud product with a series of questions to explore this new topic a bit further.
Adobe set to acquire Figma
If you’re a designer or UI specialist in the WordPress world, chances are you already know about the Adobe/Figma deal. A $20 Billion dollar deal in cash and stock – 40 times Figma revenue – shocked us and launched more memes, probably using Photoshop, than we’ve in the tech space since…well about 4 months ago.
4 Years ago, Figma donated an organizational membership to WordPress.org. Will you continue to use Figma? Tweet at us.
In Mullenweg’s recent WCUS address, he snuck in the mention of Automattic’s new cloud service – wp.cloud.
It looks to be infrastructure for cloud providers wanting to serve up some WordPress hosting, leveraging .com’s sprawling CDN & other technology. Products like Jetpack already use .com’s CDN as part of their services, as I’m sure other products like VideoPress do.
I reached out to Jesse Friedman, who leads the wp.cloud initiative, for an interview. Here’s a sneak peek of that, which airs next week – subscribe so you don’t miss it!
Hosting news continues with WP Engine jumping into the WordPress flavor hosting with a new WooCommerce offering. While Siteground surprises us with their Easy Digital Downloads speciality hosting.
Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute & Amber Hinds with the Accessibility Minute!
Links you shouldn’t miss
There’s a handful of other links you shouldn’t miss this week. These links should help you stay informed around the moving and shaking of WordPress:
Matt Mullenweg WCUS Address
This is a direct recording of his livestream session. If you missed it or want to hear the audience Q&A round, click to tune in.
Why WordPress and Wix will Always Be Worlds Apart
The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack, breaks down a detailed comparison on how much WordPress & Wix differ.
Help Test WordPress 6.1
The WordPress 6.1 Beta is out! Remember, don’t complain…explain…your issues by testing the latest version before it's released.
From the grab bag
Some of these links might interest you – dive in!
- ACF 6.0 is released
- WebP pulled from 6.x
- Syed Bahlki makes an interesting prediction about the future of WordPress
- Matt Cromwell launched WP Product Shop Talk Twitter Spaces. Subscribe to The WP Minute as this show will be exclusively syndicated through our podcast feed.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Daniel Shutzsmith
- Raquel Landefeld
- Cameron Jones
- Birgit Pauli-Hack
- Michelle Frechette
- Angela Bowman
Today's episode is a recording from the official WCUS 2022 livestream found in this video.
We've extracted the Matt Mullenweg session which includes some of his outlook on WordPress 6.1, community, and a Q&A session from the audience. If you had a chance to attend WCUS, send us a tweet about your favorite session or experience.
Photograph by Daniel Schutzsmith
Our episode is recorded this week by Michelle Frechette.
News
Sarah Gooding over at the WP Tavern posted an article asking Gutenberg Contributors to test block-based templates in WordPress Classic Themes. During Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp last week, there was a discussion about helping with block adoption. If you would like to see what this is all about and help test, jump over to make.wordpress.org.
Did you know that the WordPress Plugins Directory crossed 60,000 plugins? Sarah Gooding tweeted about this incredible milestone.
Security
Eric Karkovack shared the PSA to update the WordPress Two-Factor plugin ASAP. There are two security fixes that are available on GitHub.
Events
WordCamp Nepal 2022 is scheduled for the 5th & 6th of November 2022 at the Chitwan Garden Resort (CGR), Bharatpur Nepal. It was announced that the Ujwal Thapa memorial scholarship will be available to 7 eligible candidates who want to attend this WordCamp.
The 2023 WordCamp US will be held in National Harbor, Maryland from August 23-25, 2023. The announcement was made at WordCamp US last week.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Still thinking about going out on your own? Justin Ferriman, who ran LearnDash shares in his blog that it is important to keep an eye on reviews to find market share opportunities. Justin shares a great list to get started with software reviews and shares some third-party suggestions.
Chris Weigman introduced Kana, which is a simple and powerful WordPress development environment. If you are looking for a local development environment you can get started by visiting Chris’ website.
After seeing many great photos from WordCamp US, Brad Williams shared this tweet with the job board. Matt Medeiros listed the 35 companies hiring over at the WP Minute.
CNBC Make It showed that WordPress is number 10 for hiring on the work-from-anywhere and most in-demand jobs.
GoDaddy is launching a preview of Managed WooCommerce Stores to US-based customers. It is the largest investment to date in eCommerce. If you are looking for a solution to multichannel selling for your customers, you may want to go check out the tools being offered.
A report in SEO journal announced that Bluehost unveiled a new WordPress eCommerce solution that simplifies creating a store with a point-and-click interface.
Amber Hinds tweeted from WordCamp US that @photmatt says there's a challenge getting assistive technology users to test Gutenberg and provide feedback.
Only if you expect them to do it for free. Budgeting to pay people with disabilities for their time will solve this and is the right thing to do.
This has been the challenge for WordPress.org without a great solution yet.
Cameron Jones tweeted:
If you are using Paypal to pay for Delicious Brains products, WPEngine announced that you need to change your method of payment on the website. They are no longer supporting Paypal as a payment method.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Justin Ferriman
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Raquel Landefeld
- Cameron Jones
Editor's note: How I imagine the background music to WordCamp US 2022
News
The new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, will be a stripped-down base theme with many style variations built by the WordPress design community. This theme is being released to make theme development exciting again. Jump over to the Gutenberg times to read about variations and see the latest on the “good and bad”.
WordPress.com has announced that they can build and design a website for new business owners, in four business days or less. If you are on a budget, the cost is $499, plus an additional purchase of the WordPress.com premium plan. It will be interesting to see how this will grow and if it has any impact on the WordPress professional freelance community.
Security
Wordfence PSA: on September 6, 2022, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team was alerted to the presence of a vulnerability being exploited in BackupBuddy, a WordPress plugin that has around 140,000 active installations. This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information. There is minimal sharing about the details of this vulnerability as it is still an active threat. If you are interested in reading more jump over to the Wordfence website.
Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article that WordPress’ Security Team announced it will be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 on December 1, 2022.
Events
WordCamp US has started! Michelle Frechette writes about how to make the most of your Wordcamp US experience with fewer participants and dealing with COVID restrictions. Use the official #WCUS hashtag to follow the online WCUS conversation. If you are there, say hi to Raquel Landefeld who is our community lead at the WP Minute.
If you are a new camper, go listen to the Matt Report and Gina Marie Innocent to get more ideas on how to make the most of your WordCamp experience.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Phil Crumm has a thread on Twitter that the WordPress community is uneasy about the growing pace of acquisitions.
His hot take may be correct as the news that GridPane has completed a seed round of funding, including a significant strategic investment from Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, WordPress VIP, and Jetpack.
Another acquisition
Rocketgenius, the company behind Gravity Forms, has acquired Gravity Flow and Gravity Experts. The acquisition will help the Gravity Forms community by strengthening the portfolio of WordPress product offerings.
Vito Peleg, Atarim’s founder, recently led the first angel fundraising round for their agency collaboration tool. He and Matt Medeiros had a great interview right here on the WP Minute.
