The WP Minute

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 ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute It was recently reported that you can purchase six popular Automattic plugins right from your WordPress.com dashboard. Donna Cavalier shares what’s coming for plugins, themes and services that will be additionally available for purchase right through the WordPress.com dashboard to expand your options. You can sign up over on WordPress.com for early access if you would like to know what is coming. The Museum of Block Art MOBA is a cool pop up site of virtual [block] art. This site was recently created by community members in the WordPress world. With WordPress 5.8 and WordPress 5.9 coming out with nifty design tools, members decided to show what can be created. It is worth your time to check out the site for beautiful block ideas and see how to create your own new designs. WooCommerce WooCommerce 6.3 was released. The updates include changes to WooCommerce Blocks, WooCommerce Admin, and the Product attributes lookup table. You can check out release posts for 6.8.0 and 6.9.0 to see what’s new. This release should be backwards compatible with the previous version. Security Patchstack released their State Of WordPress Security In 2021 The Highlights: New WordPress security vulnerabilities were up 150% compared to the previous year.29% of WordPress plugins with critical vulnerabilities received no patch.99.42% of vulnerabilities originated from Plugins and Themes (compared to 96.22% in 2020) From Our Contributors and Producers Jonathan Bossenger has released a plugin in the WordPress repository that displays a customized banner and link on your site to show solidarity for Ukraine. You can check out an example of how he has used #StandWithUkraine. Wordfence has been standing with Ukraine by blocking lots of malicious requests aimed at their sites. They deployed their commercial real-time threat intelligence for free, to all Ukrainian websites with the .UA top-level domain. Jeff Golenski announced the facelift of WPScan. WPScan joined the @automattic family last year. The latest issue of the Gutenberg Times covers a lot of the new features of blocks and patterns in Gutenberg 12.7. There are many March social learning events listed in this issue if you would like to participate and keep up with the latest developments. The WPMinute discussion continued this week about the retirement of WordPress Multisite. Chris Weigman wrote a great article on where Multisite shines. His article is worth checking out. Next up a Simplified Business Minute by Sam Muñoz! Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerDaniel SchutzsmithMichelle FrechetteBirgit Pauli-HaackEric Karkovack Thanks to Mary Job for purchasing us a virtual coffee this week! 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 I had the chance to sit down with Amber Hinds of Equalize Digtial to discuss her role as a Contributor at the WP Minute. Some of the questions we covered: What is real WordPress journalism?How can business owners contribute without burning bridges?How does this get funded? I hope you enjoy this lengthier WP Minute discussion. If you do, please share it on social media! 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 Is it finally time to retire WordPress Multisite? Rob Howard wrote an article over on MasterWP that Multisite is a solution to a problem that no longer exists. The cool things that Multisite offered like sharing themes and single sign on just don’t seem as important to developers these days. Rachel Cherry tweeted a response that it may just be too early to consider removing Multisite as there is still a big audience in higher education that would be impacted by this. (p.s. Subscribe to Matt Report to hear an upcoming interview with Howard, new owner of MasterWP.) Early in February the community had many discussions about Diversity in WordCamps and Meetups. Allie Nimmons wrote a great post on MasterWP about a better journey to diversity. Go read Allie’s important article to help get a better understanding on how to approach and discuss diversity. Sarah Gooding over on the WPTavern writes that Strattic has acquired the WP2Static plugin. Strattic plans to relaunch the plugin on WordPress.org to improve its discovery, installation, and update process. From Our Contributors and Producers Jetpack has released a new way to build your own Jetpack. Release 10.7 includes My Jetpack, a brand new dashboard for managing your Jetpack products and plans in a single place. With all of the nervous watch on the war in Ukraine, it seems that Namecheap is kicking out their Russian customers, with a 6 day notice. Konstantin Kovshenin tweeted the news. Andrew Palmer was recently on the Matt Report discussing Artificial Intelligence for WordPress. If you want to check out the exciting direction of AI you can download the bertha.ai plugin from the repository and listen to this podcast to see what’s next in WordPress & Gutenberg. Ryan Breslow continues the Shopify discussion this week on how they are eating their ecosystem. This is another interesting thread/perspective on Shopify’s end-to-end commerce platform. Next Up You are on the Creator Clock with Joe Casabona “YouTube Thumbnails” by Joe Casabona Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel 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 Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has a compelling introduction to the future of WordPress as it relates to large SMB and Enterprise. Unlike the predominantly consumer or solopreneur user that has helped WP gain 43% or more of the Internet CMS market, Spencer shares a vision for WP that is focused on the amazing opportunities for software authors, agencies, and others to fulfill the needs of Enterprise customers. This is a huge category that has otherwise not been provided with the type of support and packaging they need or are used to receiving from other software ecosystems. Because the opportunities are huge for all of us going forward, you'll definitely want to have a listen to today's episode. 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.org is sporting a new design. This redesign leans on the aesthetics of jazz (of course) and leaves more space for content, new typefaces and color palettes. Go check out the new look. The second major release of WordPress 6.0 is scheduled for beta on April 12th. This release will follow the same cadence as 5.9 and will aim to refine and iterate on the customization tools introduced earlier this year. The full proposed schedule is now available on make.wordpress.org. The WordPress Training team is looking for volunteers for the Faculty Program. The Structure proposal has been published and more people are needed. You can help out in four different ways right now and feedback is being encouraged. WooCommerce The WooCommerce shipping and tax extension plugin (previously referred to as WooCommerce Services) is available. This plugin helps get your store ready to sell as quickly as possible with new products. They take care of tax calculation, payment processing setup, and shipping label printing. WooCommerce has set up a developer survey looking for feedback on making the platform better. If you work with WooCommerce and have some suggestions or insights, jump over to the site and participate. From Our Contributors and Producers Shopify stock closes down 16% after it warns that pandemic boost will fade. It blamed a deceleration in eCommerce spending after the coronavirus pandemic, the end of government stimulus and consumer spending. This twitter thread by Moiz Ali follows the shopify “cheap facebook” tailwinds and gives us his take on the new war. If you have a passion for Blockchain and NFTS you will want to take a few minutes to listen to the Do the Woo episode on these subjects. Brad Williams said he could see a world in the not too distant future (maybe even this year) while attending a WordCamp you will get an NFT. The possibilities are wide open. WPMinute producer, Justin Ferriman wrote a great post about putting a website on WordPress.com instead of self hosting. Justin makes a great case for doing this when you do not need a lot of options and want to use built in features. Would you like to be compensated for speaking at an event this year? Atarim is holding their Free Online Agency Summit April 26th-29th, 2022. Vito Peleg made some changes after a discussion with Joe Casabona about speaking engagements. There are now two ways to be compensated and it should be a great event with many speakers. Richard Tabor launches a new block based theme, Wabi, for writers and publishers. You can see his announcement tweet and download the theme for free on WordPress.org. Enjoy our contributed segments today by: “Woo Minute” by BobWP“Mind & Body” by Michelle Schulp“Gutenburg Minute” by Birgit Pauli-Haack Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerJoe CasabonaHauwa AbashiyaBrad WilliamsNigel BahadurDavinder Singh Kainth New Members A big welcome this week to Matt Cromwell from GiveWP. 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 Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm constantly filled with self-doubt. Will this experiment work? Can I make it a sustainable publication? There aren't that many people who _care_ about WordPress news, let alone care to contribute to it. This is a topic I unpacked in my interview with Kim Coleman on funding a WordPress news website. So many have come and gone in this space -- I can see why. I am grateful, however, when folks like Eric Karkovack step up to become contributors. I'm enjoying his series about the impact WordPress is having on freelancers: Part 1: What does Full Site Editing mean for freelancers? Part 2: Is WordPress pushing freelancers away? (published today) You'll get to hear Eric in today's short interview. If you're interested in becoming a contributor of content, please reach out to me. The Gutenberg Minute Birgit Pauli-Haack shares some Gutenberg updates as well. Here are the important links mentioned: Curated experiences with locking APIs & theme.json #38333 Global Styles: Saving style variations Call for Testing: WordPress Media Italian Japanese Gutenberg Developer Hours 2/22 on Meetup 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 have been a lot of people working with the latest 5.9 WordPress release and reporting their successes and failures. Tammie Lister wrote a post about the features in the editor and would like people to quit using the term FSE - Full Site Editing in 2022. The release is not an all-or-nothing proposal yet. Matt Medeiros created a video on the future of page builders with Gutenberg when a discussion on Discord started with Justin Ferriman, a WPMinute producer. Go check out that video to see if you agree with the future of Gutenberg. Anne McCarthy writes about some practical ways to lock your projects for clients and users that can make changes to a WordPress website. The new template locking API that was released in 5.9 along with newer tools like theme.json