The WP Minute

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute Now that WordPress 5.8 is here, what’s next?  Many people have been using WordPress 5.8 since the release last week. Joe Casabona does a great review on his YouTube channel which covers improvements in the block editor, embedded pdfs and table improvements.  Justin Tadlock over at WPTavern does a rundown of plugins that test the theory that many features of WordPress 5.8 can be disabled until you are ready to address them yourself. And the fun won’t stop…Hector Prieto tells us What’s next in Gutenberg stating: Full Site Editing is the lighthouse goal for Phase 2 of Gutenberg. As such, it’s good to remember it is a collection of projects that allow site editing with blocks, bringing powerful capabilities for a smooth editing experience. Don’t get left behind (and don’t complain) about the features being shipped when you can see a lot of the conceptual work being done around Full Site Editing on make.wordpress.org.  Patterns all around me WordPress.org/patterns might be the most exciting “release” around WP 5.8 for me, anyway. A browsable collection of block patterns that you can literally copy/paste into your WordPress page is really exciting.  I’m looking forward to seeing what others contribute to the directory when it’s available. WordPress on the rise…but not plugins?  David Bisset, Post Status chief curating officer, alerted us to a recent decline in active plugins through the year 2021. In contrast to the growth of WordPress, David reached out to others in the community to help draw a pattern:  There’s no reason to panic but plugin authors and business owners should be aware of the trend and keep an eye on it. I think the sudden dip is what caught my (and others) eye. While noteworthy, the ecosystem could be “adjusting” as other industries are going through similar trends. Pull up the post on Post Status for more visuals, including riveting graphs.  A win for accessibility + WordPress Also over at WPTavern, Sarah Gooding covers the recent decision for Colorado to become the First State to Require State and Local Government Websites to Meet Accessibility Standards.  Colorado has more than 4,268 active local governments using WordPress and those responsible for local sites will need to begin the process of creating a plan to ensure they are accessible before July 1, 2024. The WordPress.org Themes Team announced an open discussion and a date for a Zoom meeting with theme authors. This meeting is scheduled July 28th at 2:00 p.m. The team is proposing a new set of guidelines that reduces and simplifies what is currently in place. The BuddyPress team released their block widgets 9.0. The new BP Widget Blocks are Legacy Widgets, rebuilt as BP Blocks. You can also access them in the Block Editor for use in your posts or pages. Events WordCamp US 2021 will be a one-day event scheduled for October 1st with networking opportunities, speaker sessions, workshops, and more. This was proposed after COVID cases are on the uptick again in the US. From the Grabbag Rich Tabor has made a new block plugin for adding markdown comments that only display while editing a post with Gutenberg. If you decide to test it, just remember the block only renders within the editor. For developers reading this, that means there’s no save function. Gravity Forms adds a new reCAPTCHA Add-On with their newest launch. They are providing Support for Google reCAPTCHA. With the new Add-On, all Gravity Forms customers can now integrate Google reCAPTCHA v3 in any or all of their forms. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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  A lot of WordPress News this Week After months of talking about the release of WordPress 5.8, it has finally arrived. Matt Mullenweg announced that “Tatum”, our latest and greatest release now available for download or update is in your dashboard. This release is named in honor of Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist.  But if you need a thorough review, I recommend you head over to Kinsta’s blog where Carlo Daniele had time to write an amazing summary that covers all the new features of WordPress 5.8. His full-featured post includes a table of contents along with the videos discussing what has been worked on and added in the latest few months. It is a great source for all of the new things in WordPress 5.8. Speaking of great sources… Birgit Pauli-Haack covers more WordPress Themes for Full-Site Editing along with their Resources in the latest post on Gutenberg Times. Birgit says:  “Just remember that themes may be wonky at times until developers have had time to make updates.” Bob over at Do-the-Woo covers the latest WooCommerce updates. These updates cover the Action Scheduler 3.2.0 and 3.2.1. The AS library from 3.1.6 to 3.2.1 has been updated in this latest release. Sounds fascinating. This release comes with several fixes and an additional database index to speed up performance for sites with heavy traffic. We all love that. Lastly, Sarah over at WPTavern reports that Tiny, the makers of TinyMCE, have acquired Setka, a content design and editing platform, for an undisclosed amount of money. TinyMCE is used by millions of WordPress users, most visibly in the Classic Editor plugin as well as the Advanced Editor Tools plugin, previously known as TinyMCE Advanced.  