Anders Norén has a new WordPress theme Björk that he announced on Twitter. Björk is built for the Site Editor and Global Styles features introduced in WordPress 6.0, with 15+ block patterns and seven different theme styles that you can switch between with the click of a button.
Ganga Kafle (KafleG), a representative of the WordPress theme team and a member of WordPress Nepal has an open letter to Matt Mullenweg suggesting that the next WordPress release be named in honor of Mr. Ujwal Thapa, an important member of the WordPress Community who lost his life to COVID. We have not been able to locate a response from Matt Mullenweg at this time.
Mark Zahra, a WP Minute member, shares his opinion on his website about the state of WordPress blogs. Today we see a mix of older blogs with a solid reputation, newer blogs with unclear intentions, and some that are putting money ahead of everything else. Go spend a few minutes of your time reading about where Mark thinks this is all headed.
A big congrats to WordCamp Kathmandu on their 10th anniversary! Sunita Rai shared on Twitter what an incredible experience it was joining the organizers' team as a speaker wrangler.
Alan Edwards tweeted about being up all night producing an epic AI-powered Gutenberg block to generate beautiful images from a text prompt in seconds and inserting them into your WordPress posts and pages. If you would like to test it out, sign up to get the instructions emailed to you.
learn.wordpress.org needs help with setting the priorities for learning WordPress. They would like to have users complete the Individual Learner Survey to help the team with analysis. Please take a couple of minutes of your time to complete this survey.
Next Up
Amber Hinds with the Community Minute - “TWMP on Deaf Awareness Month: “Captions”
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Jeff Chandler
- Andrew Palmer
- Eric Karkovack
- Brian Coords
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Daniel Shutzsmith
- Michelle Frechette
- Mark Zahra
- Amber Hinds
Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture.io, shares a fascinating anecdote with Angela Bowman, WordPress Meetup organizer and podcaster (Women in WP), about a relatively new WordPress user (Dave’s daughter) who had built a WordPress site with Dave’s help last year but struggled to get another one launched on her own this summer.
Dave’s daughter and her boss, who very much wanted to use WordPress, spent five weeks trying to get WordPress to work for them. They finally gave up and gave Wix a try. One week later, they had a finished, professional-looking site.
Angela and Dave talk about the reasons behind this not-so-successful WordPress story which led to the $64,000 dollar question, Who is WordPress for Anyway?
With different camps forming around WordPress, can we come back together again? Since the announcement of Gutenberg in 2015, the speed at which the page builder plugins have evolved has not slowed down. If anything, they are growing faster and stronger than ever. And it makes sense! The Block Editor can be quite confusing and in Dave’s words “janky”. The on-boarding process with WordPress requires a learning curve that is pretty steep. But it’s not just about getting hosting set up or being initiated into how to set the Front Page in the Reading Settings. In this use case, simply working with the Block Editor created a major hurdle in getting content laid out without a great deal of frustration.
What do you think about who WordPress is for? Please share your thoughts. What will it take to make WordPress easier for DIYers? And in the words of the Beatles, will we ever “Come Together” again?
You'd be hard pressed to find a business, both online and brick-and-mortar, that didn't invest in their website over the last three years. With WordPress marketshare showing only a sliver of marketshare decline since pandemic heights, it's still a force to be reckoned with.
Putting page builders and coding tools to the side: The client + agency collaboration process of designing a website can be one of the most costly parts of any new WordPress project. Atarim aims to solve this issue using their software aimed at WordPress professionals. Vito Peleg, Atarim's founder, recently lead their first angel fundraising round. While he didn't share the total value of the deal with me, it does provide a solid year and a half of runway, according to his prediction.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing this post on social media and supporting or joining our membership here.
News
WordPress continues to work on core template changes to refine the creation experience. Many more options will be released with WordPress 6.1 that will continue to improve website building. You can explore the enhancements now in the Gutenberg plugin.
Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article about how the WP-Optimize plugin was being accused of cheating their page speed performance tool. Before the dust settled, there was a follow up article covering the details about WP-Optimize denying the cheating allegations. If you are interested in the specifics around the performance gathering and analyzing the techniques both articles are worth a read.
Sarah Gooding was writing a lot about performance last week. She had another article about how WordPress is placing WebP by default on hold for WordPress 6.1. There were many objections from lead developers and the image upload has been controversial since it was announced.
WooCommerce
If you are a WooCommerce user, there is a Store Editing Roadmap update for Q3. A lot of work has been going on for the last few months and you can quickly see what is coming Now, Next and Later.
Events
WordCamp US is right around the corner. Make sure you look for Raquel Landefeld who will be representing the WP Minute and don’t forget that you can sign up for the live stream if you are not attending in person.
The speaker call for WordCamp Buffalo is open. This WordCamp will be an in-person event and held October 22, 2022. Submissions must be in by September 11th, 2022 for speaker slots.
Next up!
Michelle Frechettewith the Community Minute - “Attending a post-covid WCUS”
Richard Tabor teases his upcoming WCUS talk: A New Era of WordPress Themes is Here: Block Themes
From Our Contributors and Producers
Sam Munoz shares that the WP Engine Builders have become a community that is unique and special. Go check them out on Twitter and become part of the builder team.
Tom Mcfarlin has written a post about using the block editor as a developer. It has not been the greatest experience. Most of the frustration comes from standards that are not in place and documentation that is scarce. This often happens with major changes and updates in WordPress. Take a few minutes to read his article. It is organized and steps you through what you will need to develop blocks and it has many great reference links.
Can we please stop saying “Gutenberg’ now? Fränk Klein’s post on the HumanMade website makes a good point of how Gutenberg is confusing. Is it a project? Is it a plugin? Is it an editor? Not for developers? Some kind of historic timeline in the multiverse that is human history? The bottom line is to be specific when referencing Gutenberg.
Abha Thakor tweeted "One of my favorite things to support has been this photography celebration with the new #WordPress Photo Directory. It will be so wonderful to enjoy views from across the world and discover where existing and new contributors are located."
WP Minute members have continued the discussion of FSE, building websites, CSS, and how relevant WordPress will be in the near future. Brian Coords shared the article from Geoff Graham about not being sure how to WordPress anymore and Lesley Sim tweeted that WordPress is still very complicated and may be 3 to 5 years away from being seamless.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Michelle Frechette
- Joe Casabona
- Daniel Shutzsmith
- Brian Coords
- Sam Munoz
- Lesley Sim
News
WordPress 6.0.2 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is available for testing. Testing is so important with this release so please go over to make.wordpress.org to help.
