The WP Minute

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute If you missed Matt Mullenweg's address at WordCamp US 2022, he snuck in a mention of the new hosting infrastructure without much context around it. Could Automattic be building out the next WordPress hosting company behind the scenes? What if you wanted to launch a WooCommerce specific hosting company? Possibly a solution that end users didn't even know was running WordPress? I reached out to Jesse Friedman, Director of innovation at Automattic, now leading the WP.cloud product with a series of questions to explore this new topic a bit further. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Adobe set to acquire Figma If you’re a designer or UI specialist in the WordPress world, chances are you already know about the Adobe/Figma deal. A $20 Billion dollar deal in cash and stock – 40 times Figma revenue – shocked us and launched more memes, probably using Photoshop, than we’ve in the tech space since…well about 4 months ago. 4 Years ago, Figma donated an organizational membership to WordPress.org. Will you continue to use Figma? Tweet at us. In Mullenweg’s recent WCUS address, he snuck in the mention of Automattic’s new cloud service – wp.cloud. It looks to be infrastructure for cloud providers wanting to serve up some WordPress hosting, leveraging .com’s sprawling CDN & other technology. Products like Jetpack already use .com’s CDN as part of their services, as I’m sure other products like VideoPress do.  I reached out to Jesse Friedman, who leads the wp.cloud initiative, for an interview. Here’s a sneak peek of that, which airs next week – subscribe so you don’t miss it! Hosting news continues with WP Engine jumping into the WordPress flavor hosting with a new WooCommerce offering. While Siteground surprises us with their Easy Digital Downloads speciality hosting. Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute & Amber Hinds with the Accessibility Minute! Links you shouldn’t miss There’s a handful of other links you shouldn’t miss this week. These links should help you stay informed around the moving and shaking of WordPress: Matt Mullenweg WCUS Address This is a direct recording of his livestream session. If you missed it or want to hear the audience Q&A round, click to tune in. Why WordPress and Wix will Always Be Worlds Apart The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack, breaks down a detailed comparison on how much WordPress & Wix differ.  Help Test WordPress 6.1 The WordPress 6.1 Beta is out! Remember, don’t complain…explain…your issues by testing the latest version before it's released.  From the grab bag Some of these links might interest you – dive in! ACF 6.0 is releasedWebP pulled from 6.xSyed Bahlki makes an interesting prediction about the future of WordPressMatt Cromwell launched WP Product Shop Talk Twitter Spaces. Subscribe to The WP Minute as this show will be exclusively syndicated through our podcast feed. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Eric KarkovackDaniel ShutzsmithRaquel LandefeldCameron JonesBirgit Pauli-HackMichelle FrechetteAngela Bowman Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Today's episode is a recording from the official WCUS 2022 livestream found in this video. We've extracted the Matt Mullenweg session which includes some of his outlook on WordPress 6.1, community, and a Q&A session from the audience. If you had a chance to attend WCUS, send us a tweet about your favorite session or experience. Photograph by Daniel Schutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Our episode is recorded this week by Michelle Frechette. News  Sarah Gooding over at the WP Tavern posted an article asking Gutenberg Contributors to test block-based templates in WordPress Classic Themes. During Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp last week, there was a discussion about helping with block adoption. If you would like to see what this is all about and help test, jump over to make.wordpress.org. Did you know that the WordPress Plugins Directory crossed 60,000 plugins? Sarah Gooding tweeted about this incredible milestone. Security Eric Karkovack shared the PSA to update the WordPress Two-Factor plugin ASAP. There are two security fixes that are available on GitHub. Events WordCamp Nepal 2022 is scheduled for the 5th & 6th of November 2022 at the Chitwan Garden Resort (CGR), Bharatpur Nepal. It was announced that the  Ujwal Thapa memorial scholarship will be available to 7 eligible candidates who want to attend this WordCamp. The 2023 WordCamp US will be held in National Harbor, Maryland from August 23-25, 2023. The announcement was made at WordCamp US last week. From Our Contributors and Producers Still thinking about going out on your own? Justin Ferriman, who ran LearnDash shares in his blog that it is important to keep an eye on reviews to find market share opportunities. Justin shares a great list to get started with software reviews and shares some third-party suggestions. Chris Weigman introduced Kana, which is a simple and powerful WordPress development environment. If you are looking for a local development environment you can get started by visiting Chris’ website. After seeing many great photos from WordCamp US, Brad Williams shared this tweet with the job board. Matt Medeiros listed the 35 companies hiring over at the WP Minute. CNBC Make It showed that WordPress is number 10 for hiring on the work-from-anywhere and most in-demand jobs.  