Advanced Editor Tools adds a “Classic Paragraph” block to the block editor that gives access to the TinyMCE editor with configurable rows and buttons. It provides a stepping stone for those who are not quite ready to switch to the block editor. Events This is the week folks. Wordfest Live starts on July 23, 2021. It’s the 24-hour festival of WordPress. From the Grabbag Changes are being made to meetup.com, the platform where local WordPress events are based. WPCalendar.io will no longer receive any more updates. If you think we can’t keep up with Acquisitions, join the club. Quite literally, Cory Miller over at Post Status has an Acquisition Tracker and it shows you when a WordPress business was sold and who bought it. Over on the Matt Report, my latest interview is with Dave Rodenbaugh. He shares he was never even working on a part-time basis with his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. Go check out the latest episode. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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 Automattic purchases Pocket Casts, a popular podcast app that was facing an uncertain future. A quote from the creators of the app: “As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new). We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts” Recent installs of WooCommerce were hit with a vulnerability which has since been patched. If you haven’t updated your WooCommerce site, please check that as soon as possible. A quote from the WooCommerce blog: Our investigation into this vulnerability and whether data has been compromised is ongoing. We will be sharing more information with site owners on how to investigate this security vulnerability on their site, which we will publish on our blog when it is ready. Pantheon host, known for WordPress hosting and Drupal hosting has raised 100 Million in a Series E round We were planning to raise in a year or two years down the road. But we have a lot of conviction in where this industry is going and our customers’ needs are pretty apparent, so we used this as an opportunity to accelerate our operational plans for the company.” — Zack Rosen, Pantheon CEO, tells TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/webops-platform-pantheon-raises-100m-from-softbank-vision-fund/ From the grab bag I found EduPack to be an interesting “Jetpack-like” plugin for higher ed A walk around the search block by Javier Arce depicts how he approaches the design of the Gutenberg search block WordFest Live starts next week, July 22-23 What is headless and why does everyone seem to want it? Hosted by Miriam Schwab of Strattic and team Yoast Over on the Matt Report I interviewed Dave Rodenbaugh of recapture.io on how he took that business from part time to full time That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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 Great News for the Castos Team in private podcasting Castos, a leader in podcast hosting and analytics, has successfully closed an investment round of $756,000. With investments by Automattic, Yoast SEO, along with individual investors, Castos will use this additional capital to fuel its advance into the Private Podcasting market. A quote from Craig Hewlett:  “On both the individual and corporate investor side I think the investors see the vision that we have for what the Private Podcasting market can mean for Castos and want to help us achieve that potential,” Hewitt said. Big huge large news: I sold @SearchWP! Lots to say but the words can't fit in a tweeter https://t.co/OdfYlZDYXG— Jon Christopher (@jchristopher) July 7, 2021 SearchWP finds a new homeJonathan Christopher tweeted that his product SearchWP has been acquired by Awesome Motive. A quote from Syed Balkhi in the announcement post:  “As he wanted to pursue the next chapter of his life, we started discussing the future of the SearchWP plugin. Given our experience running a suite of popular WordPress plugins, SearchWP was a perfect fit for our family of products.” He goes on to state:“A WordPress search plugin that a beginner, non-techy, small business owner can easily set up in less than 10 minutes to grow their business. I sat down with the team, and we have a crystal-clear 12 month plan. A lot of exciting things are coming your way in the coming months.” Also check out the interview with Jonathan Christopher in this article: Finding an awesome home for SearchWP Full Site Editing Testing Call #8 Compared to previous calls for testing for the FSE (Full SIte Editing) Outreach program, this round is intentionally targeting a more developer-centric audience compared to site builders or end users. in order to bring high impact feedback for theme.json, a new tool for extenders. You can read more about what to expect with upcoming efforts on make.WordPress.org site. Events WordFest live is coming up July 23rd. You can go and check out the speaker sessions that you do not want to miss! Grabbag Many of you are familiar with Troy Dean. Well, he was not a part of an acquisition but a name change and rebranding..  Troy Dean states: “The WP Elevation name was changed to Agency Mavericks to embrace the essence of the community and brand apart — our maverick spirit.” To honor Ujwal Thapa The WordPress Biratnagar Facebook group announced last week that a WordCamp scholarship in honor of Ujwal Thapa, who passed away from COVID 19 complications.  The WordPress Biratnagar community decided on this scholarship to honor his memory. And finally…face to face WordCamps in 2021? The WordPress community team is removing the barrier to organizing in-person meetup events for fully-vaccinated people. This is great news and we are very lucky to be able to move forward with scheduled events. Over on the Matt Report I interviewed Jason Coleman of Paid Memberships Pro on his journey to 100,000 active installs.  