The WP Minute

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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-HackEric KarkovacCameron JonesAndrew PalmerJohn LockeDaniel ShutzsmithMichelle FrechetteJustin FerrimanPaul Lacey Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 releasedWebP pulled from 6.xSyed Bahlki makes an interesting prediction about the future of WordPressMatt 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 KarkovackDaniel ShutzsmithRaquel LandefeldCameron JonesBirgit Pauli-HackMichelle FrechetteAngela Bowman Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 KarkovackJustin FerrimanDaniel SchutzsmithRaquel LandefeldCameron Jones Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 ChandlerAndrew PalmerEric KarkovackBrian CoordsBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel ShutzsmithMichelle FrechetteMark ZahraAmber Hinds Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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? Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Frechette with 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 FrechetteJoe CasabonaDaniel ShutzsmithBrian CoordsSam MunozLesley Sim Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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-HaackEric KarkovackAndrew PalmerSam MunozDaniel Shutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 LockeCameron JonesDaniel Shutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 CasabonaEric KarkovackRaquel LandefeldBirgit Pauli HaackCameron JonesDaniel Schutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 KarkovackSam MunozDaniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli Haack Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 MasterWPMatt 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-builderhttps://www.squarespace.com/websites/fluid-enginehttps://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-teamhttps://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-ends-recent-pricing-experiment-reverts-to-previous-modelWP Minute interview with Dave Martinhttps://instawp.com/What if GoDaddy had it's own WordPress?WordPress Accessibility DayPress the IssueAmber Hinds on selling her pluginWP Lift sold for 160k USDSitecare acquires Maintain from WDSEasy Support VideosDaniel on TwitterMatt on TwitterSupport the show Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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.eventsWP Minute community member Davinder Singh Kainth was interviewed on Torque Torque News Drop: Davinder from The WPWeekly | @thetorquemagWP Minute producer Justin Ferriman of LearnDash fame is relaunching nofilter.fm as a podcast NoFilterFM Pre-LaunchSitecare 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 KarkovackDaniel SchutzsmithMichelle Frechette Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 KarkovackDaniel SchutzsmithRaquel LandefeldBirgit Pauli Haack Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 ChomphosySarah Gooding summarizes the link aboveJoe Casabona compares 5FTF to the Creator EconomyRob 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 2022See 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 CasabonaBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel SchutzsmithEric KarkovackAmber Hinds Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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! Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 JonesSam MunozDaniel SchutzsmithRaquel Landefeld Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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: 1. Celebrating wins publicly and calling out individuals by name 2. Adding to their LinkedIn profiles 3. 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 KarkovackRaquel Landefeld Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 KarkovackDaniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli-HaackRaquel Landefeld Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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... 1. 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?) 2. 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. 3. 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" ;-) Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 CasabonaJohn Locke Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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: 1. 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? 2. The multi-million-dollar question: How much did WPE acquire the set of software for? 3. Who approached who first and how long did the deal take? 4. What made this deal, aside from the buy-out #, feel so much different than other deals you've done in the past? 5. Is part of the DB team going to WPE? What does a restructure look like if any is happening? 6. 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? 7. Dive into the business builders mind: What kind of clarity or relief (if any) does this give you? 8. 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) 9. Any regrets so far? 10. Any parting words of advice, promos -- the platform is yours. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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! Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute After some spotty patches announcing new pricing, WordPress.com released a new $5/month Starter plan. I had the chance to send some questions to Dave Martin, CEO of Automattic, about the announcement, plus, some other areas of .com that I was interested in knowing more about. The questions are posted below. I'd love to hear your feedback on Twitter. Questions (This audio interview was done asynchronously) 1. Congrats on refactoring and relaunching the new entry-level price point at WordPress.com. Will we see more plans come to pricing page in the future? 