continues to be modified to adapt to the user experience. The WordPress Photo Directory recently hit 1,317 photos and continues to grow. There has been a new Slack Channel created and the team is looking for volunteers and moderators to work on a new site being set up on the make network. The team needs help working through issues in the coming months. So… As we head into the iterative part of Gutenberg’s phase 2, there will be changes for the community of users as they continue to look at WordPress. Josepha Haden Chomphosy writes that the Theory of Technology adoption that will come in three parts. Keep visiting make.wordpress.org to continue to get the latest updates. Security PHP Everywhere, a utility for web developers to be able to use PHP code in pages, posts, the sidebar, or anywhere with a WordPress Gutenberg block has Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities. WordFence reported that there are three critical vulnerabilities in PHP Everywhere all leading to remote code execution in versions of the software below 2.0.3. There was a patched version of the plugin rolled out so if you are using this make sure that you are up to date as soon as possible to keep your WordPress site...well up to date. From Our Contributors and Producers Justin Tadlock over at WPTavern wrote a recent article about the Clarity AdBlocker for WordPress. Ads and upsells have been showing up in WordPress dashboards and many in the community have been complaining about it over the past few years. For many that get that exposure through the WordPress dashboard, this announcement was not well-received (to say the least). If the default full-screen editing mode and welcome guide in WordPress is annoying when you first visit the edit interface, you can jump over to GitHub to grab the drop-in snippet to disable it. Some may say that PHP is dead (or dying). There is a comprehensive article over at Kinsta that per W3Techs, PHP is used by 78.1% or almost 4 out of 5 websites. PHP seems to be very much alive and faster than before when updated to the latest release. You can go check out this article for the latest benchmarks. Are you one of those people who hate working through your inbox and approach it with dread? There is a new interesting email product called Shortwave that provides a new experience with threads, history, and bundles. You should check it out as an interesting tool to organize your email and provide a nicer experience. If you are a Beaver Builder Pagebuilder user, it is great to know that they have released a free library of courses. Next up is the Creator Minute from our producers Michelle Frechette and our Simplified Business Minute...Sam Munoz “WP Career Summit” by Michelle Frechette Transcript This is Michelle Frechette with your WP Community minute. April 8 marks the first-ever WordPress Career Summit. Tracks will be dedicated to those looking for jobs and for employers. The job seeker track will include sessions geared toward helping those look for employment with talks about the job search, applying, and interview preparation. The employer track will include sessions around recruiting, onboarding, managing remote teams, and more. Over the last few years, I’ve watched people searching for jobs, and I’ve seen companies posting openings. The job market has been difficult for many. My hope is that a career summit like this will help both sides of the hiring table, while also allowing sponsors to show why you should apply to work for them. Sponsor spots are still open. This is a Post Status event, and I’m the organizer, so reach out if you have any questions. WP Career Summit is free to attend. For more information and to register, visit wpcareersummit.com! “Simplified Business Minute” - Sam Muñoz Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Daniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli-HaackJoe CasabonaJeff ChandlerDave Rodenbaugh New Members We would like to welcome Thomas Maier Founder and CEO of Advanced Ads and webgilde GmbH to the WPMinute. If you haven't noticed, the WPMinute got a fantastic new paint job...more than a paint job...also unde

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, made the news again (this time with the Wall Street Journal). He talks about ‘asynchronous work’ and why he thinks hybrid models will die out. Automattic employees are already living the work from anywhere model and are able to adjust their work schedules as needed. Anne McCarthy is back with another round of testing this time for the WordPress Photo directory. By adding your photos here, they will automatically appear in Openverse, a search engine for openly licensed media. Volunteers are needed to test and provide feedback on media-related features in WordPress. Anyone is welcome to contribute, and feedback is open until February 23. Eric Karkovac wrote a post on the WordPress photo directory. If you would like an understanding of how licensing images came about and to see an early review of WordPress media go check out his article. From Our Contributors and Producers Many in the WordPress community have been feeling the weight of growth and change and frankly everything over the last couple of years. Cory Miller shared an update on his “crash and burn”. Many of us are not alone in this area and support Cory along with his team over at PostStatus. The organizers of WordCamp Europe 2022, were called out recently for a lack of diversity on the Organizing Team. They are addressing that now citing the team cares deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Click the link to read their updated communication. Angela Jin has started an open discussion on diversity as well over on make.wordpress.org. Make sure to participate in this very important discussion and provide feedback. Eric Mann wrote a post on his first month using WordPress 5.9 from an experienced WordPress contributor perspective. If you would like to see the good, the bad and the future of WordPress this post is worth a few minutes of your time. Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern covered the latest with the German court fining a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-Hosted Fonts. If you are using Google fonts and are subject to European regulations, you may want to review how you are using them to be in compliance. Sarah’s colleague Justin Tadlock wrote an article stating that Block Editor Sidebar Panels are the new Admin Notices. Product marketers will be interwoven with the editing experience for the foreseeable future. Or until an official mechanism for products to notify users of upgrades is offered in core, as WP Minute correspondent Spencer Forman comments. Business news! Convesio Raises $5M in funding to further develop its scalable WordPress Hosting Platform. This funding will help to deliver a consistently fast experience with their customers. MasterWP.co, a newsletter for WordPress professionals, announced that Howard Development & Consulting has acquired the publication. From Alex Denning Some news: after 5 years and 249 issues, @BinaryMoon and I have written our final issue of http://MasterWP.co. @howarddcweb have acquired MasterWP, and will be taking over bringing you insightful, quality WordPress news and analysis from next week. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerBirgit Pauli-HaackEric Karkovack If you would like to contribute news, especially in the WooCommerce space please find us @thewpminute or use our contact form at thewpminute.com and reach out to us. New Members We would like to welcome our new member this week Lawrence Ladomery from convesio.com. 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 of WPLaunchify is back to explore the future of the WP stack and how it might impact you as an agency owner or WordPress freelancer. It wasn't too long ago that HTML/CSS and some PHP knowledge was all that you needed to develop moderately advanced sites, now, the future looks a bit different. Will you leverage React, Gutenberg, FSE and all of the new technology in as WordPress advances? Spencer's hopeful for the future of WordPress and shares his opinions in today's episode. Read our related article: What does full site editing mean for WordPress freelancers? 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 Matt Mullenweg recently announced that he would be personally running Tumblr for a while. Tumblr lost their CEO and Matt is making this his top priority within Automattic for the immediate future. Keep an eye open for improvements in the community. Are you or your clients using Wordpress.com? Wordpress.com is now making it possible to purchase certain plugins directly on the plugin page. The plugins that are available right now are for WooCommerce subscribers with a Business or eCommerce plan. Keep an eye out for more paid plugins appearing in 2022. Josepha Haden Chomphosy on make.wordpress.org shared the potential release timing for 2022 of WordPress. This release looks like this right now: 6.0 – Late May 6.1 – Mid October If you have project management skills or can lend a hand on these next major releases, contact the release team. The Preliminary Roadmap for Gutenberg 6.0 has also been published by Matias Ventura on make.wordpress.org. There are four phases outlining the long-term roadmap. Events The schedule of WordCamps is published over on WordCamp central. Many are in the early stages of planning and don't have a date yet. WordCamp US has been scheduled September 9-11, 2022 in San Diego, CA. From Our Contributors and Producers To celebrate Black History Month Underrepresented in Tech will tweet about a black tech innovator/inventor every day in February. Google is burying FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) in its sea of abandoned experiments. Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern writes that Google’s FLoC ran in limited markets and received overwhelmingly negative feedback from the tech industry that left Google with an uphill battle to get enough buy-in to proceed. So now Google is proposing topics. Stay tuned for the feedback on this new proposal. Squarespace rolled out an expansion of their Member Areas program. This allows publishers to earn money selling instructional and other kinds of content online through private members-only sections of their Squarespace website. Would you like to see block standardization across the web? Joel Spolsky has an interesting blog post asking what if blocks were interchangeable and reusable across the web? He suggests a non-proprietary, block protocol that will be open and free. His article is an interesting one to read. The WPMinute Contributor spotlight is on Aurooba Ahmed this week. She has created a new plugin called the superlist block for WordPress. This is Aurooba’s first publicly released plugin on WordPress.org. The plugin lets you add other blocks within the list items essentially making it supercharged. Listen to Joe Casabona’s Creator Toolkit on Creator Clock Minute Transcript: Hey everybody, Joe Casabona here and you are on the Creator Clock. Over the last few weeks, I've spent a bunch of time putting together what I call creator toolkits. This is based on a podcast I had several years ago, but it's all about tools that you can use to build specific WordPress sites. For example, I have a toolkit for creating online courses or creating a podcast website. So how did I come up with these recommendations? Well, I've been using WordPress for a very long time. I've tried a bunch of tools and I've picked my favorite. So I want to highlight one of these toolkits and it is the creating online courses toolkit. I would recommend Nexcess’ managed WordPress hosting for this because you're going to be accepting payments. The Kadence theme with Kadence Pro is a fantastic theme for this. For the LMS plugin, I recommend LearnDash. LearnDash and Kadence work very well together. For list-building, I recommend ConvertKit, and to tie it all together to everything you use outside of WordPress, I would recommend, Uncanny Automator as the automation plugin. If you want to see more creator toolkits, you can head over to creatorcourses.com/toolkits. Or you can continue the conversation with me over on Twitter @jcasabona. New Members: Thanks to our new member Svilena Peneva from NitroPack. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackMichelle FrechetteDaniel SchutzsmithDavinder Singh KainthJoe CasabonaJeff Chandler Thanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday. 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 We hosted our first WP Minute Live Twitter Space covering learning WordPress. It was Bring Your Own Link (BYOL) style where our guest panelists brought a link to share with the audience. Here were the guests that appeared on the live show: Hauwa Abashiya, Freelance Project Manager transitioning into the WordPress space; Board Member and Volunteer at Big Orange Heart including WordFest and one of the Make Training Team Reps.Joe Casabona, Joe started his career almost 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion, which is sharing his years of knowledge about website development, podcasting and course creation to help creators, and business owners.Birgit Pauli-Haack, Birgit is the curator of the Gutenberg Times and co-host of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast with Greg Ziolkowski. Automattic sponsors her work as a full-time developer advocate for WordPress. Daniel Schutzsmith, Web Manager at Pinellas County Government, one of the Producers at The WP Minute, maintainer of WP Livestreams Directory, and soon to be launched WP Developer’s Toolbox.Matt Medeiros, Director by day at Castos.com; Creating community contributed news and journalism at thewpminute.com part of Matt Report media network. Links shared from the guests Hauwa Abashiya: https://learn.wordpress.org/| https://make.wordpress.org/training/2021/08/08/who-can-learn-help/ | https://learn.wordpress.org/social-learning/Joe Casabona: https://wplearningpaths.com | https://maven.com Birgit Pauli-Haack Gutenberg Developer Hours 2/8 WordPress Social Learning Spaces. https://fullsiteediting.com/block-theme-generator/ Block Theme GeneratorDaniel Schutzsmith: https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/18/training-team-goals-for-2022/ “Especially certification!” Episode transcript [00:00:00] Matt: This event is brought to you by malware and blog vault. Check out mal care.com and blog vault.net, helping you secure and restore your WordPress websites. Quite literally thank them without them. I wouldn’t be able to be doing the WP minute live and Daniel wouldn’t have that nice new gold chain around his neck. [00:00:18] Moving forward. I’d ask all of you to join the link squad, hashtag link squad, producers, and contributors, and the discord server share, vote and discuss their newsworthy links with others. When you’re part of the link squad, you’re part of making weekly word, press news. And we’re talking about one of the, one of the biggest topics, 5.9, and learning a little bit more about 5.9, Daniel, your segments. [00:00:46] Daniel: Yeah. And really what we’re doing here too, for folks that don’t know the w the WP minute is that it’s contributor, sourced news. We provide links basically every week of what we see out there in the industry. And so we often have discussions around those links, similar to what you’d see in a newsroom. [00:01:04] It’s just done a discord. And so we’re, we’re talking with each other and talking about the various things we like about a link or whatnot [00:01:11] Matt: WVU minute live is bringing you that discussion right here on Twitter spaces and streaming platforms across the internet, someday discuss hashtag link squad topics with us live and follow at the WP minutes. [00:01:23] Stay. [00:01:25] Daniel: Yeah, given the, the new release of WordPress 5.9, we’re going to focus on this week’s topic, being, learning WordPress. And so everyone’s brought at least one link, perhaps two or three that that share a little bit about learning WordPress. And so we’re going to go through once and we’re going to see how that goes and how long that takes. [00:01:43] But first, let me introduce our folks here. We already know kind of Matt, Modaris our fearless leader here, director by day at dot com. Creating community contributed news and journalism at the WP minutes. Part of the Matt report media network. We also have how ABA Shaya freelance project manager transitioning into the WordPress space, a board member and volunteer at big orange heart, including word Fest, and one of the make training team reps. [00:02:10] Thank you for being here. How all the way from London, I believe. Yep. That’s right. Alright. Joe, Casabona coming straight to us from Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney Phil come up soon. Joe started his career almost 20 years ago as a freelance web developer before realizing his true passion, which is sharing his years of knowledge about website development, podcasting, and course creation to help creators and business owners. [00:02:38] And I’m subscribed to seven of his podcasts. They’re all amazing. So checking out a peer get ball. They have. Beer is the curator of the Gutenberg times and co-host of the Gutenberg changelog podcast with Greg Koski automatic sponsors for work as a full time developer advocate for WordPress[00:03:00] [00:03:01] and my cell phone, Daniel should Smith, a mild-mannered

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News WordPress 5.9 - Joséphine was released this week. There is a lot of good stuff to check out on blocks and themes. If you would like an understanding of how this major release with Full Site Editing (FSE) will impact you as a freelancer, you should read Eric Karkovack’s article right here on the WPMinute. You can learn some new features and consider how these changes will fit into your business. While reporting on the updates of 5.9 there was a lot of concern about the Customizer going away with this release. Anne McCarthy explains all you need to know about the new site editor and the Customizer. Go check out her review on YouTube. Sarah Gooding reported over on WPTavern that the WordPress Community Team will relieve volunteers of the burden of COVID 19 enforcement for WordCamps and Meetups scheduled with 50+ attendees. The Guidelines were posted over at make.wordpress.org. The big picture goals for WordPress 2022 were published on make.wordpress.org. The goals are broad right now and there are many teams which you can join and contribute to. There is still a lot of work to be done so go check out the areas where you can help. Speaking of the future of 2022, WordPress 5.9 sets a strong foundation for so much more for the future of WordPress. There is a post on the Gutenberg times that paints a picture of the future that this WordPress release provides. There is a table of contents to jump to the areas of immediate interest. Before the dust settles on WordPress 5.9, the roadmap for WordPress 6.0 is published on make.wordpress.org. This is a high-level overview and the aim is to consolidate and expand the set of customization tools introduced in 5.9. WooCommerce WooCommerce 6.1.1 is available. This release resolves a bug introduced in 6.1.0, rolls back the deprecation introduced in 6.1.0, and improves WooCommerce’s support for WordPress 5.9. Events Post Status is having their first-ever career summit scheduled for April 8, 2022 (9:00am – 5:00pm CDT). The conference is for job-seeking and hiring in WordPress. If you are interested in speaking at this conference you can sign up on the WP Career Summit Site. Join @schutzsmith - Daniel Schutzsmith (January 31st 3pm EST / 8pm UTC) as he hosts WP Minute Live: Learning WordPress. Roundtable guests will be @hauwazhiya - Hauwa Abashiya, @bph - Birgit Pauli-Haack, and @jcasabona - Joe Casabona. From Our Contributors and Producers Helen Hou-Sandi (who many know as the lead developer on the WordPress open-source project) has joined GitHub this week. This is an exciting opportunity for Helen and we wish her the best. Elementor published their 2021 Wrapup with an impressive statistic of over 10 million active websites. Lesley Sim wrote a really thoughtful and researched article over on Post Status about WordPress as a Commons. There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter and different Slack channels concerning WordPress since the State of the Word talk this year. This article is worth reading to help frame an open discussion around WordPress - the open-source project. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackMichelle FrechetteDavinder Singh KainthAndrew Palmer from Bertha.ai Thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday. The WP Minute is an experiment in community journalism for WordPress. If you want to support WPminute, the team, and all of those that contribute – head on over to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport. Buy us a digital coffee for as little as $5 OR better yet! Join our community of WordPress newsies, get access to our Discord server, private podcast, behind the scenes on how the news is made, and get your voice heard on the podcast. 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 the News WordPress 5.9 (RC3) is here. 5.9 is slated for next week and you still have time to help with testing. Go over to make.wordpress.org to see how you can still help with this important release. WooCommerce The WooCommerce development team announced that they have started working on an implementation of custom tables for orders. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern covers the details of how this long-awaited improvement for the custom tables will be developed. The release is scheduled for Q3. You can check out her article for the details. Events The WordCamp Birmingham Organizing Team has unanimously decided to postpone WP Y’all until a future date in April or May when we can safely hold the event for our attendees. Nathan Ingram has a Twitter thread and he will share the updates as they become available. From Our Contributors and Producers Have you started using Blocks in your workflow? Nick Diego forked the core social block and created the Social Sharing Plugin. Justin Tadlock over at WPTavern covers how Nick created the social sharing block by forking the social block from WordPress core 5.9. Speaking of blocks, Tadlock wrote an article covering Wicked Plugins Block Builder 1.0. (Hey, Vinny’s a producer here at The WP Minute) If you would like to see how Justin created “resource block cards” using the plugin, click the link in the show notes. Do you interact with the WordPress database? The Wizard’s Collection: SQL Recipes for WordPress is an ebook that is available right now. It is a great resource If you need to update your database skills. Would you like to recognize the people that contribute to WordPress? Aurooba Ahmed has made a repo on GitHub to list all WordPress people that can be sponsored on the platform. If you know someone, take a minute to add them to the list. Andrew Palmer shared a recent interview with Marieke van de Rakt over on the Freemius channel. Marieke, the previous CEO of Yoast shares insights of the acquisition of Yoast to Newfold. Quick tip: It seems like it helps to have a broker and a banker when you need to negotiate. This interview is definitely worth a few minutes of your time. Not exactly WordPress - but worth mentioning Happy 21st birthday to Drupal. Wow! Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion. Remember, less than a year ago Microsoft acquired Bethesda with a loot chest filled with games like: Elder Scrolls, Doom, Fallout, and more. IMO this frames Microsoft as “Universe Builders.” I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw them competing with Disney on all fronts within a decade. They do open source stuff too, link in the notes. Next up: The Block Editor Dev Minute w/Aurooba Ahmed The Transcript Hi, this is Aurooba and this is your Block Editor Dev Minute! Here’s a cool feature you should know about: WordPress 5.9 is landing soon and with it, so does block support for multiple stylesheets. If you haven’t already adopted block-specific stylesheets, now is the time. Registering per-block stylesheets means that unnecessary styling is never loaded. This is great for performance and fantastic for maintainability. Being able to add multiple stylesheets per block means you can create more atomic styles. Let’s say you have a custom block that includes a button, instead of creating new styles for the button in this block, you can simply pull in the stylesheet for the regular Button block for consistency and efficiency. I think this is going to be pretty handy. Read more about this and the other fantastic features coming to WordPress 5.9 in the Field Guide on make.wordpress.org. Thanks for listening! The Gutenberg Minute w/ Birgit Pauli-Haack Transcript Happy New Year! My name is Birgit Pauli-Haack. Here is your Gutenberg Minute. Next week, Tuesday, WordPress 5.9 will be released. Theme, plugin developers, and site builders are already testing their products against release candidate 3. 5.9 is the biggest release since the block editor’s debut in WordPress 5.0. As it ties all the pieces, dare I say blocks together into a new and powerful site-building experience. Learn.WordPress.org has a new self-paced course “Simple Site design with Full Site Editing” meant for site builders and owners. You’ll learn how to create a personalized site design without any coding. Shorter workshops are also available: “How to Style Your Site with Global Styles' or How to use the List view”. On the WordPress Social Learning space on Meetup.com, you find dozens of events covering Theme development, Color Styling, and a lot more. If you need to educate users, clients, or meetup members on the latest Gutenberg features, Anne McCarthy has created a list of talking points and resources to learn more for presenters and trainers. Keep up with Gutenberg updates, via the Gutenberg Changelog podcast at gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. Links: Release Candidate 3 WordPress 5.9 https://

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Welcome back to the WPMinute's Special Edition interviewing our new community lead, Raquel Landefeld. Raquel is the event coordinator at Elegant Themes and will be coordinating content and interviews for the WPMinute. A Little History on Raquel Raquel manages the Meetup Pro Community for Elegant Themes. There are over 50 Divi chapters all over the world. Raquel coaches Meetup organizers on how to human where the emphasis and focus is on human connection. She also helps manage the Elegant Themes Facebook group with over 70K members and coaches the moderators on how to moderate the group with kindness. Raquel discusses how there are rules in the Facebook group to address new users of Divi and where users can be directed for specific help. With so much WordPress news, the challenge is centered around channels supporting independent content on the Discord server for the WPMinute. Matt and Raquel discuss the mission of the WPMinute, how the news is curated and how members interact. The WPMinute brings the human voice from the group presenting in a short form podcast. Raquel shares her great ideas of sharing short video clips and when we can meet in person, hosting a small WPMinute group meeting at a conference. If you want to become a member of the WPMinute and you want to take part in the weekly WordPress news, join our merry band of "WordPress newsies" and chat it up, get yourself mentioned in the newsletter and get credits in the show, become a contributor or producer of 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 In the News The release of WordPress 5.9 is coming this month. There are many performance enhancements that will be part of this release. In addition to editor and front-end performance enhancements, lazy loading images changed, resulting in a 30% faster page load - in some cases. Go over to make.wordpress.org to check out the numbers. Sarah Gooding, over at the WPTavern covers the new API in Gutenberg that will be released with WordPress 5.9. This new API will allow you to lock individual blocks and override template locking which had been the only way to lock blocks. Events As WordPress 5.9 comes out at the end of January, there is a Mega Meetup to provide information that WordPress professionals should know about. You can sign up for the meetup which will be held Thursday, January 20, 2022. Look for some great exploration of Blocks and what to expect around design changes. WooCommerce Updates Heads up. Starting with version WooCommerce 6.5 (scheduled for release in May) WooCommerce will require PHP 7.2 or newer to work. PHP is rapidly changing and it was determined that PHP 7.2 was the version that still had a significant number of WooCommerce active installs running. If you have an older version of PHP running it will still work, but you will not be able to continue to update this plugin. You also risk the usual performance and security issues by running older versions. From Our Contributors and Producers There are several more 2021 “year in reviews” from the WordPress community. Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains shares a nice post about how the company's growth has tripled and how the team is growing. He also covers the ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) acquisition along with other updates. The article is worth a few minutes of your time to read. WPCloudDeploy shares the blogpost of how they had 10 versions of their product released in one year. They rolled out more than 50 new and improved features last year. This is a pretty impressive post representing a lot of work from that company. There is also an update from Rich Tabor. He announced that WP Experts has acquired his Login Designer plugin. Did you know that NFT marketplace aggregator Flip, co-founded by UpOnly podcast host Brian Krogsgard (yes the guy from Post Status), has raised $6.5 million in a seed funding round? What is Flip you ask? Flip aggregates NFT marketplaces under one roof on its platform, allowing users to easily navigate through available NFTs to buy. Ever wonder why competing with Google search is next to impossible? Well, a new search engine needs an index of the web. And many sites don’t welcome any web crawler that isn’t Google or Bing. This article from Fast Company covers the challenges of competing with search that crawls sites with automated software. Brave, which is a privacy-focused web browser, had seen continued growth in 2021 with 50 million users. The Brave browser does not track your searches or share any identifying data with third-party companies. If you would like to break free from the big companies, you can give them a try. WordPress News is hard to turn into a real business. This week over on the Matt Report Rae Morey shares how she built The Repository newsletter with her background as a journalist. Two Great Segments: The Learn Minute with Hauwa Abashiya Transcript Happy New Year. It's Hauwa Abashiya here from the Make training team here with your Learn WordPress minute. If you're not familiar with Learn WordPress, it is a learning resource on .org for anyone who wants to learn how to use, build for and contribute to WordPress. The Make training team wrangles all the content on Learn and we use the Sprint methodology to determine what we are working on and our timeframe for delivery. This month we are focused on creating content for 5.9 and need your help. We have identified a number of existing lesson plans and workshops that need to be revised, as well as the new features coming to 5.9 that need a corresponding lesson plan and workshop. For the full list see our January 2022 Sprint post on .org, links provided in the show notes. If you're interested in helping create content, leave a comment on the post or drop us a message in the training team Slack channel. We also have some great workshop videos that you can follow. As a reminder, workshops are practical on-demand videos that show viewers what they can do with WordPress. Lesson plans are guides for facilitators to use while presenting at events or within educational environments. Visit make.wordpress.org/training for more information and check out learn.wordpress.org The WooMinute with Bob Dunn Transcript Hey, it's BobWP from Do the Woo, here's your 1-minute of WooCommerce The innovation we see happening with WordPress will reflect directly on WooCommerce. When I asked Matt Mullenweg at the State of the Word to give me some Woo, he said "in