There are also a lot of exciting things happening with the block editor. Birgit Pauli-Haack shared that there is a new call for testing by Anne McCarthy for Full-site Editing and another one by Justin Tadlock for the Fluid Typography in themes. Go check out the Gutenberg Times table of contents to see all the new things.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is bringing back the sandbox environment that makes it easy for a customer to test extensions before purchasing them. Select extensions can be loaded up on a private test site for 30 days before the site self-destructs. Sarah Gooding covers all the details over at WPTavern.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Digital Ocean Holdings Inc. will acquire Cloudways. The purchase will enhance offerings for small to medium-sized businesses. Under the terms of the transaction, DigitalOcean will acquire Cloudways for $350 million in cash, including a significant portion of the consideration to be paid over a 30-month period following the closing. It will be interesting to see how all the implementations will occur as some of the competitors are going to now be on the new host.
Matt Medeiros interviews Yaw Owusu-Ansah over on the Matt Report. Yaw says that:
there's something nice and freeing about [owning] an agency, being able to make your own decisions and call your own shots.
If you’re creating content for your WordPress website and need to try something different, go check out Bertha AI. There is a new pricing model and you can pay as you go with a subscription.
WP Minute member Sam Munoz is having live conversations with Brian Gardner over at WPEngine about the WordPress community, the future of Full Site Editing, and how it all impacts business owners. It is called Build Mode live and worth a visit.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Eric Karkovack
- Andrew Palmer
- Sam Munoz
- Daniel Shutzsmith
News
A new WordPress homepage and download page is live but was it done quickly enough? Mullenweg’s perception of how long a layout should take started a lot of discussion about the timing of the release, the number of volunteers on the project…to well…you name it. The comments to the controversy ran the gamut.
Mullenweg’s comments were posted in an article in Search Engine Journal about using the Block Editor. He said:
it’s such a basic layout, it’s hard to imagine it taking a single person more than a day on Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or one of the WP page builders.
Brian Coords wrote an opinion piece on MasterWP that there may be a leadership problem surrounding the project. This captures how people have felt about the WordPress Community for years. The bottom line is that there are many contributors that want to make WordPress better and need guidance in the project to get there. They want to be a part of the next iteration and keep the community growing and moving forward.
There is a new Twenty Twenty-Three default theme in development and there are many variations that are being proposed. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern reviews what has been proposed and reviewed what submissions look like. This project will close on August 31st to prepare for the October 25, 2022 release.
Gutenberg
Gutenberg designers are considering replacing the current welcome guide with a new onboarding experience. This idea is to show the features available upfront. You should go and check out the design changes proposed and provide feedback over at make.wordpress.org.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce has submitted a Request for Change (RFC) to reduce the size of the woocommerce plugin archive. If you are using WooCommerce you should review how this change could impact debugging your workflows.
Events
There is still time to nominate your favorite WordPress products over at the WP Weekly. This is the second year for the awards and a fun way to support your favorite products.
From Our Contributors and Producers
The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed. The WP Minute member, Lesley Simm tweeted:
Took us long enough. The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed.
We last made a legit update to it over a year ago. 5 months ago, we added a notice to say we would close it in May 2022, then just didn't.
Cameron Jones writes in his blog why he is not sold on ‘Five For The Future". His personal experience about the way to contribute may be shared by others and it should be paid attention to if the WordPress community is to get through this time of growing pains.
A new proposal, published by Automattic-sponsored contributor Adam Zielinski, calls for contributors to stabilize APIs before merging them into core. The Gutenberg plugin has been the safe place to experiment but suggests that these APIs being put into core is a real problem. Adam is looking for feedback on this until September 7th.
Winstina Hughes has a guest post this week on the WP Minute about sponsoring underrepresented & minority WordCamp speakers. We encourage you to read or listen to the podcast episode.
New Member
This week we welcome Cory Miller from Post Status to the #linksquad crew.
If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- John Locke
- Cameron Jones
- Daniel Shutzsmith
This week we bring you a guest post by Winstina Hughes. Read on as she shares about a very important movement.
The WordPress community has expressed tremendous support for the call to action to sponsor underrepresented/minority WordCamp speakers by removing the financial burden of their travel and lodging expenses. But who made the call, and what inspired it? Listen in to learn who made the call to action, what inspired her, the goal of the initiative, and where to seek support or offer sponsorship.
Links
Four Freedoms
Community Team
Inclusion Initiatives
Support Inclusion In Tech
Gutenberg News
Last week there was a bunch of new stuff with Gutenberg 13.8.0. Birgit Pauli-Haack discusses all the new features with Grzegorz Ziolkowski over on the changelog podcast. You can hear about Fluid Typography, updates to Block APIs, and WordPress 6.1 Planning.
The Gutenberg Editor is testing On Tumblr and Day One Web Apps. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern writes about the details of using the betas on Tumblr and Day One. Check that out.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce 6.8 has been released. Smart Shipping for new sites has been added to this release. You can see all of the recent updates by checking out the WooCommerce site.
Events
WordCamp Asia sold out of tickets on their first batch of standard and micro sponsor tickets in just 1 day. The second batch of tickets will be available soon.
From Our Contributors and Producers
The Free Rider topic around WordPress got a lot of discussion going in the WP Minute Slack channel. Joe Casabona published a podcast episode on why free riders are necessary and really not a problem that needs to be solved. If you really want to democratize publishing, then you can’t expect everyone to contribute. You have to accept and welcome the free riders. Eventually, they may want to contribute and be part of the open source community. Joe was also interviewed by Brian Coords over on MasterWP.
WordCamp US is right around the corner. If you are an introvert that will be attending, you may want to listen to the Matt Report podcast with Ken Elliott. Ken is a self-described “networking introvert” that built a WordPress agency with his co-founder and he will be emceeing WordCamp US next month. WordCamp US is sold out but you will be able to live stream for free.
The first beta release of Advanced Custom Fields PRO 6.0. is now available. It has improved performance for Repeater fields with large datasets, and a new generation of ACF Blocks with block JSON support. Go check that out if you are interested.
Marie Comet shared on Twitter a little experiment of bulk converting Classic WordPress posts to Gutenberg posts. You can check out this tool for converting classic posts to blocks and provide feedback.
Wordfence has looked at the threats to Ukrainian websites since the invasion of Russia. This cyber-war has been going on since mid-March and this blog post shows the statistics for the threats.
For WordPress developers that have been using Desktop Server for many years, it was sad to see ServerPress is closing. If you are a Premium Subscriber, you will have support until your subscription is up. Check out the just-released interview with Marc Benzakein reviewing that 12 years in business and the 10 years he was a partner.
GoDaddy Inc. reported their financial results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2022. Revenue was up 11%, and they announced an additional $250M share repurchase plan. GoDaddy’s CEO, Aman Bhutani said:
We continue to execute well against our strategic priorities, including building a one-stop shop for connected commerce, ubiquitous presence and digital identity, wrapped in our world-class customer service.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Joe Casabona
- Eric Karkovack
- Raquel Landefeld
- Birgit Pauli Haack
- Cameron Jones
- Daniel Schutzsmith
The talk around the WordPress open source and the free rider problem has been discussed by the community since May with strong opinions on both sides of the contributing fence. Josepha Haden Chomphosy wrote an article over on make.wordpress.org about the issue with Open Source (the Tragedy of the Commons) and the Free Riders.