That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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 Gutenberg, WordPress 3.8 Release, WooCommerce & Jetpack WordPress 5.8 is still marching along with modifications for release in July. Eighteen bugs and fixes were applied from Release 3 concentrating on polishing existing default themes, fixing bugs in the new block Widget screen, and squashing Editor bugs collected during beta. WPTavern posted a review of the Gutenberg 10 updates in the plugin. The Query and Query Loop blocks were renamed, hopefully clearing up all the confusion for end users. The Query Loop block has been renamed to Post Template to better represent its purpose within Query, whereas the Query block label now refers to it as Query Loop. I enjoyed Justin Tadlock’s take on WordPress theme lock-in, in the block-era. “I do not necessarily see this as a Bad Thing. We have always had these little silos in the WordPress ecosystem, and they have mostly worked out.” WooCommerce News. The first release candidate is now available for WooCommerce 5. The planned release date is July 13. Jetpack launched a new mobile app. Automattic has launched a new mobile app for Jetpack, available on iOS and Android. The app features an array of Jetpack-specific features, including: Backups and restoresSecurity scanningActivity monitoringSite statsAnd more Security in the news  Ithemes Security Pro 7 was released with significant improvements and a redesigned interface. Tony Perez writes on NOC about how we communicate #wordpress and #security. People focus on all the tools and configurations, and not enough on the actions they’re trying to prevent. He covers his approach in this article about WordPress in the Enterprise. According to ehackingnews.com Over 800 million WordPress-linked records are leaked in this misconfigured cloud database associated with DreamHost, a popular WordPress hosting platform. A fix was made “within hours” of the discovery. Grabbag  Ninja Forms celebrates 10 years! Congratulations to James Laws and Kevin Stover. https://twitter.com/jameslaws/status/1409589138257371141?s=21WPEngine is now offering  Local 6.0 Pro free for everyone. As of June 29, 2021, everyone has access to Local Pro tools and features for free. This is another great tool for developing locally.Alex Standiford at WP Dev Academy released his new course that teaches how to build modern, scale-able WordPress plugins quickly. If you’re a developer looking to up your WordPress game, this course is for you. Just how competitive is the membership plugin space? Learn how Paid Memberships Pro has grown over the last 8 years in my interview with Jason Coleman on the Matt Report. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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 Its the WP Minute! This episode is brought to you by Search WP. Improve WordPress search by visiting SearchWP.com You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Checkout thewpminute.com for the links. Sshh…no major acquisitions this week. WordPress 5.8 is slated for release on July 20. In just over a month, many users will get their first experience of the template-editing mode. This can be exciting for users allowing them to create custom templates without ever leaving the post-editing screen. New powerful blocks like the Theme blocks and Query blocks will be introduced. Beta 3 of 5.8 is available today for testing. If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Maps, Sarah Gooding from WordPress Tavern breaks down some of the recent happenings with the MapLibre Project. Citing she even opened a ticket for Jetpack to consider using it in a future release.  Chris Lema shares his thoughts from the lens of Nexcess/LiquidWeb and other hosting companies on the future success of WordPress. It seems Nexcess might have their own Membership website experience coming for WordPress hosting soon. WPEngine’s Summit 2021 dubbed “The Digital Breakthrough Conference” launches tomorrow June 24th.  From the Grabbag The WPWeekly hit the 50 issue milestone, congrats Davinder. Joe Casabona shows you how to submit to the WordPress Block Pattern Directory without code.WebDevStudios is now a VIP Gold Partner with proven excellence implementing WordPress at scale.Gravity Forms celebrate the Gravity Forms Certified Developer Program (Look for more of this from major plugin vendors in the future).I enjoyed this conversation with WPBuffs founder Joe Howard and Nathan Hirsh on his podcast about starting FreeUp.net a home for hiring WordPress freelancers.  If you’re a creator in the WordPress or web tech space, I talked about how you can get a job leveraging your existing content over on the latest episode of the Matt Report. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list 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 A major update coming to WordPress 5.8. Beta release 2 is available for testing now. This release expands WordPress’ site building capabilities, along with improvements to features users have enjoyed since the launch of the block editor. The release will also include WebP support which 95% of the web browers worldwide use. Check out the WordCamp Europe 2021 Gutenberg demo narrated by Beatriz Fialho. WordPress Taverns’ Sarah Gooding recaps a discussion with Matt Mullenweg and Matias Ventura “The Block Editor Gets Ready to Become a Site Builder” A quote from Matt: For me, 2020 was the year that really felt like people started to see the vision of Gutenberg from four or five years ago, when it was very abstract and they saw it as kind of like the old WYSIWYG editor with some extra lines on it or something,” Mullenweg said. “The first 17 or 18 years of WordPress democratized people putting text into a box. Now we’re democratizing design, allowing people to control the boxes.” This has been another huge project for the WordPress contributors and developers. Josepha Hayden Chomphosy is very transparent on the WP Briefing podcast about how difficult it is to run a large open source project and offers suggestions on how to get a big group of people to come to consensus. Eric Karkovick Editor, Writer & WordPress Expert at Speckyboy covers what WordPress acquisitions