2. I notice higher up in the features list that the $5/mo plans come with payments for subscriptions/donations etc -- this is usually associated with the creator economy. Is the creator class community high on your priority of customer segments? 3. My running theory is your new plans are in preparation for a proper WooCommerce vs Shopify showdown. Can we expect to see competitively positioned WooCommerce hosting plans this year? 4. I'm curious to learn if there are any partnership channels or programs being developed for premium theme/plugin authors to work more closely with .com customers? Again, something that one might see from Shopify partnership programs. 5. If I take the biggest offering of Jetpack, it costs me 509.36 after tax for year one, then 1,199.40 pre tax every year after. .com is 191.50 after tax every year. Both are Automattic offerings, so I'm curious, is this Automattic's way of saying .org sites are really expensive to manage and maintain come to .com or is there room for both to serve a large set of customers? 6. Can you comment on the services side of .com and potentially how big that line of business is? Specifically the "we'll build your website for $499" offering. Having run an agency for 10 years, I know how complicated things can be when you try to productize a service 7. True or false "WordPress.com is the best place to experience WordPress" 8. I have to keep you honest here: The H1 of WordPress.com reads: "Welcome to the world's most popular website builder "43% of the web is built on WordPress. More bloggers, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies use WordPress than all other options combined. Join the millions of people that call WordPress.com home." That's taking some creative freedom in the wording to say the least since other hosts + .org version is what makes up the 43% part. How do you see the division of .org vs. .com and sharing the spotlight? 9. I think VideoPress might be one of my favorite features of Jetpack and .com, can you share in any other really interesting features coming to .com that other platforms would struggle to compete with? 10. My audience will be furious if I don't ask: Will we ever see a .com Super Bowl ad or _any_ consistent advertising on YouTube/Podcasts like your competitors? Hint hint wink wink, there are a lot of WordPress podcasts that you could sponsor :) Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News WordPress 6.0 "Arturo" was released. This release was named for the Latin jazz musician and director Arturo O'Farrill. With nearly 1,000 enhancements and bug fixes, the second major release of 2022 is here. You can watch the official release over on YouTube. It is a minute and a half of great jazz and cool features. There were some interesting numbers on Gutenstats.blog of what blocks are used for with .com and Jetpack. The stats are interesting showing 76.6 million active installations and it is exciting to see where all the common blocks are being used. If you are interested to see where Gutenberg is headed, make sure you keep updated at make.wordpress.org. Are you interested in starting a new site with your idea or small business? WordPress Starter is a new, beautifully pared-back plan designed to put that idea center stage. For just $5/month you get fast WordPress managed hosting, unlimited site traffic, and reasonable startup prices. This is the new price point for WordPress.com that Sarah Gooding, over at the Tavern, and I have been waiting to hear about for some time. I’ve reached out to Automattic for a comment. Events WordCamp EU will be happening next week. There is an interesting panel discussion with the global lead Taeke Reijenga on “Acquisitions in WordPress”. The WPMinute has been covering these acquisitions individually over the past year but you may want to check out this panel to hear their takes on some of the major changes and takeovers within the community over the past year. From Our Contributors and Producers Speaking of acquisitions, Adrian Tobey of GroundHoggWP tweeted that his team has acquired Scott Bolinger’s plugin, HollerWP. Bolinger exited the plugin space recently joining the team at GoDaddy. Would you like to see a practical use of Gutenberg in the digital news space? Check out this Twitter thread by Seth Rubenstein where he explains how he has gone all in on block development and what is possible in Gutenberg. Tom McFarlin shares his perspective of WordPress as an application. He goes beyond the latest published newsletters, tweets, blog posts, podcasts, etc., around Full Site Editing and Headless options. He points out that we may be forgetting the fact that WordPress is far more malleable than FSE and Next.js. The WPTavern jukebox recently interviewed Ana Segota and Kelly Choyce-Dwan about how the WordPress pattern creator works. If you want to hear how you can submit your patterns and the constraint challenges around the submission, go take a listen to that episode. Joost de Valk warns us to optimize crawling to save the environment: Every time they find a URL, they crawl it and if it’s interesting to them, they’ll keep crawling it basically forever. The bigger your site, the more URLs you have, the more likely every individual URL is to be hit multiple times per day. Speaking of the environment: Over on the Matt Report, “Can WordPress save the planet?” Hannah Smith talks to Matt about how web sustainability can save the planet. This is a very unique approach for a WordPress Freelancer if you are looking for a new niche in your business. New Member Alert We would like to welcome Cameron Jones, a WordPress developer and technical SEO based in Victor Harbor. Thanks for supporting the show by joining us on our discord server talking about WordPress news every single week. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel Schutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute How much thread could a Twitter thread thread if a Twitter thread could thread thread Carolina Nymark shares some of the trends she’s seeing with Full Site Editing themes in the repo. Data like, common block styles include button, post-title, and site-title. Check the Twitter thread for more. Allie Nimmons has a new role at MasterWP as their Digital Producer. Devin Walker, founder of GiveWP and WP Minute Producer, got the conversation going about the high-cost to sponsor WordCamp US by asking the question “Would you spend $30-60k to sponsor and only reach 650 people in person? “ See sponsorship rates here. (I have an answer: sponsor the WP Minute for a year instead!) Captain Macho Pirate Mick Rackham real name Michael, pondered that Matt Mullenweg should purchase the Mozilla or at least become the primary funder, to which Mullenweg replied “Would happily do it.” Christina Warren penned a fantastic tweet thread in a response to last week’s “WordPress losing market share” that Joost wrote about. Is WP really shrinking? Alex Denning wrote that a .4% drop doesn’t matter. “We had no idea why the market share was growing, and we accordingly have no idea why it’s shrinking.” Eric Karkovack aggregated a collection of articles on Authory, The Changing Landscape of WordPress. In other news Justin Tadlock leaves his position as 1 of 2 writers at the WP Tavern. In his farewell address he shares that he’s published 647 articles during his tenure and also reveals, there’s no one behind the proverbial green curtain: “From the day I arrived until today, I have had complete independence to thrive or fail by the result of my work. It felt like our small team had been left on an island to fend for ourselves at times. We must go through the same channels as other publications for information and have never been given special treatment.” Over on our blog, Eric Karkovak wrote that Freelancers are Caught in the Middle of WordPress Licensing Woes. If the recent MemberPress debacle had you feeling uneasy – this post is for you. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel SchutzsmithJeff ChandlerEric KarkovacRaquel LandefeldBrad WilliamsJoe Casabona Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News Want to find the latest with Gutenberg? You can quickly find the updates on the Gutenberg Hub. where can check out the latest resources or tutorials. Maciek Palmowski tweeted this resource where you can create a Gutenberg page quickly by using the builder. Not WooCommerce related by very interesting Bloomberg Technology reported that Shopify Inc. shares plunged below their pre-pandemic level after the company missed revenue and profit estimates, prompting some analysts to dramatically change their outlook on the Canadian e-commerce company. Shopify fell 14.7% to $413.64 on the New York Exchange, bringing this year’s decline to 70%. The stock is now 2% below where it closed on the day in March 2020 that the World Health Organization called Covid-19 a global pandemic. Events Wordsesh is scheduled for next week May 16–20, 2022. This is one of the first virtual, free seminars for WordPress professionals and has some great speakers scheduled. Head on over to the site to get signed up. From Our Contributors and Producers Lemon Squeezy just became free. Instead of a monthly cost, there will just be a larger percentage of each transaction kept by Lemon Squeezy. They have announced two major releases on their Lemon Drop. According to their website, if you already have a subscription, you will be grandfathered in. There has been a leadership change announced over at Yoast. After joining Newfold Digital in August 2021, they have seen a lot of growth. Thijs de Valk picked up a new role as CEO after Marieke van de Rakt decided to step back from this position. You can see the updates over on the Yoast blog. WPSiteSync reported that they will no longer be updating the plugin and its Premium Extensions. There are plans to integrate some of its functionality into DesktopServer. Currently, if you use WPSiteSync for your workflow, the current plugin and its Premium Extensions will be free to the public. Vikas Singhal tweeted that the Chrome Extension for @insta_wp is now a little more powerful. After you install the extension, you will be able to launch instances “without” registration for any wp.org plugin or theme. Ellen Bauer announced on Twitter that a new FSE (full site editing) theme, Kori has been released. It is a cool one-page theme for resume websites. You can read the blog and try it out on ainoblocks.com. Ines van Dijk, was interviewed on the Matt Report. Go check out this episode to get some great ideas on how to help WordPress product owners get better at customer support. This interview covers many issues that come up with support and may be familiar to you. But if you need help you can hire her team or get support templates from her site Quality in Support. Joost De Valk wrote on his blog that the WordPress market share appears to be shrinking over the past few months. Could it be that WordPress is being out-innovated or could it be site speed? You can read the article to review the most recent data. If you have any comments on the shrinking market share of WordPress, go ahead and Tweet at us @thewpminute or share an audio clip with us. Chris Badgett announced that LifterLMS is looking for Head of Growth Marketing. You can check out