Could it be that we are concentrating on multiple things to discuss one single problem? Josepha makes the point that the discussion should be focused on making the software as best as it can be for everyone using it.
WebP, an image format developed by Google, which is intended to replace JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats, will soon be generated by default for new JPEG images uploaded in WordPress. WebP conversion is coming to WordPress 6.1 and it doesn't look like there will be a UI-based option to turn this off. Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern writes about the opt-in option in depth and it seems like a ticket for this will remain open to see if this option remains as the default.
Gutenberg
What happens when a theme registers a pattern with a third-party block? If the user has the block plugin installed, it appears as it should. If you want to read more about how WordPress handles registering patterns in themes with third-party blocks jump over to the Gutenberg Times to read this article by Justin Tadlock.
Events
WordFest Live is scheduled for November 18, 2022. This is a 24-hour online festival focusing on Wellness for remote workers and sponsored by the Big Orange Heart. Submissions for volunteer speakers are open for the event. The deadline to register to be a speaker is August 15, 2022.
WordCamp US will be coming up in a little less than a month. They have Announced the Round 7 speaker panel which is Matt Mullenweg. You can find all the updates on their site. We will be a contributing media partner so look for Raquel (part of the WP Minute team) at WordCamp US.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Speaking of the value of contributing to WordPress, our WP Minute community member, Sam Munoz wrote an article posted over on Torque that covers her appreciation of WordPress and shows where you can contribute even without knowing code. All contributions matter.
If you have missed the exciting topics in the WordPress news space you can catch up on the last three months by listening to the WP Minute Rewind on the WP Minute with Matt Mederios and Daniel Schutzsmith.
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski talk with Syed Balkhi about his experiences blogging and developing plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. Sidenote: It always perplexes me that people outside of the WordPress space don't understand the size of Awesome Motive and the accomplishments that Syed and his team have built under that brand.
The latest project updates for the WordPress.org Homepage and Download page are available. These mockups look great and these designs will begin immediately in a new block theme on the WordPress.org website.
New Member:
This week we welcome Brin Wilson from WinningWP to the #linksquad crew.
If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Next Up:
WP Request for Feedback minute by Brian Coords
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Sam Munoz
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Birgit Pauli Haack
Daniel Schutzsmith and Matt Medeiros return for a new WP Minute Rewind!
Daniel and Matt will choose 3 of their favorite WordPress news headlines from the previous month to share and expand upon. Join us as they go deeper in this longer format show. If you love WordPress news, like _really_ love WordPress news, this episode is for you!
Please share this on social media and tell others to tune in.
Important Links & Takeaways
- The WP Minute is now sponsored by MasterWP
- Matt is looking for a WordPress news writer. Contact us if that's you.
- WP Minute is now in Slack (no more Discord)
- What's the difference between WP Minute and other WP groups?
- An inside look at community journalism in the WP
- https://joost.blog/cms-market-share/
- https://www.hubspot.com/company-news/hubspot-introduces-a-powerful-and-free-drag-and-drop-website-builder
- https://www.squarespace.com/websites/fluid-engine
- https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team
- https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-ends-recent-pricing-experiment-reverts-to-previous-model
- WP Minute interview with Dave Martin
- https://instawp.com/
- What if GoDaddy had it's own WordPress?
- WordPress Accessibility Day
- Press the Issue
- Amber Hinds on selling her plugin
- WP Lift sold for 160k USD
- Sitecare acquires Maintain from WDS
- Easy Support Videos
- Daniel on Twitter
- Matt on Twitter
- Support the show
Guest host, Amber Hinds is sharing with us her POV on Equalize Digital's first "exit."
"This post tells the story of how WP Conference Schedule came to be and why we ultimately ended up selling it before even launching the paid version of the plugin."
Amber Hinds
Links
Amber Hinds
Equalize Digital Sells WP Conference Schedule
Amber Hinds Blog
Leading off this week is Joost de Valk’s semi-annual CMS market share analysis. WordPress maintains a 43% share, the equivalent of AT&T’s wireless market share, within the CMS space.
Shopify, WordPress’ closest competitor on the chart chimes in at 4.2%
Shopify also shocked the industry by laying off 1,000 employees via email, penned by the companies CEO, Tobias Lütke.
Juxtaposed to the the layoffs, a report from McKinsey & company, shows that 41% of workers surveyed quit their jobs due to lack of career development and advancement.
Squarespace, which is holding on to the 4th spot at 2% market share, has launched their new website building experience: Fluid Engine.
WordPress.com is going back in time…to their former pricing. Sarah Gooding from WP Tavern reports the .com team have ended their pricing experiment.
The WordPress mobile app is shedding it’s Jetpack features, in an effort to simplify the experience:
“The hope is that this change will simplify much of the UX and design of the WordPress apps for users who don’t want or need Jetpack services and tools. The WordPress apps will continue to be maintained and updated, ensuring that users can publish content from anywhere just as they can today. “
Meanwhile, the Jetpack team plans on improving the Jetpack app as they transition these features out of the core app. Have any predictions on how the Jetpack app will change over time? Tweet at us @thewpminute OR Join our members-only Slack group for $79/year.
Help Josepha find a better name for Full Site Editing (FSE): Giving FSE a More User Friendly Name – Make WordPress Core.
The terms “full site editing” and “full site editor” (also abbreviated as FSE) were developed to easily refer to a collection of features and now that those features are integrated into our daily WordPress experience, how can we best update the wording to be more user friendly?”
This year’s Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship recipients are Margherita Pelonara, Simona Simionato, and Pooja Derashri!
Simona is the COO at a consulting company that focuses on digital learning and splits her time between Valencia, Spain and Milan, Italy.
Simona Simionato’s high-profile studies include a Degree in Statistics, a Master’s in International Tourism Management, and graduation in coaching – in a School officially recognized by the ICF – which enriched her professional profile as a specialized Brief Coach.
Pooja Derashri hails from Ajmer, India. She started using WordPress in 2013. Pooja and her husband Anand co-founded WPVibes, a WordPress plugin development agency. Her initial involvement was as a developer. Currently, she is transitioning towards SEO and Content Marketing.
Margherita Pelonara lives in Santa Maria Nuova, Italy with her husband, two sons (25 and 15 years old), two cats, and has an insane addiction to lipstick (and WordPress, of course!).
Margherita helps women freelancers who want to take their businesses and their lives to the next level: she builds websites with WordPress, fixes them, updates them, and teaches women how to use them.
From the Grab Bag!
- StellarWP launches a WordPress events site WP.Events - wp.events
- WP Minute community member Davinder Singh Kainth was interviewed on Torque Torque News Drop: Davinder from The WPWeekly | @thetorquemag
- WP Minute producer Justin Ferriman of LearnDash fame is relaunching nofilter.fm as a podcast NoFilterFM Pre-Launch
- Sitecare buys Maintainn from WebDevStudios
Next up: Michelle Frechette with the WP Community Minute!
