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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★

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 this podcast ★