The WP Minute

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm constantly filled with self-doubt. Will this experiment work? Can I make it a sustainable publication? There aren't that many people who _care_ about WordPress news, let alone care to contribute to it. This is a topic I unpacked in my interview with Kim Coleman on funding a WordPress news website. So many have come and gone in this space -- I can see why. I am grateful, however, when folks like Eric Karkovack step up to become contributors. I'm enjoying his series about the impact WordPress is having on freelancers: Part 1: What does Full Site Editing mean for freelancers? Part 2: Is WordPress pushing freelancers away? (published today) You'll get to hear Eric in today's short interview. If you're interested in becoming a contributor of content, please reach out to me. The Gutenberg Minute Birgit Pauli-Haack shares some Gutenberg updates as well. Here are the important links mentioned: Curated experiences with locking APIs & theme.json #38333 Global Styles: Saving style variations Call for Testing: WordPress Media Italian Japanese Gutenberg Developer Hours 2/22 on Meetup 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 There have been a lot of people working with the latest 5.9 WordPress release and reporting their successes and failures. Tammie Lister wrote a post about the features in the editor and would like people to quit using the term FSE - Full Site Editing in 2022. The release is not an all-or-nothing proposal yet. Matt Medeiros created a video on the future of page builders with Gutenberg when a discussion on Discord started with Justin Ferriman, a WPMinute producer. Go check out that video to see if you agree with the future of Gutenberg. Anne McCarthy writes about some practical ways to lock your projects for clients and users that can make changes to a WordPress website. The new template locking API  that was released in 5.9 along with newer tools like theme.json continues to be modified to adapt to the user experience.  The WordPress Photo Directory recently hit 1,317 photos and continues to grow. There has been a new Slack Channel created and the team is looking for volunteers and moderators to work on a new site being set up on the make network. The team needs help working through issues in the coming months. So… As we head into the iterative part of Gutenberg’s phase 2, there will be changes for the community of users as they continue to look at WordPress. Josepha Haden Chomphosy writes that the Theory of Technology adoption that will come in three parts. Keep visiting make.wordpress.org to continue to get the latest updates. Security PHP Everywhere, a utility for web developers to be able to use PHP code in pages, posts, the sidebar, or anywhere with a WordPress Gutenberg block has Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities. WordFence reported that there are three critical vulnerabilities in PHP Everywhere all leading to remote code execution in versions of the software below 2.0.3. There was a patched version of the plugin rolled out so if you are using this make sure that you are up to date as soon as possible to keep your WordPress site...well up to date. From Our Contributors and Producers Justin Tadlock over at WPTavern wrote a recent article about the Clarity AdBlocker for WordPress. Ads and upsells have been showing up in WordPress dashboards and many in the community have been complaining about it over the past few years. For many that get that exposure through the WordPress dashboard, this announcement was not well-received (to say the least).  If the default full-screen editing mode and welcome guide in WordPress is annoying when you first visit the edit interface, you can jump over to GitHub to grab the drop-in snippet to disable it. Some may say that PHP is dead (or dying). There is a comprehensive article over at Kinsta that per W3Techs, PHP is used by 78.1% or almost 4 out of 5 websites. PHP seems to be very much alive and faster than before when updated to the latest release. You can go check out this article for the latest benchmarks. Are you one of those people who hate working through your inbox and approach it with dread? There is a new interesting email product called Shortwave that provides a new experience with threads, history, and bundles. You should check it out as an interesting tool to organize your email and provide a nicer experience.  If you are a Beaver Builder Pagebuilder user, it is great to know that they have released a free library of courses. Next up is the Creator Minute from our producers Michelle Frechette and our Simplified Business Minute...Sam Munoz “WP Career Summit” by Michelle Frechette Transcript This is Michelle Frechette with your WP Community minute. April 8 marks the first-ever WordPress Career Summit. Tracks will be dedicated to those looking for jobs and for employers. The job seeker track will include sessions geared toward helping those look for employment with talks about the job search, applying, and interview preparation. The employer track will include sessions around recruiting, onboarding, managing remote teams, and more. Over the last few years, I’ve watched people searching for jobs, and I’ve seen companies posting openings. The job market has been difficult for many. My hope is that a career summit like this will help both sides of the hiring table, while also allowing sponsors to show why you should apply to work for them. Sponsor spots are still open. This is a Post Status event, and I’m the organizer, so reach out if you have any questions. WP Career Summit is free to attend. For more information and to register, visit wpcareersummit.com! “Simplified Business Minute” - Sam Muñoz Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Daniel SchutzsmithBirgit Pauli-HaackJoe CasabonaJeff ChandlerDave Rodenbaugh New Members We would like to welcome Thomas Maier  Founder and CEO of Advanced Ads and webgilde GmbH to the WPMinute.  