Thanks to all of the producers this week:
- Davinder Sing Kainth (for voting his own article - I see you)
- Eric Karkovack
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Michelle Frechette
WordPress support company Sitecare acquires Maintainn, excluding the team, from WebDevStudios.
Hear from the founders in today’s interview to learn how the deal went down, what to look for in good acquisitions, and what the future of WordPress support companies look like.
The landscape of monthly WordPress support companies has certainly changed since these two OG’s launched in 2012-2013. Sitecare plans to double-down on their packaged monthly services while WedDevStudios continues to expand their enterprise WordPress business.
Links
Ryan Sullivan
Brad Williams
Sitecare
Maintainn
WebDevStudios
Where is the concentration on performance and other goodies in new releases of WordPress? Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern covered how WordPress contributors have been discussing adding SVG support for more than nine years. The SVG module is currently one of the items that the Performance team contributors have identified for WordPress 6.2 as a goal for proposing the module for core. Anyone who wants to contribute can join their efforts on GitHub.
Eric Karkovack wrote about the issue recently on the WP Minute. It seems that the concentration of WordPress core updates has been directly related to the Gutenberg block editor. To some members of the community, those developments have come at the expense of letting other areas of the software slip. Eric’s article makes the point that Security and Data Organization could also use some attention and he is looking for balance across the core in future releases of WordPress.
If you are a Jetpack user, you will be happy to know that Jetpack AP Bot for Telegram will now let you automatically share blog posts from any Jetpack-powered WordPress site (including any site hosted at WordPress.com) directly to a Telegram channel. This free tool saves time sharing content to Telegram, where readers can subscribe to read your posts just as easily as they would via email or social media.
Acquisitions:
Acquisitions stay front and center for 2022. WPLift.com sold for $160k. It previously sold in 2016 for $205k. Matt Medeiros interviewed Daan Tol 6 years ago and writes about how running a media company is difficult but well worth it on the WP Minute.
Events
There was a call to speak at the largest WordPress event in Asia - WordCamp Asia. They are looking for speakers that can talk about relevant #WordPress topics. Check out the site to see the categories for inspiration and sign up for this huge event being held in Bangkok on Feb, 17-19, 2023.
Raquel Landefeld wrote about her recent experience at WordCamp EU and the power of attending WordCamps in person. Check out her article on the WP Minute and look for her at WordCamp US this September.
As a reminder: The Gutenberg Times will host a Live Q & A July 22, 2022 with the Pew Research Center. They used a mix of Core and Custom Blocks to streamline their publishing process, and create powerful charts and quizzes. You can register over on the Gutenberg Times website.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce 6.7 was released along with WooCommerce Blocks 7.8.3. There is also a Release Cadence update. You can review the latest on the WooCommerce site.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Hubspot announced the launch of a free CMS drag and drop tool to empower business builders to create reliable websites. This is an interesting offer to check out for building a website while you are working on your brand and growing your business. I always thought that Hubspot would have purchased WPEngine. It's a running theory of mine over the years. Hey! It is never too late.
Daniel Schutzsmith shared the latest on how popular theme designs are now available on the WordPress.org Figma account. Users can now explore the designs for popular themes such as Stewart, Archeo, Pendant, and Wei. If you’d like to add your own theme design, you can get started using the Theme Template file.
Speaking of themes, there is a proposal from the Make WordPress design team for a new kind of default theme. The discussions have started concerning the release of a new default theme (or a curated set of styled variations) with 6.1 and there is a call for comments on style suggestions. Go check out make.wordpress.org to get involved.
Another new theme to investigate is Poe by Anders Norén. It is a clean and minimal block theme built with portfolios and blogs in mind and named after Edgar Allen Poe.
Mike Oliver has opened his GeneratePress @podia community. There is a lot planned for the rest of this year. You can visit his landing page at Website Builders Collective to see all the exciting things planned for the new design. P.S. If you are a product owner with something launching, let us know at the WPMinute.com/contact.
James Baldacchino wrote an article over at Ellipsis about the current climate surrounding WordPress. His overall analysis showed that WordPress Year to date had a 10.4% decrease but the climate remains good.
EDD - Easy Digital Downloads 3.0 has arrived with many improvements. Jump over to their blog to see the latest.
New Members
This week we welcome two new members to the #linksquad crew: Patrick Gallagher and Mark Zahra.
You may have reached out to them already in the Slack group. If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Raquel Landefeld
- Birgit Pauli Haack
Five for the Future is back on the radar, surfacing more clarification and criticism. Here’s snack pack of links from around the community addressing various opinions on the subject:
- Five for the Future’s True Intentions by Josepha Haden Chomphosy
- Sarah Gooding summarizes the link above
- Joe Casabona compares 5FTF to the Creator Economy
- Rob Howard warns of “toxic scorekeeping.”
Gettin’ Guten with it
Gutenberg Times will host a livestream July 22nd featuring PEW Research Lead Developer and Director of Digital Strategy on how they use WordPress core + custom blocks.
Want to know where FSE is headed with all things media? Anne McCarthy posted the FSE Program All Things Media Summary.
Product updates
LearnDash has taken to the clouds with its latest hosted version of the popular WordPress LMS plugin.
SpotlightWP has launched a new analytics dashboard for those of you posting to WordPress and the gram.
Pure HTML and CSS WordPress builder LiveCanvas has launched their builder version 3.
Product acquisition
Amber Hinds' Equalize Digital has sold their WP Conference Schedule plugin to Events Calendar:
“Earlier this year, we realized that continuing to support WP Conference Schedule no longer made sense,” said Hinds, “It was a distraction from our mission to improve accessibility in WordPress and took development and marketing time away from Accessibility Checker.”
Events
A call for organizers has been placed by the WordCamp Euorope 2023 team.
The Grab bag!
- Call for sponsors for WordPress Accessibility Day 2022
- See what it looks like for a hacker to attack a WordPress wesbite.
- Congrats to WordPress Historian Jeff Chandler for taking on a new role at WP Engine.
- Part 2 with Corey Maass on Matt Report, Building Amazing Products.
Next up!
Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute!
New Members
This week we welcome two new members to the #linksquad crew: Jonathan Wold and Juan Hernando!
You can meet them in the Slack group and if you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Joe Casabona
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Eric Karkovack
- Amber Hinds
Guest host Andrew Palmer is back to address the topic of collaboration.
His company Bertha recently collaborated with Yoast to forge a powerful combination of AI + SEO for WordPress. If you've been on the fence about collaborating with others, there's no better time than now to start! Enjoy Andrew's -- or it is Bertha's? -- take on collaborating in WordPress!
You’d have to be living under a rock to miss the recent WP drama unfold on Twitter.
In some quickly deleted fever-induced tweets, Mullenweg likened GoDaddy to a “parasitic company” that is an “existential threat” to WordPress. Explore more of the debate in the following articles:
Matt Medeiros’ take on What would GoDaddy’s WordPress look like?
WP Tavern recaps the Mullenweg twitter thread.
MasterWP’s Rob Howard weighs in.