the details of the position over on the lifterlms website. Next up: Sam Muñoz asks "How Easy is it To Hire You?” - Simplified Business Minute Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel SchutzsmithJeff ChandlerEric KarkovacLiam DempseyRaquel Landefeld Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News With the release of WordPress 6.0 RC1, it is time to explore the 97+ enhancements that have been made. Milana Cap over at make.wordpress.org has shared the field guide where developers can read about the high-level changes in WordPress 6.0. The field guide also covers changes in accessibility, blocks, UI, and more for the non-developers out there. Birgit Pauli-Haack has done a great review in the Gutenberg times newsletter of what is new in the latest Gutenberg Plugin 13.1. Go check out the updates along with how to switch your website to a FSE theme by Carolina Nymark. Carolina’s long post covers the benefits and cautions about third-party plugins that may not yet be updated. Events David Bisset shared in a tweet that the 19th anniversary of #WordPress is coming on May 27th. Go to wp19.day to share a few words, a photo (direct or via Twitter w/ #wp19 #wp19day) or a video short via @ZipMessage on the website. It's a global event and you can already check out some of the submissions posted to the site. From Our Contributors and Producers If you are concerned that WordPress can still compete in the CMS market you may be interested to find out that searches for WordPress terms hit over 10 million per month for the first time. Alex Denning wrote a post about what might be going on over his website at Ellipsis. There has been the largest volume of search traffic for WordPress yet, with a growth of 25% in absolute volumes from Q3 to Q4. If search data indicates interest and growth then WordPress still has some validity in the CMS market space. It looks like LearnDash is creating a “circle-esque” solution by providing a modern community plugin with just the core essentials for WordPress LMS. Head over to wptribe.io to try this new plugin. Automattic acquired Clipisode in January 2022. Brian Alvey shut down the social video platform and is now the CTO of WordPress VIP. Sarah Gooding reported on WPTavern that James Kemp acquired ReplyBox. The system can be embedded on any website, including static HTML pages to add dynamic commenting. It integrates with WordPress through a connector plugin that is available on WordPress.org. It is great to know that this system will now be maintained and updated on a regular basis. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerBirgit Pauli-Haack Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 is now available for testing. These releases are moving along and testers are needed for the most recent release. If you would like to check out the release schedule you can go over to make.wordpress.org. It was just announced that Matt Mullenweg will be speaking at WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal June 2-4 2022. If you plan on attending this event you may want to listen to a podcast from Delicious Brains that gives some great ideas on how to make the most of your WordCamp visit. WooCommerce WooCommerce has released 6.5 RC2. This puts them on track for the May 10, 2022 release date. Testers are needed for this release as well. From Our Contributors and Producers Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern writes about how the WordPress subreddit blew up this week with reports of MemberPress locking users out of the plugin’s admin if they do not renew their subscriptions. MemberPress is a popular membership plugin for WordPress that does not have a free version available. They do clearly outline the subscription policy but cutting off access to the plugin’s admin screens leaves users without the ability to manage the membership functions of their sites once their subscriptions lapse. It will be interesting to see if this “change” impacts their customer base. David Vongries tweeted that he is looking for a new home for Kirki. If you are looking to venture into the Gutenberg product market this may be a great opportunity for you. Reach out to David if you're interested. Amber Hinds also tweeted about two plugins that need to be rehomed. They have become a distraction from the main focus on accessibility. Go check out the thread on Twitter and reach out to Amber if you're interested in her plugins. MasterWP has announced their WordCamp US 2022 Travel Sponsorship Program. Rob Howard explains how to apply. Go check out his blog post to apply to be a speaker to WordCamp US and possibly receive sponsorship. If you would like to contribute to helping send somebody to WordCamp you can head on over to DonateWC. Chima Mmeje was interviewed over on the Matt Report about how and why to raise your freelance rates. Go listen to this interview to discover how entrepreneurs can raise rates through grit, perseverance, confidence, and ultimately discovering self-worth. Next up: Block Editor Dev Minute by Aurooba Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel SchutzsmithEric Karkovack Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Recently on the WPMinute, I was able to have another interview with Eric Karkovack a producer at the WPMinute about his view of the Freelancer in WordPress. Eric has been a freelancer since 1999 and knows how the changes and ups and downs can impact your business. Eric started organically in the WordPress world by coding and writing on his own blog. He had the opportunity to blog for Speckyboy for additional income. This is easy to do if you understand concepts and can contribute through documentation or a tutorial. Blogging allowed