During the 2022 State of the Word event, Matt Mullenweg announced that the WordPress.org theme and plugin repositories would allow authors to categorize their entries as “Commercial” or “Community” products. Not long after, the feature became active.

As Sarah Gooding reports for WP Tavern, authors are starting to opt-in. Examples include Automattic’s Akismet and Jetpack plugins, which are designated as “Commercial”. Meanwhile, default themes such as Twenty Twenty-Three are designated as “Community”.

WordPress developer Ronald Huereca has written a summary of the feature, including the differences between the available categories. Also included is a guide for developers who’d like to opt-in.

Next up (listen to the podcast for more): WordPress Maintenance Minute by Austin Ginder!

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

As one of the oldest WordPress form plugins, Contact Form 7 boasts over 5 million active installs. But it has tended to lag behind competitors when it comes to user interface. Developer Munir Kamal recently announced a third-party extension, CF7 Blocks, that adds block-based functionality. Longtime users will finally have an easy way to integrate their forms into the Block Editor.

StellarWP’s Matt Cromwell has developed a Zapier automation that will provide the daily number of downloads for a plugin residing in the WordPress.org repository. The stats are compiled in a Google Sheet document. Cromwell also breaks down the value of this data in a separate blog post.

2022 was a busy year for WordPress core. Core team representative Jb Audras shared a plethora of relevant data on Twitter to prove the point. For example, there were 2,597 commits made by a total of 988 contributors during the year. The thread features several charts that demonstrate how much work goes into building and maintaining the project. The complete review is available over on make.wordpress.org.

That’s not the only year-in-review worth mentioning. Several other WordPress community members have shared their own wrap-ups, including:

• Syed Balkhi (Founder and CEO of Awesome Motive)
• Carrie Dils (WordPress developer and LinkedIn Learning instructor)
• Katie Keith (Barn2 Plugins)
• Alex Standiford & Family (WordPress developer)
• Wombat Plugins

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From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

• Which AI platform is better at writing a WordPress plugin? Keanan Koppenhaver pitted GitHub CoPilot and ChatGPT against each other to find out.
• Justin Ferriman looks at why blocks may play a key role in the next WordPress gold rush.
• With many WordPress community members moving to Mastodon, Antonio Cambronero has written a guide for integrating with the decentralized social platform.
• Over at The Verge, Monique Judge asks for a return to the days of personal blogging.
• WordCamp US will take place from August 24-26, 2023 in National Harbor, MD. The event has recently posted an open call for organizers.

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Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: 

• Matt Cromwell
• Justin Ferriman
• Keanan Koppenhaver

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