Finally, GoDaddy responds to (almost) the whole shebang in a Sarah Gooding interview.
Moving and shaking at Post Status
Long-time Post Status news anchor David Bisset announces his departure from the position. David will be taking on the role of Product Development for WP Charitable at Awesome Motive, after the company announced the acquisition of the plugin.
Michelle Frechette highlighted some of the assholes in the WordPress space. She recalls her first-person experiences in the community in Misogyny in WordPress is Real.
From our contributors and producers
Rae Morey explores the Australian WordPress vibe after WP Minute Producer Cameron Jones sparked the debate on Twitter.
WP Lift, long-time WordPress blog, is for sale over on Flippa.
How do you like your Classic Press? Shaken, stirred, on the rocks?
“Recent turbulence in the ClassicPress community has resulted in the directors resigning and new leadership installed. The WordPress fork is run under a non-profit organization called the ClassicPress Initiative. “
Sarah Gooding summarized the events at the Tavern.
Events
WordCamp US tickets will go on sale tomorrow, June 30th 2022. Visit the WordCamp US website for more information.
The Grab bag!
Twitter announced a longform writing feature.
The Lexman artificial podcast creates a completely original interview podcast…with itself…in different voices.
I enjoyed the outline of how Basecamp built the new “Bubble up” feature in HEY email.
Our very own Raquel Landefeld was on the Women in WP podcast number 86. We’d never 86 the Raquel!
Eric Karkovack highlights 10 Lesser-known WordPress plugins
Matt Report talks life after selling a plugin business with Corey Maass
Next up!
Get the Pulse on WordPress with Raquel Landefeld
New Members
Welcome back Seth Goldstein for re-upping his WP Minute Producer membership.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Cameron Jones
- Sam Munoz
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Raquel Landefeld
Whoever thought that Apache web server would be de-throned in it’s prime? Hello NGINX. We see you Cloudflare. Red Hat and Fedora linux showed up, but then the world went faster together with Ubuntu.
Intel dominated the chip space forever. Still does, technically, but AMD and Apple are going after their lunch including the paper bag it’s packed in.
Sprinkle in the open source coding languages, tooling, and protocols over the last 30 years and everyone shouts open operability — until they get control — and then it’s “our way is better than your way, see ya later.”
Why I want WordPress to win
Probably for all of the reasons you do too.
I love the software, it affords me a career, a specific lifestyle, and it puts food on the table. I think WordPress is the best piece of software around to help drive a technical workforce.
First, because of its flexibility. Second, because it’s open source. But not open source like Swift — which is locked into Apple. WordPress can run and do a lot more than other “closed” open source projects.
The open source software could be powerful for local community programs that train, spread awareness, and deploy solutions around WordPress which leave real impacts on society.
An approachable solution to publish and consume local government topics which are crucial to a town’s population. Non-profit and news that sorely need a low-cost solution to democratize publishing. Understanding how programming, the internet, and technology works for a young (or old!) demographic.
I want WordPress to win because of that, not because it makes a prettier website than Wix.
The desire for open source should not be the desire for control
If you love open source, you have to love the fact that you’re not in control.
It’s going to be dealing with the ups and downs, letting humans settle the issues at hand. You hate a feature? Too bad, wait for someone to change it. Your favorite part of code just got shipped? Now stand and defend its existence in each future version.
Not in control? Fork it.
Me? No. You? Doubt it.
But GoDaddy could. It wouldn’t be easy.
None of this is easy. Who said it would be?
Open source is giving up direct control, knowing that you have to deal with the wait: volunteering, funding, resources, project direction, etc. It means dealing with the flaws of humans or herding cats, as some call it.
Otherwise you put someone in control, let them decide all the things, and you get something that isn’t open source. It’s called Apple, where they build a great commercial product but only release a sliver of it through open source.
It’s the brittle timeline of WordPress we’re living in now. On one hand, we need a leader like Matt, on the other he’s a benevolent dictator that doesn’t want to leave.
On one hand, he needs the community to rally around the cause, volunteer at all the things, and generally drive innovation for good. On the other hand, he can walk into any board room with his 43% of the pie, and raise enough money to do it all himself — WordCamps and all.
But he’d still have his kryptonite: Time.
In defense of Matt Mullenweg
I don’t envy his position, plus I think he does way too much.
.org release lead, CEO of Automattic and the dozen+ products it has, Tumblr guy, investor, I think philanthropist, and then he has to live a life.
My gut tells me that none of this is moving fast enough for him.
WordPress competing with other platforms, WooCommerce being more real, and exercising this desire to weave open source (through WordPress) into the fabric of web technologies.
And that last part, is what got us into this recent mess.
I’m not going to link up his tweets or screenshot them, you can check out this article by MasterWP if you want to see an archive of his “WP Deplorables” moment.
The straw that broke? Was a tweet in reference to Newspack.pub and Matt’s urge to defend the importance of open source + WordPress in journalism. Specifically for local journalism. Which as I stated above, I’m 100% in favor of.
The cost of running a media business is already high enough, we don’t need fees and software to be the blocker to publishing stories that impact a society.
And it was in this moment replying to a GoDaddy employee that Matt summoned his Will Smith impersonation and slapped an entire group of humans for no reason at all.
Well, there is a reason, and one I’ll talk about in a moment, but it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to GoDaddy, it wasn’t fair to their employees that do give back, and it wasn’t fair to us as a community to see our leader break like that.
I mean, I Am Legend was one of my favorite movies.
What if GoDaddy had their way with WordPress
They’d have no choice but to give back to to the project 100x what they do now.
There are a lot of great people building things for WordPress at GoDaddy these days. Even if you include my fanny-pack wearing ex-boss that lets more bad tweets fly than good. They’re employing a lot of people that help usher WordPress along.
In fact, when it comes to supporting the community, GoDaddy is great. They reach out to me and my content creating colleagues to see if there are ways to support us. You might even hear a sponsorship spot from GoDaddy on a future podcast episode.
Jetpack recently passed at a sponsorship opportunity with me. I never heard from anyone at WordPress.com, you never see a WordPress ad anywhere. Either because they don’t need it, or they don’t realize they need it.
This is where Matt will start to lose ground. Connecting with the community.
But let’s cut straight the chase: While GoDaddy spends on marketing and showing up at WordCamps, it’s not like they directly employ 40 people to commit to WordPress core.
I’m not as smart as Mullenweg, but GoDaddy’s current market cap is just north of $11 Billion dollars. Back of the napkin math tells me that half a million a bucks a year to ensure the open source software which nets you a few billion a year, is not a hard pill to swallow.
This seeming lack of dedication to re-invest back into the open source project by a company with a fiduciary responsibility to get shareholders paid, would send any Fresh Prince into a tailspin.
And it’s not just GoDaddy, it’s every company. It’s Matt’s Five for the Future.
Just imagine if GoDaddy called Mullenweg’s bluff and threw a million dollars of salary to WordPress core every year. If Matt really wanted to be in control, as we all like to pontificate, what would Automattic do?