Eric to get his opinion out there and connect with people. As a freelancer, you can try this same approach with your area of expertise. There have been many topics recently in the WordPress space. For example, Plugin ownership has impacted freelancers. When the plugin changes ownership how does that impact the freelancer? How will you convert sites and determine how much to spend on maintaining these plugins? The other big area making an impact recently has been WordPress core. The challenge for WordPress freelancers has been the difficulty of navigating and following what is happening in the WordPress space. There is a big barrier with how the freelancer can educate the customer when it can take hours to navigate the updates from WordPress and other channels. When you are impacted as a freelancer in many areas, it helps to write and post about it to keep others informed. Just get out there by practicing writing and posting on social media. This is a great interview with Eric. If you take his advice, you may be able to expand a side project as a freelancer. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute WordPress 6.0 Beta 2 is now available for testing. The call continues to be made for testers and if you would like to contribute to this cycle jump over to make.wordpress.org. The WordPress Performance Group has a stable release of their plugin. The Performance Lab plugin is a collection of modules focused on enhancing performance of your site. This plugin allows you to enable and test the modules before they become available in WordPress core. Other news from the WordPress Performance team…the WebP by Default proposal is currently on hold after the community voiced critical feedback and significant technical concerns. Over on make.wordpress.org Phi Phan Launched a Separator Block With an Icon Option. Justin Tadlock covers the options of this plugin in his article over on the WPTavern. From Our Contributors and Producers Open source Calendly rival Cal.com has raised $25 million in a series A round of funding and launched what it calls an “app store for time” so developers can build their own apps on top of Cal.com’s scheduling infrastructure. Google Analytics Universal Analytics will be sunsetted on July 1, 2023. Google is providing a conversion migration tool for Google Analytics 4. Search Engine Land covers how you can convert your goals without having to recreate them. Rob Howard shared his opinion on paying WordCamp speakers over on his MasterWP publication. “Paying for speakers’ lodging and airfare is a cost that could be recouped through sponsorships from Automattic and the other large companies that are bringing in millions of dollars in annual revenue while riding on the good name of the WordPress open-source community.” With all the changes being made to WordPress core, many of our listeners may want some ideas on how they should build their next WordPress project. Eric Karkovack has an article on the WPMinute when considering early adoption or sticking with your legacy business. This article is worth checking out. “Why are the #wordpress .org make blog emails now branded with a Jetpack logo and powered by Jetpack?” asks Tom Nowell over on Twitter. See this link for the trac ticket for the source. Privacy focused Brave wants to de-AMP the web. The browser team announced that Brave will skip AMP rendered web pages and direct the visitor to the original de-AMP’d page. Featured segments today: Learn WP minute by Hauwa Abashiya Creator Clock by Joe Casabona Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Daniel and Matt are back to discuss the week in WordPress news. They'll cover some of the important stories that came across The WP Minute news desk like: TinyPressWordPress.com Makes Major Unannounced Pricing Changes, Slashes Free Storage LimitsMatt's Twitter surveyJetpack vs .com pricingDaniel's theory on WP as a better no-code tool Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News There is a call for WordPress users to help with the upcoming release of WordPress 6.0. This release is scheduled for May 24, 2022. There have been over 400 updates and 500 bug fixes since the last release and they could really use everybody’s help to test. Jump over to make.wordpress.org to join the core slack channel and get involved. WooCommerce The WooCommerce blocks roadmap has been released. There are a lot of cool things happening over at WooCommerce with most of the work taking place right now in the WooCommerce Blocks repository with store editing. Take a look at the ways you can contribute. The plan is to release quarterly updates. From Our Contributors and Producers If you missed it, go check out the latest eCommerce minute, on the WPMinute with Dave Rodenbaugh. He provides additional news and perspective on the owner of FAST, the one-click checkout provider. Jodie Fiorenza wrote a great article on Omnichannel marketing over at WebDevStudios. With an omnichannel strategy, the customer becomes the focus of the campaign. Take a minute to read Jody’s article and see if you can consult with a customer using multi-channel marketing in your business. The Admin Bar community created an anonymous WordPress Agency survey for all of their community members to ask them questions about their revenue, and various focuses (including accessibility, SEO, hosting, etc.). The results were very interesting and worth checking out. The first issue of Tiny Press went out this week by our contributor Daniel Schutzsmith. The article covers 3 WordPress design and development links. There is also a great interview of Chris Coyier from css-tricks.com by Nathan Wrigley on the WPTavern podcast about his sale of CSS Tricks to Digital Ocean. This