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute It's the WP Minute Shopping Show! I'm your host Matt and I am delighted to share 5 great WordPress products with you this week. What's the WP Minute Shopping show all about?! You'll get to hear from WordPress product owners pitch their product in 1-minute or less. If you're interested in their product, please visit their store. The better they pitch, the better chance they have that you might be buying -- maybe even spice things up for you with a discount code. You'll have to keep listening to find out. For product owners, it's a great way to talk about your cool new feature, version, or add-on. Want to support The WP Minute project and get your pitch heard? Buy 3 spots on the WP Minute Shopping Show! Tune into the WP Minute Shopping Show each time you see it on the feed to learn more about products, their owners, and what deals they might have in store for us. WordPress products on the show today: WP PusherWicked Block BuilderNewsletterGlueRecaptureEasy Support Videos 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 The News The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 5.9 is now available! Your feedback helps the community check that nothing is missed. Given the tens of thousands of plugins, themes and differences in how millions of people use the software, now is a good time to test. To really understand the year in core, you can dig deeper into contributor data with a lot of numbers and charts over on make.wordpress.org. It is an amazing amount of work that everyone can be proud of. But it should be noted that the data does not include contributions on GitHub repositories like Gutenberg. Angela Jin shared the proposal for the Block Pattern Directory. It will soon be live and ready to accept custom Block Pattern submissions! In anticipation of this new directory, questions have been raised around the best practices for submitting Block Patterns. Before you submit your block pattern, make sure that you have some basic automated checks in place. If the submitted Block Pattern passes the checks, it will be published immediately or it will be flagged for manual review. You can comment up until January 14, 2022. Did you hear that Yoast is headed to Shopify? There will be an online event held on Thursday, January 20, 2022. It starts at 4:30 pm CET / 1:30 pm EST. Joost de Valk, shares on his blog the business reasons that Yoast was built for Shopify, which is not open source. Events Post Status is having their first-ever Twitter Conference. They are picking up the torch from Hey Pressto and carrying forward with an All-on-Twitter Conference to be held Tuesday, May 24, from 9 am – 4 pm EST. Check the link on how to apply and present in 15 tweets. From Our Contributors and Producers WSForms posted Website Resolutions for 2022. This article is a good reminder to review your current website and make adjustments if you do not have all the innovative things to make it awesome in 2022. If you would like to stay focused in 2022 and need motivation there are several blogs that review the past year. Syed Balkhi shares his year in review that includes many acquisitions in the WordPress space. One data point of note: Awesome Motive is now 200+ team members strong. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birgit Pauli-HaackMichelle Frechette Next up: The Creator Clock, with 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 WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 was released this week. Sara Gooding over at the Tavern wrote that there are a few important changes to note in this release regarding how the WordPress admin will direct users who are exploring block themes. There is an incompatibility message for redirection depending on whether the theme is using blocks or the customizer. The release team has determined that a 5th beta will not be necessary and the official release is scheduled for January 25, 2022. Events The call for speakers is now open for WordCamp Europe 2022. We will have to keep an eye on how this in-person event will be safely organized. It appears that you will also be able to participate online. From Our Contributors and Producers A software vendor has lost a civil case in a first-time ruling by Italian courts on open source licensing. The case involved Ovation’s GPL licensed Dynamic.ooo software, which is a plugin for the open-source Elementor platform for building WordPress websites. The software was distributed without including acknowledgment of the original work, including information about changes tthat he defendants had made to the software, and with no mention of the software’s copyright holders. There is a fine levied against the defendants every day until the software is brought into compliance. WPCS.io, an Amsterdam-based provider of the world’s first multi-tenant WordPress cloud platform to create SaaS solutions with WordPress, announced that they are raising a substantial seed investment from Arches Capital. WPEngine announced on their blog that they have acquired the Frost theme, adding to their open-source cache of WordPress solutions. This theme was created by Brian Gardner and focuses on block editing and the full site editor. Gardner re-joined WPEngine in late September of this year as Principal Developer Advocate. This ended his “gap year” after staying with WPEngine during a transition period of the hosting company acquiring StudioPress, a company he was a partner in previously. WPEngine will be issuing full refunds to active customers. Matt Mullenweg lays out a debate over the future of the internet. Mullenweg, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder, joins ‘TechCheck’ to discuss the future of their internet. The WordPress developer explains the difference between open vs. closed platforms and which will see the most growth. This will be interesting to watch next year. Interesting TikTok news Is it possible that TikTok brought more traffic than Google this year? The viral video app seems to be on a high, finishing the year with the most cumulative internet traffic of any domain in the world — more so even than Google, which typically holds the number-one spot. Cloudflare reviewed how the Internet went for TikTok in 2021. Next up Michelle Frechette with a year-end wrap-up. Don’t forget to read Michelle’s contributor post: In-person events: The good, the bad, and the fearful. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerNigel BahadurDave RodenbaughDaniel Schutzsmith New Members: We welcome a new member this week, Jennifer Bourn to the WPMinute. 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 With no major acquisitions, events, or feature releases this week, we can all take an exhale of relief. Today’s theme is: Reflection. WP Minute Contributor Joe Casabona reflects on the State of the Word hosted by Matt Mullenweg. He shares strong opinions on how you might give back to WordPress by taking care of yourself, first. “When I was in college, I learned about Saint Ignatius and the idea of Cura personalis, or care of the entire person. I’d like to think of contributing more like this” WP Minute Producer Michelle Frechette represented Post Status in an interview with Matt Mullenweg about acquisitions in the WordPress ecosystem. Matt says Automattic is participating in all parts of the ecosystem from investment to purchasing companies. Nexcess shares 22 WordPress predictions to look forward to in 2022. WP Minute Producer Daniel Schutzsmith was quoted on his take of the Full Site Editing Knowledge Gap. “As block-based themes and full site editing take over the WordPress landscape, they may create a knowledge gap among WordPress users,” David Bisset asks us to reflect on what we think the biggest news items for WordPress are this year. Send him your message to be included in the round-up. Reflecting on all of the…awards? The WP Weekly Awards for 2021 concluded. Elementor claimed the most voted page builder, Yoast won for best SEO plugin, and I…came in 4th place for the Matt Report podcast with the WP Minute ever so slightly behind, holding down the 15th spot. I can’t wait for next year! And speaking of audio… @Francisco on WP Slack has shared an update about Openverse and where the next iteration is leading us. He shares some mockups of what searching and discovering audio + images might look like on the platform. From the grabbag Daniel Schutzsmith started a WordPress Twitter community Protocol asks if Matt Mullenweg can save the internet Treehouse was sold Contributor audio segments by: Michelle SchulpMichelle Frechette Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerJoe CasabonaMichelle FrechetteDaniel 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 In the News State of the Word 2021 happened this week. If you would like to hear the complete audio or read through the transcript from the live event check out the link over on the WPMinute. There is even a mega-thread of our favorite clips over on Twitter. GoDaddy covered the event as well including their own timestamps for the video stream. I have three takeaways from the event that I think are important: WordPress still wants more volunteers and contributorsGutenberg is bigger than WordPress The acquisition train is fueled by the influx of the larger tech economy Speaking of acquisitions: You may want some insight on how to approach selling your company. Check out Freemius’ Gamechangers — where videos of some of the largest acquisitions in the WordPress space have occurred. The first interview in the series (from December 8th) is with Syed Balki from Awesome Motive. WPMinute Contributor Kim Coleman, co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro received 27 likes on her Twitter question on the Freemius account when they announced it: Is this the total list or are there any women in your series? I asked Vova for a comment leading into the inclusion of this article in today’s episode: We are not happy about it either and take full responsibility for this mistake. We are going to rectify it. We already have Marieke from Yoast to join and are waiting to hear from additional female founders. The growth of WordPress Is Elementor the hero we asked for? Joost de Valk published the sixth iteration of his CMS market share analysis on his blog and found that the W3Techs tracked Elementor. It appears that much of the new growth for WordPress as a CMS is tied to Elementor since they are dependent on each other. Elementor sites cannot exist without WordPress, so they are tied to each other. But I think the conclusion is fair that of all those new sites being built with WordPress, a very large portion of them, is being built with Elementor. Events WordCamp US 2022 will be held in San Diego this September. No dates have been announced but you can sign up to be an organizer now. From Our Contributors and Producers WP Minute ecommerce correspondent Dave Rodenbaugh published his latest ecommerce minute discussing the issues with the supply chain. If you are waiting for products this week and want to understand the crisis better, go check out that episode. Can you still make a living building WordPress sites? This Tweet from Jack Forge got some traction on Twitter and many people responded about how WordPress is great for enabling people to make a decent living. There are some fantastic stories in that thread. Eric Karkovack does a recap of 2021 on SpeckyBoy. He covers the foundational shifts that we have seen in WordPress. These shifts include the changes to WordPress 5.9, acquisitions, and how all of this will lead to something bigger in the new year. With Full Site Editing coming late in January 2022, you may want to experiment with David Gwyer’s first release of theme.json theme generator. If you're interested, you can sign up over on themegen.app. There was a lot covered in the State of the Word and Security was discussed (as usual). If you are interested in monitoring all your WordPress sites for security vulnerabilities found in plugins, themes, and WordPress core there is a new security product that you can check out over on Product Hunt. If you are a community member who publishes course content and may have missed this, you can now publish on WP Dev Academy. If you would like to know when this platform is available from Alex Standiford you can sign up over on WP Dev Academy. FINALLY not WordPress related but still notable Apple launched a redesigned open source website. You can explore some of the projects built on open source. It is pretty interesting stuff. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerBirget Pauli-HaackEric KarkovackDave RodenbaughDaniel Schutz Smith New Members: We would like to welcome new members to the WPMinute Discord group Scott Murcott and Andres Armeda this week to the WPMinute. They have already contributed to the news this week. Thank you very much! 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 State of the Word 2021 just concluded in NYC. Just over 2 hours of updates around the community, the software, and the vision of Matt Mullenweg. This episode is an entire recording of the livestream broadcast over YouTube including audience + listener questions. If you enjoy content like this, please consider giving back to WordPress or donating to this publication. Episode Transcript oh, but really, really, um, welcome to everyone. Thank you all for being here. This is very exciting. Um, I am excited to see all your faces. It's been many years since I've seen some of you, um, in case you have not noticed we are changing our hashtag this year. It is state of the word written out, but remember to do your capitalization for people using reading. Assistive technologies, readers, screen readers. I got it. Uh, there is going to be a Q and a portion after this. It will be here from our live audience, but also some folks at home. Um, uh, he's the at-home portion for us right now. So if you have any questions, get them ready. If you're here, there's a microphone here that you will be able to ask your questions at. Or if you are watching at home, you can head on over to the YouTube embed of this, uh, live stream. And we are monitoring the chat there for questions as well. Um, that is all that I have to say. Um, and I think that's probably all that you want to hear from me anyway. And so tonight giving our annual state of the word where we talk about everything we've done this year and everything we hope to do next year is of course WordPress project. Co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Wow. Wow. We're really here. So, uh, welcome everybody. And I've been told to ask if folks over here can just move up one row. Um, if you don't mind where we're going to try to fill out the front and bed that. This is so exciting and so honestly fulfilling to be together again. Oh yeah. I guess everyone's starting to cascade for those joining us live. We are here in New York city. It is, the sun is setting. We've got a few invited community members from all of the world. Thank you all for coming. We had people joined by plane, train and automobile. How long was the train ride? Two and a half day train ride to get here. So that is definitely the most interesting. I actually am also came a, probably a two and a half day trip, but all the way from Antarctica. So if you notice a little bit of a raccoon tan, that was because I had very strong sunglasses and I guess not strong enough sunblock as that's me have some penguins. And while there I read a lot of books and learned a lot about Antarctica and one that particularly stood out actually a leader who's inspired me for a long time was Ernest Shackleton. And I knew a lot about his endurance journey where ship crashed or got stuck. And then they sent back. Basically they saved every person who was on that journey, but a story I didn't know about him, which I learned about was. Journey's to the south pole. He turned away only 97 miles away from reaching the pole, which is pretty darn close if you've ever tried to get, I think I flew, like if you add it all up, like almost 7,000 miles back. So the turnaround of the last 97 and actually as this was happening, as I was reading about this, I was thinking about the version 5.9 release. So you might know that today was a scheduled or right around today was the scheduled originally scheduled date for the WordPress 5.9 release. And we made a very, very unusual decision for WordPress to delay that release for about a month. So we're going to release it in January, but it felt like we were so close and we decided to turn around. And, but very, I believe it was entirely the right decision as it was for Shackleton. He made it back alive. I think his saying was better to be alive, donkey than a dead lion So we don't want full site editing, which is coming in 5.9 to be a dead lion But it was also I think, a moment for reflection, because of course we talk about and the philosophy part of WordPress, how deadlines are not arbitrary and whatever we were making that decision, which wasn't that long ago, I just delayed the release. I wasn't thinking so much about what's happening right then the kind of month before. But what did we do? 3, 4, 5 months before. So I think it's an excellent time to reflection for reflection. And actually some of this has started on Anne McCarthy's blog. We started talking to her comments section, uh, in public, of course, has everything happens on WordPress about what we can learn from this that we can start putting into effect, not just for the release coming next month, which will be fine, but for the big 6.0, which is coming next year, I've even heard some rumblings that 20, 22 might be a year. We aim for four releases instead of just three, but let's not get too crazy just yet. Where are the beginning of the state of the

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute WP Minute producer Dave Rodenbaugh of Recapture.io discusses what the supply chain issue is with eCommerce and why it is still an issue. The US imports over 41% of its consumer goods from China and these imports come in through two ports - Long Beach, CA or Los Angeles, CA. During COVID people were buying online at a skyrocketing rate and those goods were coming in containers and unloaded. However, there was already a shortage of truck drivers and port workers and with the pandemic this problem has escalated. This means that containers stacked up at the ports and ships waited in the harbor. Today, that record is 96 ships waiting. To address this issue, local laws have been modified to allow containers to be stacked higher, but they are not moving quickly enough. About 80,000 jobs are still open and that’s why items are still not moving. For example, cars and car parts are sitting in containers and can’t get to where they are needed. According to Bloomberg from December 4th the average waiting time for a ship to be unloaded is 20.8 days! It used to be 6 days - pre pandemic. And the cost of shipping containers has also risen dramatically the past two years as well. The freightos index shows that the current cost is about 14K but the goods that may be on that container are impacting small businesses. So this is the issue in a nutshell. Until we can move that freight completely from all points in the journey, we are going to continue to see small shortages and price increases everywhere. This will probably continue for months. If you have other eCommerce topics you would like Dave to talk about, tweet at the WPMinute and he will put it on the show. Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash Episode transcription It's the WP minute. This episode is brought to you by mind size. If you're looking for monthly WooCommerce report, check out mind size.com. Today's episode is written and produced by Dave Rodenbach [email protected]. It's his returning episode on the e-commerce minute discussing the. At the supply chain, if you're out there going, man, am I going to get my presence? This holiday season for my kids? They will kind of give us a little insight into that and, and the impact the supply chain has on the e-commerce world. We really hope you enjoy today's episode with Dave. If you do thank him on Twitter. If you want to think the WP minute support the WP minute, by going to buy me a coffee.com/matt report, that's buy me a coffee.com/matt report support WordPress media and independent. Like this. Okay. Let's get into today's episode. Hello again, Dave, Rodenburg here with the e-commerce minute. This episode comes to you right after black Friday, cyber Monday 2021. This week. I want it to talk about an ongoing crisis in e-commerce that you've probably heard a bit about, but you're likely confused as to why it's still a problem. And that would be the supply chain issue. So we've been hearing about supply chain delays since the beginning of the pandemic here in the U S. You probably suffered through some shortages of consumer goods, like toilet paper buying, fresh meat, like chicken or beef. And now you're probably seeing those items on your shores store shelves again, but everyone keeps talking about supplier, June issues, supply chain issues doesn't make sense. Right. So let's unpack that. First of all the United States imports over 41% of its consumer goods from China. There's some smaller amounts that come from Vietnam, India, and Germany. The total is about 56% of, of its total consumer goods come from overseas. That figure has remained fairly consistent for the last four years. According to jungle scout. So 40% of all those imported goods pass through one of two ports in the United States, either the port of Los Angeles or the port of long beach, for those that know their California geography, that basically means the greater Metro area of Los Angeles is responsible for 40% of all consumer goods coming to the United States. That's huge. Now let's spice that up a bit during COVID. Consumer online spending increased dramatically. So those goods started. Over in containers. Once they arrive, the workers would unload the containers and then move them to trucks or railroad cars for further distribution in the United States. But before the pandemic even started, there was already a truck driver and warehouse workers shortage to the tune of about 61,500 jobs, which under the pandemic skyrocket at another 33% higher to 80,000 jobs. And no. Fill them. So without these essential workers to move freight, the containers just stacked up at the ports. And eventually the ports build up causing the ships with new containers, to idle in the Harbor, waiting to be unloaded, which then created a line of ships all the way out into the Pacific ocean at its high point of over 96, unloaded ships that.