Call it? Raise it? Fold?
Along with not being as smart as Matt I’m not an Anthropologist either, but imagine the dynamics of a jousting match like Automattic and GoDaddy investing resources into WordPress core?
Maybe in that timeline you’d love Full Site Editing? Maybe I wouldn’t want to rip my face off trying to set up a new menu item.
And as these two titans clash to click the commit button, other organizations from around the globe start to weigh in too. I mean, we don’t want Automattic and GoDaddy to be the ONLY ones controlling this software that we love…do we?
Imagine what good would come of these giants touting a tagline of “$1million dollars invested every year into writing code for WordPress.” Now imagine $100 million.
We the people would be better off with a product like that. But who do we leave our fate to?
Who is a better leader: Matt Mullenweg, GoDaddy, or you?
The desire for open source should not be the desire for control.
What’s getting us into this mess is that Mullenweg is towing two lines, commercial and open source. I’d go as far as saying not because he wants to, but because he has no other choice. I mean, GoDaddy, call his bluff, throw more money & bodies at WordPress core — let’s see what we get.
I’m sure there’s plenty of backroom dealings I’m not privy to. Maybe GoDaddy doesn’t want to bundle Jetpack, PeachPay or whatever CPM means that goes back into Automattic’s coffers. And I’m not foolish, it just means it goes into GoDaddy’s instead.
Maybe like the tabloids read, GoDaddy doesn’t want to give back to something they feel is really funding the Automattic engine.
Whatever it is, the idea of WordPress should not be lost. WordPress is valuable because of it’s community. If that starts to erode then WordPress becomes less valuable, and we lose a lot more than just a fancy website building tool.
People come to WordPress because of the technical reasons it does really well. They stay because of the community, because of Matt, Automattic, and GoDaddy. We are here because you can’t knock on Google or Apple’s door and say, “Hey I want to talk to you about where this project is headed.”
I’m here because I believe in this shit, and you should too. If you don’t, then please move along.
WordPress can be Matt’s, or it can be GoDaddy’s, it could be with or without Gutenberg & FSE — but it isn’t any of those.
It’s ours.
We have switched over to Slack from Discord.
News
There has been a lot of feedback for full site editing in the latest release of WordPress. The team over on make.wordpress.org is looking for people to sign up for usability testing by June 24th. This outreach program is going to try something new and pair up members of the program with community designers. Once paired, they will then find time between June 20th and July 1st to record a 15-minute call on Zoom going through one of two tasks: Creating & applying a new header, and using and customizing patterns.
WordPress.org is now strongly recommending that theme authors switch to local hosted webfonts. Sarah Gooding writes over on WPTavern that a recent German court case fined a website using Google-hosted webfonts. In order to comply with GDPR - Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation - WordPress themes should switch to locally hosted webfonts.
Are you still recovering from WCEU? There are two reviews from media supporters that you may want to check out. Bob Dunn and Matt Medeiros recorded their experiences.
And there are nearly 3000 event photos. If you would like to see those you can view the photo album from WCEU on Flickr.
Andrew Palmer reviews his WCEU experience right here on the WP Minute.
Nathan Wrigley interviews Matt Mullenweg on the Jukebox podcast hosted at the WPTavern. Mullenweg shares his reflections on WordPress and the changes to come in the future.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce 6.6 was released and you can find the complete changelog over on the WooCommerce site for the recent changes.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Eric Karkovack writes about the CMS landscape (including WordPress) on the latest at the WP Minute. Eric makes a good argument about why a freelancer would not choose WordPress for building a website.
What’s with the WordPress vibe? Changes and Acquisitions seem to be published weekly now. Acquisitions in #WordPress have created some concern among smaller businesses and entrepreneurs as we compete with bigger companies with much larger budgets. Mark Zahra has a little survey on Twitter asking if you had to double down on one area in the next 6 months with the goal of generating growth, what would it be?
There were several layoffs reported lately from Elementor and Envato.
James Giroux tweeted about the status of @envato and @elemntor announcing significant redundancies in the last week. You can help those affected by:
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Celebrating wins publicly and calling out individuals by name
-
Adding to their LinkedIn profiles
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Introducing them to your network
Next Up:
Simplified Business Minute by Sam Muñoz
The Case for Not Automating Client Interactions
New Members
We would like to welcome Mark Westguard to the WP Minute community and thank Sarah Gooding and Carrie Dils for buying a digital coffee to the WP Minute.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Raquel Landefeld
In this episode, Andrew Palmer of Bertha.ai reflects on his time at WordCamp Europe.
If you were stuck at home to watch from afar like me, your FOMO was probably running at 110%. Unlike Andrew, I missed out on the awesome talks, after parties, and the ever important hallway track. Missing friends and colleagues in one of the most beautiful places in the world! I'm happy to see it was a successful event.
If you had a great time, or appreciate their hard work, say thanks to the WCEU Organizing Team.
Strattic was acquired by Elementor. Miriam Schwab, co-founder of Strattic writes:
“Life is interesting – sometimes outcomes are obvious, and sometimes what ends up happening kind of blows our minds. When we set out to build Strattic, we expected to follow the usual path: raise Pre-Seed, Seed, A rounds etc. An exit was always on the table, but who knows when that would be or how that would look? It was hard to imagine.”
Miriam Schwab
Well, imagine no more as her team brings Jamstack to Elementor. A move that should add a lot of value and expertise to the cloud offering of Elementor. Stay subscribed to hear an interview with Miriam on this podcast.
Julien Melissas tweeted that his company Craftpeak was acquired. Craftpeak is complete with web solutions for craft breweries.
Good news! If you’ve been struggling with FSE, WordPress 6.1 is set to improve that experience, writes Sarah Gooding on the Tavern. See the roadmap for 6.1 and learn what’s ahead…all the way to 2025?!
Brian Coords continues to challenge the WordPress status quo over on MasterWP in two featured posts today. First, When the Cathedral Owns the Bazaar, a fresh take on the age-old dilemma: Automattic, a WordPress agency, and an open source ideology walk into a bar.
Capping off his second post right here on The WP Minute, where he asks Where will the WordPress middle class go? Rebooting a concept that I wrote about a while back about the blue collar digital worker.
Matt Cromwell and Lesley Sim have officially announced Glam That Plugin! Check out the announcement YouTube video where Lesley looks great and Matt…well he’s Matt.
The grab bag is back! And it’s filled with threads!
Kim Coleman co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro has an interesting thread on taking a product focus sabbatical.
Matias Ventura added more commentary to the WCEU fireside chat with Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomposy. He also extended these thoughts around the admin experience in a Make WordPress post.
Alan Sschlesser urges that theme.json is not the replacement we’re hoping for in WordPress themes.
Phil Crumm chops the head off of headless WordPress solutions. Stating that in terms of headless, “it’s (WordPress) falling short.”
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Eric Karkovack
- Daniel Schutzsmith
- Birgit Pauli-Haack
- Raquel Landefeld
Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has a creative way to find new WordPress customers that may just surprise you!