is a great podcast to learn about Chris’ journey. Friend of the show Scott Bolinger is seeking a buyer for his pop-up plugin Holler Box. New Members: We would like to thank Courtney Robertson for buying a coffee this week and joining as a monthly member. Next up: Simplified Business Minute with Sam Muñoz “Block Editor Dev Minute” by Aurooba Ahmed Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Lisa Sabin-WilsonBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel SchutzsmithDave RodenbaughLiam Dempsey Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute One Click Checkout provider Fast, headed by Domm Holland, shut down unexpectedly this week after attempting to secure a down round of funding to deal with their financial obligations. What obligations you might ask? Well, according to their pitch deck, their monthly burn rate was over $10M dollars for their 500 plus employees. And to top it off, their company was making about 50,000 dollars a month, or around $1200 per employee. These stats are pretty depressing for a company of that size and certainly must be frustrating to the investors who put in over $100 million over several rounds. The news came fast and along with it, a barrage of folks linking to articles that point out Domm’s shady past. In 2010, Domm purchased a domain that would be useful to the Australian airline Qantas and then redirected traffic from it to a direct competitor. By way of threat he sold the squatted domain to Qantas for 1.3 million. After that, he started the Uber of Towing and ended up in a $15 million dollar legal dispute about cars no one cared about. Holland threatened to release the private bank account and driver’s license data of 21,000 drivers. When the Supreme Court refused, he shut down the company with no notice to any of its employees and notified them via text message. Not content to cause problems in his country, he moved to Silicon Valley and started Fast in 2019, a one-click checkout competitor to Bolt, Apple Pay, Shop Pay and others. He hired a team of contractors from Nigeria to build the initial version of Fast and acquired funding for it. Three months in, he fired all Nigerian contractors and took full credit for their work in subsequent press releases. Again, with no notice. These are only some of the stories that came from this very chaotic startup. In the last few months, Domm’s social media account had been uncharacteristically quiet in comparison to last year as they went on a hiring spree. When word leaked about his financial problems, the startup went to an abrupt death spiral and imploded here on Tuesday April 5. Some of the 500 employees found out about the troubles while attending the Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas, NV. Salespeople and project managers found their corporate credit cards stopped working mid-conference. As they starting asking coworkers what was happening, the word got out and there was a brief attempt to shop the company to save it. Given Domm’s chaotic and troubled history, it’s not surprising he was unable to secure any funding under those circumstances. My heart goes out to the employees who lost their jobs in such a demeaning way. Fast’s destruction puts the future of one-click checkout into some doubt. Originally a feature patented by Amazon, once the patent expired a number of competitors have sprung up in the space, including Bolt, Rally and our own WP-based solution PeachPay that has been funded by the good folks at WooCommerce and Automattic. In other news, one-click competitor Bolt has acquired a crypto startup for 1.5 billion dollars according to the Wall Street Journal today. This could be a signal of a pivot in the space given Fast’s quick and painful demise. Crypto buyers and sellers both suffer from terrible experiences in the checkout process, from the exchange to using it directly in the real world. This appears to be a step in changing that experience for the better. That’s the ecommerce wrap for this week. Have something you want us to cover about ecommerce? Tweet us! This is Dave, signing off until next time. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has some important reasons why we should consider HOW we are moving forward with Full Site Editing, Blocks and Themes. We are all facing a fork in the road for WordPress, where we can remedy the mistakes of the past and finally create a unified framework to be used by any designers, plugins authors or service providers offering free or paid solutions. Look to Legos for an example of how a standardized framework benefits creativity and promotes a gigantic market for innovation. Instead of repeating the mistake of incentivizing folks to publish one-use FSE themes and duplicate core blocks, with willy-nilly CSS style sheets…we could instead create a unified framework that anyone could extend to create new design "kits" or plugins or services. This would ensure that all of the new components work together, don't break each other, and provide a clearer understanding of where profitable opportunities exist for a more profitable and easy-to-understand WordPress ecosystem. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News Julia Golomb over at make.wordpress.org has posted a new Proposal with Steps to Integrate #WPDiversity into organizing WordPress events. All new WordCamp and meetup organizers would automatically receive an invitation as they are onboarded to make sure the diversity consideration is addressed. Could it be lucky #13 for testing FSE (Full Site Editing)? Anne McCarthy over on make.wordpress.org posted that testers are needed and you can follow the instructions to create a template for author pages and learn how to unlock the UI for blocks. You have until April 21, 2022 to provide feedback. Anne also answers questions from the FSE Outreach Program. The post provides answers gathered through the program that started on March 16th and ended on March 30th. Sarah Gooding over on WPTavern wrote about the most recent changes made on WordPress.com. There were major unannounced pricing changes along with the 500 mb free storage change. It took many by surprise and frustrations were expressed by users on Twitter and other forums. WooFunnels, the popular sales funnel and automation plugin was added to the WPBeginner business through their Growth Fund. Syed Balkhi announced that he will be advising the team on how to expand their WordPress Product business. WooCommerce Beta 1 for the April 2022 release of WooCommerce is available for testing. You can either download it directly from WordPress.org or install it in the WooCommerce Beta Tester Plugin. From Our Contributors and Producers WP Migrate DB Pro is Now WP Migrate. WP Migrate dropped the “DB Pro” in their plugin to better reflect what the product does. The latest release of WP Migrate 2.3 gives you the choice to include or exclude the database. Migrate just the database, just your files, or both. No more workarounds required. David Lockie announced that he has joined the Automattic family as a Web3 Lead in the WooCommerce Transact team. Fast tweeted an announcement that they will be closing their doors. Fast had stood out in the crowded field of one-click checkout startups after it landed a $102 million infusion of cash in a fundraising round last year led by payments giant Stripe. It appears that the product was generating very little revenue. Check out the latest episode of the Matt Report with Joe Howard where we learn you can find someone else to run your business. Joe is stepping aside but is still a majority owner of the business. He is now focused on a new SaaS startup. Eric Karkovack has a blog post on Speckyboy asking the question of whether market share should matter when choosing a CMS. Market share is only one consideration and Eric covers other factors in his article. Next up: The Creator Clock Minute: Podcast Plugins with Joe Casabona Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackJoe CasabonaDaniel ShutzsmithJeff Chandler Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News I'm sure you've been paying attention to the war. A pro-Russian war plugin appeared in the WordPress plugin repository resulting in a lot of heated conversation on the Internet. It was finally removed by the plugin team in the WordPress repository. Heather Burns covers a non-US perspective in her article. Weglot, a popular WordPress multilingual plugin, has raised €45M from Partech Partners. Sarah Gooding, over at the WPTavern writes how this is the first time that Weglot has taken outside capital to expand its translation services. The WordPress Performance Team has published a feature proposal that would enable WebP images by default into WordPress 6.0 core. The performance team has published their proposal over on make.wordpress.org. Events WordCamp Asia is tentatively back on the schedule of in-person WordPress events with new dates: February 17-19, 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand. It will begin with a Contributor day, followed by two conference days. From Our Contributors and Producers There is a technical discussion over on WordPress Gutenberg GitHub on the Dynamic replacement of server-provided content in blocks and in HTML attributes. The proposal uses Dynamic tokens which read like Shortcodes 2.0 but with a much better interface. If you need to manage photo/image source attributions and licenses in WordPress go check out the premium version of Image Source Control. This plugin manages and displays image credits which have been an issue for years. If you enjoy founder stories, the article is worth a couple of minutes of your time to read. Jamie Marsland submitted his 100th YouTube video on Gutenberg. If you are in search of a charity form for Gutenberg blocks for your site go check out his video. Do you want to know how Crocoblock is doing in Ukraine? Lana Miro has a video on YouTube that you should go watch while they continue to work during this frightening time. WP Minute Writer Eric Karkovack wrote a new Freelancer’s View: Overcoming the Challenge of Selling Clients on WooCommerce. Listen to the latest podcast on buying a WordPress media property with Rob Howard on the Matt Report. Matt and Rob explore building an agency, how to hire, and Rob’s latest purchase of MasterWP. Joe Howard took to Twitter to state that he’s working on a new product that isn’t the company he founded, WP Buffs. Stay tuned to the Matt Report for a full interview. Next up: Block Editor Dev Minute by Aurooba Ahmed WP Accessibility Minute” by Amber Hinds Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackRaquel LandefeldThomas MaierMatt Cromwell Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Hosts Matt Medeiros and Daniel Schutzsmith recap some of their favorite WordPress news stories from the last month. We'll get a recap of Daniel's #WPTalks Twitter spaces and a possible podcast series. Articles mentioned Block MuseumMaster of WP Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News It was announced that the Pattern Directory will be open for submissions from the public on make.WordPress.org. The Pattern Creator page will allow designers and content creators to build, edit, and submit their best block patterns. You can learn more about the pattern directory because the code is public and available on GitHub. Birgit Pauli-Haack tested the submission process and reported that it was a great experience