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute After appearing on the Post Status State of WordPress News roundtable, I felt like I had a bit more to say about my experience with WordPress news. WordPress news isn't a heavily trafficked topic on the web. How does a publisher build more than just a side gig from putting out WordPress news? How do we define WordPress news? I asked Kim Coleman, co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro, to see if she had any questions around the topic and if she had any interest in recording a podcast episode about it. Thankfully she was willing to chat and share her questions and her opinions on how we do WordPress news. If you enjoy today's episode, please say thanks to Kim on Twitter or consider becoming a supporting Producer here at The WP Minute! Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Matt: It's the WP minute, a special WP minute because I am joined by a special coat. Co-host the title of this episode is called challenges of a WordPress news business. I have my great friend here, the lovely Kim Coleman, Kim, welcome to the program. [00:00:18] Kim: Hi, thanks for having me, Matt. I'll. I want to add who I am before we get too deep, because Everybody knows you. [00:00:25] Nobody knows me, maybe. Well I've been working in WordPress as the line goes from the WordPress rep since I used to rock the Kubrick theme. So I'm a really OJI community member. I spend a lot of time doing site development and moved into products. [00:00:39] And now most notably a WordPress membership plugin paid memberships pro. [00:00:45] Matt: I want to talk about how you and I ended up in this moment of time first. I did. Post status state of the WordPress news. I think they called it and it was a great Twitter space. I'm not a fan of Twitter spaces. Dave, if you're listening, I'm an old school podcast. I like things to be recorded. [00:01:02] I like to sit in our little recording room that we're in now and I don't have to use my phone. So I wanted to, once I was done with that conversation, which again was a fabulous conversation six or seven of us from around the WordPress news space, fantastic conversation. But I felt like I really only scratched the surface on what it's like to, I don't know. [00:01:20] I hate to say run a WordPress news business, but that's the phrase that comes into my head. And Kim, I know that well I've known you for years, right? Ever since I was running my studio, you running your studio, we go way back. But I saw you chatting up others in the WordPress new space on Twitter with some great points, some strong opinion. [00:01:38] I was like, Kim's the perfect person to sit down with to talk about this stuff. And that's how we've ended up in this room today. Is that a fair state? [00:01:45] Kim: Totally fair. Yes. I struggle with opinionated verse. Not because my product does work with a lot of other plugins out there and businesses. So, who you are as an individual and who you are as your business face are an interesting part of these conversations, but yeah, I'll, I'll do my best juggling. [00:02:03] Matt: Kim burying the lead right out of the gate. We're going to talk, we're going to talk about that stuff. So it's Kim I don't wanna say interviewing me, but we, we chatted on some points that we thought were really important to share about news in the WordPress space. And there's so many of us are blogging about WordPress. [00:02:20] We have our opinions, we want to share it. And then there's like a small percentage of us that say, okay, I'm going to do this for a living. Like I'm gonna write about WordPress, whether it's tutorials, development, tutorials, training stuff, or, inside WordPress news. And I know there's a few of you out there especially in the discord server that. [00:02:38] Yeah, that's what you do for a living. You create content around WordPress whether it's eat, soft content, like the tutorial or more of the hard hitting stuff, like the news, you want to figure out how to do it. I've got some opinions to share. And I think Kim has a couple of questions for me [00:02:53] Kim: I want this to be your build in public moment where we talk about Matt report media and what you're doing with the news. And like we said, the title of the show, what are the challenges that we're facing as a community? And what are those things? So I think that's a good kickoff is let's establish, why is it important? [00:03:09] Why is news important in WordPress? We're a multi-billion dollar industry made up of many big and fewer and fewer huge and then thousands of tiny, tiny companies. So why is news important to you? [00:03:23] Matt: I'll give you my, why it's important to me from, from the heart first is because look, it is a, it's a big space. And one of the very first things that I saw coming into the WordPress space was, looking at some colleagues that were, that they were getting the connections, they were getting the project

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Was Gravatar hacked or not? It depends on what you have read or what your definition of “hacked” is I suppose. The password breach monitoring service HaveIBeenPwned alerted users to a large-scale data leak by Gravatar, an add-on service for user profiles owned by Automattic. In October 2020, a security researcher published a technique for scraping large volumes of data from Gravatar, the service for providing “globally unique avatars," HaveIBeenPwned warned. This technique allowed the details of just under 114 million users to get into hackers' hands. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote that Automattic said they were not hacked. The Gravatar service gives you control over what you want to share online through their API. So this information can be made public and somebody can scrape that data and use it nefariously. Jeff Chandler pointed out that this has been an issue since 2009 and shared the information from developer.it. Security researchers and privacy advocates have warned about privacy attacks on Gravatar for years. Gravatar did not send out notices about the breach and left it to the user to accept the risk or use something other than Gravatar. WordPress updates There is a new directory for FSE block themes. Over on make.WordPress.org during the run-up to the release of 5.9 developers should note that the directory names for templates and template parts are being changed. With the release of 5.9 these will instead be: templates parts It's pretty straightforward. Events Ellen Bauer will be sharing a twitter space with Justin Mahinyala discussing #Freelance opportunities for developers, designers, writers, and marketers in the #WordPress ecosystem. They will share advice and tips on how to get started. DM any questions you want them to talk about. 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 inaugural Member Sunday Spotlight is here and we’re honored to highlight Daniel Schutzsmith. A thrice WordCamp organizer, now carving out a niche for WordPress livestreams with his latest project, WP Livestreams. With a passion for livestreams throughout the pandemic, Daniel stumbled into a real need for livestream creators and viewers. With so much great WordPress content being streamed, he hopes to make his website the go-to destination for the community to find new content across YouTube, Twitch, Twitter spaces and whatever technologies come next. Quite a natural direction for someone who thought he’d hang his hat on radio broadcast before getting into programming. It was a real treat to listen to this interview lead by former WP Minute Managing Editor, Paul Lacey. Don’t forget to say hi to Daniel in the WP Minute Discord server or on Twitter. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it on social media. Consider becoming a WP Minute member too! Join our annual membership including access to the Discord server, getting Producer rights to this very news channel and take part in the the #linksquad. We’re nearly 50 strong, so why not join us? Grab your membership at buymeacoffee.com/mattreport 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 episode is brought to you by Mindsize. If you’re looking for monthly WooCommerce support, look no further than Mindsize.com 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. In the News There was a lot of excitement this week around LTDs (LifeTime Licensing Deals). There were several posted reactions to the email sent from Delicious Brains, the new owners of Advanced Custom Fields. The email was not well-received (to say the least) by some users that have had Lifetime Licensing because it was asking for a part-time donation for the product. Twitter exploded with reactions and many in the WordPress community responded as well. We covered this on the WPMinute and Sarah Gooding also wrote about both perspectives — positive and negative — in her article over on the WPTavern. The bottom line is that the lifetime licenses are tough, and very few still remain in the WordPress space. ACF (read: Brad) will continue to honor the pricing for legacy customers. With the recent delay of WordPress 5.9 the team is looking for testers for Beta 1. Angela Jin posted the link for the helpful testing guide. Feel free to participate and let them know how you “broke” it. Testing is very important for a successful release. A JSON Schema for theme.json and one for block.json are now available to help with building block-based themes. The schema can be used by code editors to provide things like tooltips, autocomplete, and validation while editing theme.json or block.json. The WP Live Streams Directory pick of the week “Building Modern WordPress Plugins With Plugin Machine (Part 2)*” presented by Josh Pollock, formerly of WPCaldera, on December 7th at 11pm UTC / 6pm EST / 3pm PST. In Part 1 of his talk, Josh laid the foundation of the mess that modern tooling has become for plugin development. In Part 2, Josh will show us a demo of Plugin Machine, a new app he’s building that helps developers create plugins and add features to them easily. You can catch this by registering for the Pittsburgh WordPress Developers and Designers meetup. Other News From Our Contributors Shopify Engineering announced that they had their biggest Black Friday Cyber Monday ever in 2021. They were proud of the uptime and traffic across the infrastructure along with their partner Google Cloud. Liam Dempsey shared this post by Andy Stitt thanking WordPress for helping him find Digital Accessibility. This is a great article of how WordPress helped Andy advance and allow him to concentrate on accessibility now. Giving Tuesday And now, I’d like to introduce you to Mary Job, who’s leading the Uwani Hub building project. If you feel compelled to support their efforts, consider clicking on the link to donate. Quote/Transcript for show notes: Thank you Matt for the opportunity to speak briefly about the Uwani Hub Building Project on the WP Minute Podcast. I started this building project this year so that we would have a better chance of achieving our vision 2030 WordPress goals, we currently have 9 workstations in our current space, we need at least 30 of those which is what the building allows us the opportunity to have. We are giving ourselves a 10 year, now 9-year timeframe because we do not want to stretch our volunteers too thin, and because this is not just about numbers, but making an actual impact on each individual we teach WordPress program. As you may well have heard in the News, my country Nigeria is lacking in lots of basic infrastructures, we can’t boast of consistent electricity, by choosing to do WordPress in our community, we are looking at impacting our participants not only with a tool useful for their personal empowerment but also one they could export career-wise without necessarily leaving our country shores. For us at the hub, those 5000 people would not just be a number, but people with faces we are going to build the WordPress community with, together. WordPress is central to this cause because it is one tool that I have come to know so well enough to teach to others, and more importantly because the future of WordPress lies in the hands of the coming generation (our current & future teenagers). If we can make them see what we all see when asked “Why WordPress?”, then we would be leaving a mark, not just today, but also tomorrow. Folks can go to support us at Uwani.org or on our Open Collective page, we sincerely hope our programs get well underway from the year 2022 if we can finish the building before the end of January 2022. Continuing our Giving Tuesday coverage with a note from Dan Maby on his success with his campaign yesterday at the Big Orange Heart. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birget Pauli-HaackDaniel SchutzsmithLiam DempseyNigel Bahadur Thanks to the new Contributing Members that joined