GoDaddy is launching a preview of Managed WooCommerce Stores to US-based customers. It is the largest investment to date in eCommerce. If you are looking for a solution to multichannel selling for your customers, you may want to go check out the tools being offered. A report in SEO journal announced that Bluehost unveiled a new WordPress eCommerce solution that simplifies creating a store with a point-and-click interface. Amber Hinds tweeted from WordCamp US that @photmatt says there's a challenge getting assistive technology users to test Gutenberg and provide feedback. Only if you expect them to do it for free. Budgeting to pay people with disabilities for their time will solve this and is the right thing to do. This has been the challenge for WordPress.org without a great solution yet. Cameron Jones tweeted: If you are using Paypal to pay for Delicious Brains products, WPEngine announced that you need to change your method of payment on the website. They are no longer supporting Paypal as a payment method. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Eric KarkovackJustin FerrimanDaniel SchutzsmithRaquel LandefeldCameron Jones Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Editor's note: How I imagine the background music to WordCamp US 2022 News The new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, will be a stripped-down base theme with many style variations built by the WordPress design community. This theme is being released to make theme development exciting again. Jump over to the Gutenberg times to read about variations and see the latest on the “good and bad”.  WordPress.com has announced that they can build and design a website for new business owners, in four business days or less. If you are on a budget, the cost is $499, plus an additional purchase of the WordPress.com premium plan. It will be interesting to see how this will grow and if it has any impact on the WordPress professional freelance community.  Security Wordfence PSA: on September 6, 2022, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team was alerted to the presence of a vulnerability being exploited in BackupBuddy, a WordPress plugin that has around 140,000 active installations. This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information. There is minimal sharing about the details of this vulnerability as it is still an active threat. If you are interested in reading more jump over to the Wordfence website. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article that WordPress’ Security Team announced it will be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 on December 1, 2022.  Events WordCamp US has started!  Michelle Frechette writes about how to make the most of your Wordcamp US experience with fewer participants and dealing with COVID restrictions. Use the official #WCUS hashtag to follow the online WCUS conversation. If you are there, say hi to Raquel Landefeld who is our community lead at the WP Minute. If you are a new camper, go listen to the Matt Report and Gina Marie Innocent to get more ideas on how to make the most of your WordCamp experience. From Our Contributors and Producers Phil Crumm has a thread on Twitter that the WordPress community is uneasy about the growing pace of acquisitions. His hot take may be correct as the news that GridPane has completed a seed round of funding, including a significant strategic investment from Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, WordPress VIP, and Jetpack.  Another acquisition Rocketgenius, the company behind Gravity Forms, has acquired Gravity Flow and Gravity Experts. The acquisition will help the Gravity Forms community by strengthening the portfolio of WordPress product offerings. Vito Peleg, Atarim’s founder, recently led the first angel fundraising round for their agency collaboration tool. He and Matt Medeiros had a great interview right here on the WP Minute.  Anders Norén has a new WordPress theme Björk that he announced on Twitter. Björk is built for the Site Editor and Global Styles features introduced in WordPress 6.0, with 15+ block patterns and seven different theme styles that you can switch between with the click of a button. Ganga Kafle (KafleG), a representative of the WordPress theme team and a member of WordPress Nepal has an open letter to Matt Mullenweg suggesting that the next WordPress release be named in honor of Mr. Ujwal Thapa, an important member of the WordPress Community who lost his life to COVID. We have not been able to locate a response from Matt Mullenweg at this time. Mark Zahra, a WP Minute member, shares his opinion on his website about the state of WordPress blogs. Today we see a mix of older blogs with a solid reputation, newer blogs with unclear intentions, and some that are putting money ahead of everything else. Go spend a few minutes of your time reading about where Mark thinks this is all headed. A big congrats to WordCamp Kathmandu on their 10th anniversary! Sunita Rai shared on Twitter what an incredible experience it was joining the organizers' team as a speaker wrangler. Alan Edwards tweeted about being up all night producing an epic AI-powered Gutenberg block to generate beautiful images from a text prompt in seconds and inserting them into your WordPress posts and pages. If you would like to test it out, sign up to get the instructions emailed to you. learn.wordpress.org needs help with setting the priorities for learning WordPress. They would like to have users complete the Individual Learner Survey to help the team with analysis. Please take a couple of minutes of your time to complete this survey. Next Up Amber Hinds with the Community Minute - “TWMP on Deaf Awareness Month: “Captions”  Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Jeff ChandlerAndrew PalmerEric KarkovackBrian CoordsBirgit Pauli-HaackDaniel ShutzsmithMichelle FrechetteMark ZahraAmber Hinds Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture.io, shares a fascinating anecdote with Angela Bowman, WordPress Meetup organizer and podcaster (Women in WP), about a relatively new WordPress user (Dave’s daughter) who had built a WordPress site with Dave’s help last year but struggled to get another one launched on her own this summer.  