In this episode, Andrew Palmer of Bertha.ai reflects on his time at WordCamp Europe. If you were stuck at home to watch from afar like me, your FOMO was probably running at 110%. Unlike Andrew, I missed out on the awesome talks, after parties, and the ever important hallway track. Missing friends and colleagues in one of the most beautiful places in the world! I'm happy to see it was a successful event. If you had a great time, or appreciate their hard work, say thanks to the WCEU Organizing Team. ★ Support this podcast ★

Strattic was acquired by Elementor. Miriam Schwab, co-founder of Strattic writes:  “Life is interesting – sometimes outcomes are obvious, and sometimes what ends up happening kind of blows our minds. When we set out to build Strattic, we expected to follow the usual path: raise Pre-Seed, Seed, A rounds etc. An exit was always on the table, but who knows when that would be or how that would look? It was hard to imagine.”Miriam Schwab Well, imagine no more as her team brings Jamstack to Elementor. A move that should add a lot of value and expertise to the cloud offering of Elementor. Stay subscribed to hear an interview with Miriam on this podcast.  Julien Melissas tweeted that his company Craftpeak was acquired. Craftpeak is complete with web solutions for craft breweries.  Good news! If you’ve been struggling with FSE, WordPress 6.1 is set to improve that experience, writes Sarah Gooding on the Tavern. See the roadmap for 6.1 and learn what’s ahead…all the way to 2025?! Brian Coords continues to challenge the WordPress status quo over on MasterWP in two featured posts today. First, When the Cathedral Owns the Bazaar, a fresh take on the age-old dilemma: Automattic, a WordPress agency, and an open source ideology walk into a bar. Capping off his second post right here on The WP Minute, where he asks Where will the WordPress middle class go? Rebooting a concept that I wrote about a while back about the blue collar digital worker. Matt Cromwell and Lesley Sim have officially announced Glam That Plugin! Check out the announcement YouTube video where Lesley looks great and Matt…well he’s Matt. The grab bag is back! And it’s filled with threads! Kim Coleman co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro has an interesting thread on taking a product focus sabbatical. Matias Ventura added more commentary to the WCEU fireside chat with Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomposy. He also extended these thoughts around the admin experience in a Make WordPress post. Alan Sschlesser urges that theme.json is not the replacement we’re hoping for in WordPress themes. Phil Crumm chops the head off of headless WordPress solutions. Stating that in terms of headless, “it’s (WordPress) falling short.” Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Eric KarkovackDaniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli-HaackRaquel Landefeld ★ Support this podcast ★

Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has a creative way to find new WordPress customers that may just surprise you! Find an existing community of non technical people that have websites (like bookkeepers or copywriters) Then look at any of these three things... 1. Above the Fold: Do they have the three things any site needs when visitors first arrive? (hint: What's the Pain? | How do they Solve the Pain? | What's the Call To Action to get the Solution?) 2. Ways To Contact: Do they have the BIG 3 ways listed clearly in a way that is easy to find? (hint: Phone | Email | Social ). It's amazing how many companies don't list a phone number, when a virtual number is almost no cost today with Google Voice and similar. 3. Add To List: Do they have a way for visitors to the site to add their email to a list (hopefully one that is for marketing automation and not just collecting dust). It costs virtually nothing in time or money for them to implement this feature, just like a fishbowl in the old days for folks to drop their business card to win a prize. It's the only way for them to avoid losing potential leads. Once you've looked at any or all three of these, email them with FREE advice on how to fix their problems, and preferably setup a 15 minute call to speak with them on Zoom and learn more about what they do, how they do it, and whether they have someone who currently helps them with their WordPress website. Remember: There was a world of people doing business BEFORE social media and paid online advertisement. It still exists... it's called "The Golden Rule" ;-) ★ Support this podcast ★

News Big acquisition news happened last week when Delicious Brains, owned by Brad Touesnard, sold five of its plugins to WPEngine. You may use one or all of these plugins starting with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), WP Migrate, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES, and Better Search Replace. Some of the product teams will be moving to WPEngine and the other support teams and developers will continue as usual as issues are escalated to them. Listen to Brad’s interview with Matt Medeiros right here on the WPMinute. Other ecommerce News DTC Patterns, an ongoing Barrel research project has compiled over 100 articles where their teams buy real products from brands many of us are familiar with. They highlight interesting and effective ecommerce user experiences and marketing interactions. These observations are called “patterns” where over 100+ articles were written showcasing various ways brands engage with customers before, during, and after the purchase process.  Events WordCamp EU is over and it looks like many in the WordPress community had a great time getting together in person and talking about all the new things arriving in WordPress 6.0, Gutenberg and the future of WordPress. It was announced that WordCamp EU will be in Athens, Greece. The WPMinute’s writer, Eric Karkovac wrote about the feelings of WordCamps and David Bisset shares his takeaways from WordCamp EU. I donated $100 to A Big Orange Heart for 20 selfies taken with Matt Cromwell out in Porto. He matched the $100 along with Michelle Frechette’s WPCoffee Talk and StellarWP. I challenge you to match a $100 donation too!  If you are using a Pagebuilder with WordPress this is a heads up that the Pagebuilder Summit is right around the corner June 20 - 24 2022. Registration is open for this event. From Our Contributors and Producers John Locke shared this Podcast episode from MasterWP about Capitalizing the “P” in WordPress. Nyasha Green and Rob Howard discuss this article about why the capital P in WordPress is such a big deal and why this one letter influences how some people think about it when hiring developers.  Speaking of hiring developers, Rachel Cherry is looking to fill a 20/hr a week developer position at Cornell University College of Business. Check out the Tweet for more detail. Community Segments this week by: WP Security Minute by Chris Wiegman Learn WP minute by Hauwa Abashiya New Members We would like to welcome Austin Ginder as a Producer and Brian Coords to the WPMinute Community. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Joe CasabonaJohn Locke ★ Support this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★