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute It seems a year can’t go by without the pesky lifetime WordPress license topic popping up to spice up the holiday conversation. A struggle dating back 7 years ago to the month when Jeff Chandler covered, now defunct, Sidekick.pro where then owner Ben Fox shared his pricing experiments. When Brad Touesnard purchased Advanced Custom Fields back in June, he was swiftly reminded how hard lifetime license pricing really is. I mean, he did his due diligence, he knew what he was getting into. But the lifetime license woes lingered well before the new owners arrived. Elliot Condon wrestled with it, “get it all for one price forever” that is, until he finally revised pricing for 2020 to build the business a better runway. Lifetime license holders will get **all** ACF Pro software updates forever. They won’t be required to pay for version 6.0 or any other major or minor releases in the future. They signed up for updates for life, so we’ll continue to deliver on that promise forever. 8/10— Brad Touesnard (@bradt) June 3, 2021 On Delicious Brains acquiring Advanced Custom Fields Amidst a fumbled start, Brad, did bless all lifetime license holders with access — forever. It’s on Twitter, so it’s permanent in my book. This isn’t the first pricing rodeo for Brad and company. When asked about lessons learned with pricing in a 2018 interview with Joe Howard on the WPMRR podcast, Brad had this to say: “I think the biggest thing that people don’t do is experiment with their pricing.When I launched Migrate DB Pro, I think the developer license was, $99 per year.In December of that year, I doubled the pricing. Which would have been totally uncontroversial, except that I changed all the prices for the existing customers as well. I didn’t grandfather it.And there was definitely quite a bit of blowback. I’d regret doing it because I feel like at that point, it wouldn’t have hurt us to like grandfather those people in but I don’t believe really in grandfathering people in forever.That’s the same aversion I have to like unlimited things and “lifetime this and that.”Brad Touesnard Pricing is challenging, no doubt, and lot has already been said about lifetime licenses. Should you offer them as a product owner? Clearly the data (and the community) is pointing to a firm “no” at this point. Should the customer expect that a lifetime license actually means a lifetime of free…everything? Read Chris Lema’s take, On Lifetime Licenses. WordPress, the only billion dollar software industry that has us begging for money Paul Charlton of WPTuts posted a reaction video to a recent e-mail sent from Delicious Brains, the new owners of Advanced Custom Fields. In the video, Paul shares his frustration with the ask of lifetime license holders to “pitch in” to keep the development of the popular plugin alive. Paul was one of the first in line to question what would happen to lifetime license holders when Delicious Brains acquired ACF back in June. From the current events: Agency Principal, Alex J Vasquez doesn’t seem to have an issue with the ask, stating “ Could this have been said differently? Sure, a better crafted msg would go a long way but I have zero issues with the ask.” Could this have been said differently? Sure, a better crafted msg would go a long way but I have zero issues with the ask.— Vah–skezz (@alexjvasquez) November 27, 2021 Where for folks like Charlton, it “sticks in his throat” that customers are almost feeling guilted into supporting the product. Charlton has no problem if users want to support their favorite software, but is not entirely thrilled when a brand requests it. When the dust settles After reaching out to Paul for a post-publishing lay of the land, he responded: “My biggest takeaway is the complete silence from them to be honest. They’ve been tagged in many replies and spin off comments and nothing at all has come back from them.As for learning anything new, it’s pretty much radio silence across the board. Just speculation and frustration from most commenters.” UPDATE: An updated quote from Paul after the recent ACF tweet It’s good to hear Delicious Brains are going to honour the LTD, but maybe it would be a good idea to run future emails through a competent PR company first to avoid confusion. The ACF Twitter account tweeted: “Lifetime license customers: We are still firmly committed to honoring lifetime licenses and all future emails. We will reaffirm this commitment. So there is no confusion. Signed, Brad Touesnard.” When I asked Brad for a comment, that was the tweet he shared and pointed to his previous thread, posted back in June. Some of our WP Minute Producers have expressed their thoughts in our Discord server: “Well, Brad is in a tough spot here—there are a ton of these “lifetime deals” with ACF that he inherited and their something of a liability from a business perspective.”Dave Rodenbaugh “Bra

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Gobble gobble! WordPress 5.9 will not be released until the beginning of 2022. There were some major blockers identified with the Beta Release and the team thought it best to delay the release instead of pushing through the holidays. Beta 1 was originally scheduled to release last week. Now the overall schedule will be updated to reflect the new date, January 25, 2022 (edit: We said 22nd in the podcast, but have revised it here.) This will give contributors more time to collaborate further on the release. There is a new video posted on Facebook that covers responsive editing and customization for 5.9. Check this out to see all the new features that are coming. Justin Sainton shared how he got the new brand for pagely.com launched with full site editing in WordPress. This article shares how the project was started in January of 2021 but was quickly finished in 8 weeks for the merger and acquisition with GoDaddy. Justin covers some of the pain points of Full Site Editing in Gutenberg that you should be aware of in case you decide to follow this accelerated timeline yourself. Events As I mentioned last week the State of the Word will be live-streamed from New York City. That means that you can join the fun either online or in person, on December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm EST! You can join with your local Meetup for a watch party and now you can participate in person in New York City by filling out the registration by Sunday, November 28, but be aware that not all requests will receive a seat due to the venue capacity – set at 50. Sabrina Zierden shared the first plans for the largest venue for WordCamp Europe 2022. To work on the plans, they have reopened the Call for Organizers again. It looks very exciting to have live conferences scheduled in 2022. That video looks pretty amazing as an in-person venue. Security We should maybe be getting used to seeing Security breaches happen but when it does, it is still so disturbing. This time in a disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission, GoDaddy revealed that they had been hacked. This was not the first time the company was compromised. GoDaddy stated that it has discovered that an “unauthorized third party” had accessed a managed WordPress hosting environment. Up to 1.2 million users were compromised. According to this document, GoDaddy believes that the first breach occurred around September 6, 2021, and investigations are currently underway. Go change all your WordPress passwords if you have accounts with GoDaddy. From Our Contributors and Producers Block Building Do you want to create your own custom block? The Wicked Block Builder is in the WordPress plugin directory. There’s no setup required and you can build blocks in as little as a few minutes. The block builder is still in beta so please make sure you have a backup in place before you give this plugin a try. The Automattic Theme team has been working on a plugin to help you create a Blockbased child theme. You can use the existing tools to make changes to a Blockbase theme, and then export a bundle of templates and theme.json as a new child theme. Once the theme has been created then unzipped to your WordPress site, you can modify it further. It is a cool tool to go check out. In the continued discussion around custom blocks, Matt Watson wrote a nice in-depth article about creating Gutenberg blocks over on the WPOwls. The challenge was to build a typical “Owl-Link” Gutenberg “Block” using JavaScript and React style syntax. Matt does a great job of reviewing how to build and apply a block pattern in Gutenberg. If you are not interested in learning blocks at all, you can check out Webflow’s approach to creating Websites with no code. BobWP shared that this will be year 11 for him in the WordPress space. His post reflects on people leaving WordPress recently and how the community has been important to him over the years. The PHP foundation has been created as an open collective to help maintain the knowledge that has been developed over its 26-year history. The language has been actively developed by a huge number of people and in order to have this stick around for another evolution, the foundation has been established. Many companies have joined forces to keep PHP alive, including Automattic. Mind and Body Minute As we are all busy around the holidays while trying not to eat all the pies so…enjoy the clip submitted by Michelle Schulp! It is a great reminder to take care of yourself, set realistic wellness goals, and approach the season with mindfulness. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Birget Pauli-HaackDave RodenbaughDaniel SchutzsmithBob DunnJeff ChandlerVinny McKeeMaciek Palmowski New Members:We would like to welcome Vinny from Wicked Plugins and Patrick Garman from Mindsize. They were quick to contribute this week in the news, and we appreciate it! T

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