Dave’s daughter and her boss, who very much wanted to use WordPress, spent five weeks trying to get WordPress to work for them. They finally gave up and gave Wix a try. One week later, they had a finished, professional-looking site.  Angela and Dave talk about the reasons behind this not-so-successful WordPress story which led to the $64,000 dollar question, Who is WordPress for Anyway?  With different camps forming around WordPress, can we come back together again? Since the announcement of Gutenberg in 2015, the speed at which the page builder plugins have evolved has not slowed down. If anything, they are growing faster and stronger than ever. And it makes sense! The Block Editor can be quite confusing and in Dave’s words “janky”. The on-boarding process with WordPress requires a learning curve that is pretty steep. But it’s not just about getting hosting set up or being initiated into how to set the Front Page in the Reading Settings. In this use case, simply working with the Block Editor created a major hurdle in getting content laid out without a great deal of frustration. What do you think about who WordPress is for? Please share your thoughts. What will it take to make WordPress easier for DIYers? And in the words of the Beatles, will we ever “Come Together” again? Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute You'd be hard pressed to find a business, both online and brick-and-mortar, that didn't invest in their website over the last three years. With WordPress marketshare showing only a sliver of marketshare decline since pandemic heights, it's still a force to be reckoned with. Putting page builders and coding tools to the side: The client + agency collaboration process of designing a website can be one of the most costly parts of any new WordPress project. Atarim aims to solve this issue using their software aimed at WordPress professionals. Vito Peleg, Atarim's founder, recently lead their first angel fundraising round. While he didn't share the total value of the deal with me, it does provide a solid year and a half of runway, according to his prediction. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing this post on social media and supporting or joining our membership here. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News  WordPress continues to work on core template changes to refine the creation experience. Many more options will be released with WordPress 6.1 that will continue to improve website building. You can explore the enhancements now in the Gutenberg plugin.  Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article about how the WP-Optimize plugin was being accused of cheating their page speed performance tool. Before the dust settled, there was a follow up article covering the details about WP-Optimize denying the cheating allegations. If you are interested in the specifics around the performance gathering and analyzing the techniques both articles are worth a read. Sarah Gooding was writing a lot about performance last week. She had another article about how WordPress is placing WebP by default on hold for WordPress 6.1. There were many objections from lead developers and the image upload has been controversial since it was announced. WooCommerce If you are a WooCommerce user, there is a Store Editing Roadmap update for Q3. A lot of work has been going on for the last few months and you can quickly see what is coming Now, Next and Later. Events WordCamp US is right around the corner. Make sure you look for Raquel Landefeld who will be representing the WP Minute and don’t forget that you can sign up for the live stream if you are not attending in person. The speaker call for WordCamp Buffalo is open. This WordCamp will be an in-person event and held October 22, 2022. Submissions must be in by September 11th, 2022 for speaker slots. Next up!  Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute - “Attending a post-covid WCUS” Richard Tabor teases his upcoming WCUS talk: A New Era of WordPress Themes is Here: Block Themes From Our Contributors and Producers Sam Munoz shares that the WP Engine Builders have become a community that is unique and special. Go check them out on Twitter and become part of the builder team. Tom Mcfarlin has written a post about using the block editor as a developer. It has not been the greatest experience. Most of the frustration comes from standards that are not in place and documentation that is scarce. This often happens with major changes and updates in WordPress. Take a few minutes to read his article. It is organized and steps you through what you will need to develop blocks and it has many great reference links. Can we please stop saying “Gutenberg’ now? Fränk Klein’s post on the HumanMade website makes a good point of how Gutenberg is confusing. Is it a project? Is it a plugin? Is it an editor? Not for developers? Some kind of historic timeline in the multiverse that is human history? The bottom line is to be specific when referencing Gutenberg. Abha Thakor tweeted "One of my favorite things to support has been this photography celebration with the new #WordPress Photo Directory. It will be so wonderful to enjoy views from across the world and discover where existing and new contributors are located." WP Minute members have continued the discussion of FSE, building websites, CSS, and how relevant WordPress will be in the near future. Brian Coords shared the article from Geoff Graham about not being sure how to WordPress anymore and Lesley Sim tweeted that WordPress is still very complicated and may be 3 to 5 years away from being seamless. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Michelle FrechetteJoe CasabonaDaniel ShutzsmithBrian CoordsSam MunozLesley Sim Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News  WordPress 6.0.2 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is available for testing. Testing is so important with this release so please go over to make.wordpress.org to help. There are also a lot of exciting things happening with the block editor. Birgit Pauli-Haack shared that there is a new call for testing by Anne McCarthy for Full-site Editing and another one by Justin Tadlock for the Fluid Typography in themes. Go check out the Gutenberg Times table of contents to see all the new things. WooCommerce WooCommerce is bringing back the sandbox environment that makes it easy for a customer to test extensions before purchasing them. Select extensions can be loaded up on a private test site for 30 days before the site self-destructs. Sarah Gooding covers all the details over at WPTavern. From Our Contributors and Producers Digital Ocean Holdings Inc. will acquire Cloudways. The purchase will enhance offerings for small to medium-sized businesses. Under the terms of the transaction, DigitalOcean will acquire Cloudways for $350 million in cash, including a significant portion of the consideration to be paid over a 30-month period following the closing. It will be interesting to see how all the implementations will occur as some of the competitors are going to now be on the new host. Matt Medeiros interviews Yaw Owusu-Ansah over on the Matt Report.  Yaw says that: there's something nice and freeing about [owning] an agency, being able to make your own decisions and call your own shots. If you’re creating content for your WordPress website and need to try something different, go check out Bertha AI. There is a new pricing model and you can pay as you go with a subscription. WP Minute member Sam Munoz is having live conversations with Brian Gardner over at WPEngine about the WordPress community, the future of Full Site Editing, and how it all impacts business owners. It is called Build Mode live and worth a visit.  Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Birgit Pauli-HaackEric KarkovackAndrew PalmerSam MunozDaniel Shutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute News  A new WordPress homepage and download page is live but was it done quickly enough? Mullenweg’s perception of how long a layout should take started a lot of discussion about the timing of the release, the number of volunteers on the project…to well…you name it. The comments to the controversy ran the gamut. Mullenweg’s comments were posted in an article in Search Engine Journal about using the Block Editor. He said: it’s such a basic layout, it’s hard to imagine it taking a single person more than a day on Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or one of the WP page builders. Brian Coords wrote an opinion piece on  MasterWP that there may be a leadership problem surrounding the project. This captures how people have felt about the WordPress Community for years. The bottom line is that there are many contributors that want to make WordPress better and need guidance in the project to get there. They want to be a part of the next iteration and keep the community growing and moving forward. There is a new Twenty Twenty-Three default theme in development and there are many variations that are being proposed. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern reviews what has been proposed and reviewed what submissions look like. This project will close on August 31st to prepare for the October 25, 2022 release. Gutenberg Gutenberg designers are considering replacing the current welcome guide with a new onboarding experience. This idea is to show the features available upfront. You should go and check out the design changes proposed and provide feedback over at make.wordpress.org. WooCommerce WooCommerce has submitted a Request for Change (RFC) to reduce the size of the woocommerce plugin archive. If you are using WooCommerce you should review how this change could impact debugging your workflows. Events There is still time to nominate your favorite WordPress products over at the WP Weekly. This is the second year for the awards and a fun way to support your favorite products. From Our Contributors and Producers The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed. The WP Minute member, Lesley Simm tweeted: Took us long enough. The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed.We last made a legit update to it over a year ago. 5 months ago, we added a notice to say we would close it in May 2022, then just didn't.  Cameron Jones writes in his blog why he is not sold on ‘Five For The Future".  His personal experience about the way to contribute may be shared by others and it should be paid attention to if the WordPress community is to get through this time of growing pains. A new proposal, published by Automattic-sponsored contributor Adam Zielinski, calls for contributors to stabilize APIs before merging them into core. The Gutenberg plugin has been the safe place to experiment but suggests that these APIs being put into core is a real problem. Adam is looking for feedback on this until September 7th.  Winstina Hughes has a guest post this week on the WP Minute about sponsoring underrepresented & minority WordCamp speakers. We encourage you to read or listen to the podcast episode. New Member This week we welcome Cory Miller from Post Status to the #linksquad crew. If you’re not a member yet, go to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport to join. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  John LockeCameron JonesDaniel Shutzsmith Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★