The WP Minute

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeNews 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 ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeHow 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 ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeNews 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeNews 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeNews 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeRecently 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeWordPress 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeDaniel 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeNews 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 this podcast ★

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribeOne 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 this podcast ★