If you haven't noticed, the WPMinute got a fantastic new paint job...more than a paint job...also under the hood. This thing is screaming fast. Thanks to Mike Oliver for designing the new WPMinute theme for us built on Generate Press. If you are looking for somebody that does amazing front-end design and optimization, look no further than WPMinute Producer, Contributor, and web developer Mike Oliver. Thanks to his hard work on the redesign. Thanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday. 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 Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, made the news again (this time with the Wall Street Journal). He talks about ‘asynchronous work’ and why he thinks hybrid models will die out.  Automattic employees are already living the work from anywhere model and are able to adjust their work schedules as needed. Anne McCarthy is back with another round of testing this time for the WordPress Photo directory. By adding your photos here, they will automatically appear in Openverse, a search engine for openly licensed media. Volunteers are needed to test and provide feedback on media-related features in WordPress. Anyone is welcome to contribute, and feedback is open until February 23. Eric Karkovac wrote a post on the WordPress photo directory. If you would like an understanding of how licensing images came about and to see an early review of WordPress media go check out his article. From Our Contributors and Producers Many in the WordPress community have been feeling the weight of growth and change and frankly everything over the last couple of years. Cory Miller shared an update on his “crash and burn”. Many of us are not alone in this area and support Cory along with his team over at PostStatus. The organizers of WordCamp Europe 2022, were called out recently for a lack of diversity on the Organizing Team. They are addressing that now citing the team cares deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Click the link to read their updated communication. Angela Jin has started an open discussion on diversity as well over on make.wordpress.org. Make sure to participate in this very important discussion and provide feedback. Eric Mann wrote a post on his first month using WordPress 5.9 from an experienced WordPress contributor perspective. If you would like to see the good, the bad and the future of WordPress this post is worth a few minutes of your time. Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern covered the latest with the German court fining a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-Hosted Fonts. If you are using Google fonts and are subject to European regulations, you may want to review how you are using them to be in compliance. Sarah’s colleague Justin Tadlock wrote an article stating that Block Editor Sidebar Panels are the new Admin Notices. Product marketers will be interwoven with the editing experience for the foreseeable future. Or until an official mechanism for products to notify users of upgrades is offered in core, as WP Minute correspondent Spencer Forman comments. Business news! Convesio Raises $5M in funding to further develop its scalable WordPress Hosting Platform. This funding will help to deliver a consistently fast experience with their customers.  MasterWP.co, a newsletter for WordPress professionals, announced that Howard Development & Consulting has acquired the publication.  From Alex Denning Some news: after 5 years and 249 issues, @BinaryMoon and I have written our final issue of http://MasterWP.co. @howarddcweb have acquired MasterWP, and will be taking over bringing you insightful, quality WordPress news and analysis from next week. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:  Jeff ChandlerBirgit Pauli-HaackEric Karkovack If you would like to contribute news, especially in the WooCommerce space please find us @thewpminute or use our contact form at thewpminute.com and reach out to us. New Members We would like to welcome our new member this week Lawrence Ladomery from convesio.com. 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 Spencer Forman of WPLaunchify is back to explore the future of the WP stack and how it might impact you as an agency owner or WordPress freelancer. It wasn't too long ago that HTML/CSS and some PHP knowledge was all that you needed to develop moderately advanced sites, now, the future looks a bit different. Will you leverage React, Gutenberg, FSE and all of the new technology in as WordPress advances? Spencer's hopeful for the future of WordPress and shares his opinions in today's episode. Read our related article: What does full site editing mean for WordPress freelancers? Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★