for her in the Gutenberg Times. Events If you are a Page Builder user you will be happy to know that the Page Builder Summit is back June 20-24. If you want to be the first to know when tickets are available you can register on the website. WordCamp US has made the call for speakers up until April 17, 2022. You can submit your application for up to three topics over on their website. From Our Contributors and Producers The 2022 acquisitions keep happening as predicted. Yith, specializing in developing and selling themes for WordPress and WooCommerce, joined Newfold Digital. Matt Mullenweg treats us to two more appearances on podcasts. First, with the Verge. He is interviewed on why he bets on small companies and reveals how WordPress and Tumblr are keeping the internet weird. Second, with Guy Raz on How I Built This, sharing a genesis story of his career & WordPress. The US Court affirms it's false advertising to claim software is Open Source when it’s not. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed a lower court decision concluding what we’ve always known: that it’s false advertising to claim that software is “open source” when it’s not licensed under an open-source license. Neo4j, Inc. had been through several releases of its software and several license choices along the way, ending with what the court called “the Sweden Software License,” because the licensor was a Swedish subsidiary of the plaintiff. You can check out the details on the open-source initiative. Listen to Spencer Forman's latest take on why multilanguage is critical for your WordPress business on our episode here on the WP Minute. Next up Joe Casabona and the Creator Clock Minute Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Dave RodenbaughBirgit Pauli-HaackAmber Hinds Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has some important reasons why you should be using Multilanguage on your WordPress sites (or those of your clients) today! With a global online economy and potential customers for a WordPress business existing in countries that speak languages other than English, it is imperative that you provide automatic translation for your content, but more specifically for your Sales Funnels, including all products, sales pages, checkouts, upsells, order bumps, thank you pages and more. Only by providing these in a prospective buyer's native language can you ensure a "personalized journey" that results in higher conversion rates and more profit. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute It’s the WPMinute! I am Birgit Pauli-Haack with the following news and updates. This episode is brought to you by the WPMinute. This is a great place to be a part of the community, get access to the private Discord server and be part of the news. You know how it goes, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. News Does WordPress need more than one Block Theme? Justin Tadlock over at the WPTavern wrote a recent article covering different opinions of having thousands of Block Themes when Full Site Editing is really becoming a thing. There are strong opinions for having one theme or having many. Do you provide one block theme that builders can expand on OR do you offer many themes to provide a site for new users to fill in their custom information? Go read the article to understand each approach. If you would like to test out a block theme with FSE check out the article by Misha Rudrastyh on Learning Full Site Editing with the Kubrick Block Theme. It is a great basic tutorial that clearly explains. WooCommerce WooCommerce started rolling out automatic updates with patches for WooCommerce 3.5–6.3. This fix contains important security improvements for the PayPal Standard payment gateway (deprecated since July 2021). Please make sure to update your site if you don’t get the update automatically. Events Buddy Works is having a Webinar on How to Automate Gutenberg block development in WP projects on March 23rd, 2022 at 5:00 PM UTC. If you are interested in how to start WordPress block development head on over to their website to register. From Our Contributors and Producers Voting for Torque’s 2022 Plugin Madness is now open. In its seventh year, this bracket-style competition pits the best plugins from around the community against each other. CSS-Tricks has been acquired by DigitalOcean. Chris Coyier will still be working at CSS-Tricks so you can expect things to pretty much remain the same with DigitalOcean continuing to produce high-quality content on front-end development. Ronald Huereca wrote a detailed article for WordPress plugin development with a table of contents over at Media Ron. He covers the Tips, Tricks, and Guidelines for Navigating WordPress.org. Tim Ferriss and Matt Mullenweg are in Antarctica on the most recent podcast of the Tim Ferriss Show. They explore personal fears, discuss bucket lists, grief and craft some life missions. You can even hear Tim’s Best Penguin Impressions (#578). This is a long podcast full of interesting tidbits and you get to hear Matt in an informal setting. There is a new update for LearnDash. The onboarding wizard in 4.0 automatically installs plugins like Certificate Builder, WooCommerce, and Course Grid depending on what options you select. To check out all the new features, jump over to LearnDash.com. Apologies to Joe Casabona for not including his "Podcast Plugin" in the recording this week. We look forward to his Creator Clock Minute in the WPMinute next week. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Michelle FrechetteBirgit Pauli-HaackMatt Cromwell Thank you to @brand_on_fire for becoming a new member of the WPMinute. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★