Find an existing community of non technical people that have websites (like bookkeepers or copywriters)
Then look at any of these three things...
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Above the Fold: Do they have the three things any site needs when visitors first arrive? (hint: What's the Pain? | How do they Solve the Pain? | What's the Call To Action to get the Solution?)
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Ways To Contact: Do they have the BIG 3 ways listed clearly in a way that is easy to find? (hint: Phone | Email | Social ). It's amazing how many companies don't list a phone number, when a virtual number is almost no cost today with Google Voice and similar.
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Add To List: Do they have a way for visitors to the site to add their email to a list (hopefully one that is for marketing automation and not just collecting dust). It costs virtually nothing in time or money for them to implement this feature, just like a fishbowl in the old days for folks to drop their business card to win a prize. It's the only way for them to avoid losing potential leads.
Once you've looked at any or all three of these, email them with FREE advice on how to fix their problems, and preferably setup a 15 minute call to speak with them on Zoom and learn more about what they do, how they do it, and whether they have someone who currently helps them with their WordPress website.
Remember:
There was a world of people doing business BEFORE social media and paid online advertisement. It still exists... it's called "The Golden Rule" ;-)
News
Big acquisition news happened last week when Delicious Brains, owned by Brad Touesnard, sold five of its plugins to WPEngine. You may use one or all of these plugins starting with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), WP Migrate, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES, and Better Search Replace. Some of the product teams will be moving to WPEngine and the other support teams and developers will continue as usual as issues are escalated to them. Listen to Brad’s interview with Matt Medeiros right here on the WPMinute.
Other ecommerce News
DTC Patterns, an ongoing Barrel research project has compiled over 100 articles where their teams buy real products from brands many of us are familiar with. They highlight interesting and effective ecommerce user experiences and marketing interactions. These observations are called “patterns” where over 100+ articles were written showcasing various ways brands engage with customers before, during, and after the purchase process.
Events
WordCamp EU is over and it looks like many in the WordPress community had a great time getting together in person and talking about all the new things arriving in WordPress 6.0, Gutenberg and the future of WordPress.
It was announced that WordCamp EU will be in Athens, Greece. The WPMinute’s writer, Eric Karkovac wrote about the feelings of WordCamps and David Bisset shares his takeaways from WordCamp EU.
I donated $100 to A Big Orange Heart for 20 selfies taken with Matt Cromwell out in Porto. He matched the $100 along with Michelle Frechette’s WPCoffee Talk and StellarWP. I challenge you to match a $100 donation too!
If you are using a Pagebuilder with WordPress this is a heads up that the Pagebuilder Summit is right around the corner June 20 - 24 2022. Registration is open for this event.
From Our Contributors and Producers
John Locke shared this Podcast episode from MasterWP about Capitalizing the “P” in WordPress. Nyasha Green and Rob Howard discuss this article about why the capital P in WordPress is such a big deal and why this one letter influences how some people think about it when hiring developers.
Speaking of hiring developers, Rachel Cherry is looking to fill a 20/hr a week developer position at Cornell University College of Business. Check out the Tweet for more detail.
Community Segments this week by:
WP Security Minute by Chris Wiegman
Learn WP minute by Hauwa Abashiya
New Members
We would like to welcome Austin Ginder as a Producer and Brian Coords to the WPMinute Community.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Joe Casabona
- John Locke
If you haven't heard, Brad Touesnard has sold his suite of Delicious Brains plugins to WP Engine.
In this interview, I ask him the following question:
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The million-dollar question: Why sell a suite of WordPress popular, profitable and beloved plugins -- of which was ACF which you only acquired merely a year ago?
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The multi-million-dollar question: How much did WPE acquire the set of software for?
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Who approached who first and how long did the deal take?
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What made this deal, aside from the buy-out #, feel so much different than other deals you've done in the past?
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Is part of the DB team going to WPE? What does a restructure look like if any is happening?
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SpinupWP becomes the main focus, until you sell _that_ to WPE in the future, does this sale help extend the runway or will you seek more traditional funding routes?
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Dive into the business builders mind: What kind of clarity or relief (if any) does this give you?
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Do you think you'll ever transition to a proper WP host with standard support protocols and hosting fees? (Don't lie there's big money there)
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Any regrets so far?
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Any parting words of advice, promos -- the platform is yours.
News
WordPress turned 19 this year on May 27th. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article covering the beginning when Matt Mullenweg partnered with Mike Little and released the first version of WordPress based on the b2/cafelog software. The highlight of this year’s anniversary celebration was on the wp19.day website which has video blogs from people all over the WordPress community about how WordPress has changed their lives and how much the community has played a part in its growth.
Is WordPress getting more difficult? Lesley Sim has many responses over on her Twitter thread. It is weird that many responses do not include WooCommerce - which has a lot of catching up to do.
Jetpack announced that it’s breaking up…it’s modules, anyway. You can now install the most popular Jetpack modules like Backup, Protect, Boost, Social, Search, and CRM.
WooCommerce
The first release candidate for WooCommerce 6.6 is now available and currently on track for the planned release date of June 14, 2022. If you would like to check out the changes and test the latest go ahead and download the release from wordpress.org.
Events
WordCamp EU officially starts this week, June 2 - 4. There are many informal updates occurring on Twitter right now. The WPMinute is donating $5 for every selfie with Matt Cromwell (up to $100) with @learnwithmattc. You can share on this thread at #WCEU to @aBigOrangeHeart.
From Our Contributors and Producers
Last week the WPMinute reported that the new WordPress Starter plan is available for just $5/month on WordPress.com. This interview with a few questions to Dave Martin, CEO of Automattic, covered the refactoring and pricing of the new WordPress.com. Go check out the interview and provide your feedback on Twitter.
If you've been using InstaWP to launch sandbox WordPress websites, things are about to heat up for that platform led by Vikas Singhal. In an exclusive interview with WPMinute producer, Daniel Schutzsmith and Vikas shares how he landed a seed funding round from Automattic and how he plans on using the funding for his company.
Are you looking for a WordPress database management plugin or maybe a way to just see what's in your database? Delicious Brains launched the SQL buddy plugin and it is available in the repository. If you are currently using phpMyAdmin and looking for a lightweight plugin, it may be worth checking out this plugin for database management.
Oxygen 4.0 was released with many fundamental changes to the builder. The shortcodes are now converted to json. You can check out the latest update on their YouTube video.
Joost de Valk shared this Tweet about a potential new search engine from Apple. @Scobleizer says Apple will introduce a new search engine at WWDC. Joost noticed that there has been increased crawling with applebot over the last few months and it will be interesting to see what is announced at Apple’s Developer Conference.
Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:
- Daniel Schutzsmith
If you've been using InstaWP to launch sandbox WordPress websites, things are about to heat up for the platform lead by Vikas Singhal.
In an exclusive interview with Daniel Schutzsmith, Vikas shared how he landed a seed funding round from Automattic and how he plans to use the funding in the company. If you like today's interview, please share it on social media and consider supporting the show!