says about the future and states that the WordPress ecosystem is maturing and consolidating. “Frankly, it’s becoming a lot harder for solo entrepreneurs or small development shops to manage a popular plugin. Supporting a large userbase while also focusing on the future could become overwhelming.Thus, it’s not surprising to see that some of these products are being sold off to larger firms. We saw something similar happen with internet providers back in the early 2000s. The more mature the market, the harder it became for a small company to carry out its mission. Pretty soon, they were just about all bought up by corporate interests”. Alex Denning along with Iain Poulson tweeted last week that they have created FlipWP and For $300/year the duo will help connect WordPress product companies for sale, with would-be buyers. If all this talk about acquisitions every day has your brain tangled up, Chris Lema posted a straight forward Twitter thread to bring some clarity to this fast-paced space. There are a lot of discussions about companies (and hosts) acquiring folks in the #WordPress space. Now, new marketplaces are getting created to help you sell your company. All of this is great. But not all buyers are the same, and it's not always about the $$$. 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 Jetpack gave us all a boost by pushing out a forced update patching a vulnerability in the Carousel feature. Tony Perez illustrated his point of view on how forced updates, in the hands of bad actors, could be a risk for the software. Brandon Kraft, part of the Jetpack team, tweeted that the forced update was justified by the meta/security team since 18% of Jetpack sites were affected. We weren't part of the discussion. Provided details and got the response, but I wouldn't expect a security convo to be public. But, yes. Single feature impacted. A few things need to be all true for it to matter on a site, which looked like qualified about 18% of sites IIRC.— A Guy Called Kraft ❤️‍ 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 is an interview with Brad Touesnard, founder of Delicious Brains, talking about his recent acquisition of Advanced Custom Fields. A series of questions I’ve provided him, where he’s recorded answers to via audio. I hope you enjoy today’s episode and learn more about one of WordPress’ most historic acquisitions. Check the transcript at the bottom of the post and please share this episode out on your social media channels! Transcription [00:00:01] It’s the WP minute. This episode is brought to you by easy support videos, support your WordPress users by placing videos right in the WordPress admin. Get it@easysupportvideos.com.[00:00:12]Today is an interview with Brad two Nard, founder of Delicious Brains, and talking about his recent acquisition of advanced custom fields, a series of questions he’s recorded answers to via audio. Let’s dive right in.[00:00:24]Can you give us a sense of how you vetted a product company like ACF? What was attractive besides the obvious..[00:00:29] Revenue, especially recurring revenue, definitely looked at that right away. I looked at the customer base and what their expectations were.[00:00:40]there is obviously more to it with due diligence, . In terms of verifying all those numbers and making sure everything was accurate , and legit, but the accountants and lawyers handled most of that anyway and just provided reports.[00:00:57]ACF’s pretty simple company Elliott set up a really kind of simple thing for 10 years by himself. There weren’t a lot of moving parts , to really vet , in this deal, in terms of what was attractive, obviously…[00:01:10]ACF isa great product that has a passionate and large community of users and customers. The thing that particularly appealed to me is that the customers are the same as our customers.[00:01:24]I think the thing that was the most attractive, it was like, this is a way for us to really kind of step into more mainstream WordPress world, I think. And that seems to be, I’m definitely feeling that over the last few days as the, after the announcement , was made, the, it was really, it’s almost overwhelming how much noise has been kicked up on Twitter especially around lifetime licenses.[00:01:53]How do you weigh this decision amongst the existing product lineup at Delicious Brains?[00:01:58] I’m confident that we can hire folks and handle ACF and scale up what we’ve been doing all these years with our existing products. And, we’ve added, within the last few years we’ve doubled our products.[00:02:11]this is just an extension of where we’ve been already going. It makes complete sense. It’s kind of a supercharging, right? If we were adding two new products over the next, three years, that’s a lot different than adding, a massive product, overnight. it is a big jolt to the business.[00:02:30]Can you hint at the size of the deal?[00:02:32] Nope. Moving on[00:02:34]Will pricing and existing licenses be honored for customers.[00:02:38] Yes. We made that very clear in the announcement posts that we won’t be changing pricing anytime soon.[00:02:46] And if we do in the future existing customers, won’t be impacted.[00:02:50]Then of course we made the mistake of totally not mentioning lifetime licenses and totally missing that and that was a mistake. I wrote a tweet thread yesterday, everyone seems happy with what we’ve decided to do with lifetime licenses.[00:03:07]Is this Delicious Brains way of investing in Gutenberg and a potential theme product in the future.[00:03:12] Definitely not a theme product. That’s not really been something on my mind. I’m not going to write off any ideas, but yeah, it’s just not something we’ve really considered at this point.[00:03:24]Investing in Gutenberg, that’s a bit of a different question.[00:03:27]I can see that. ACF blocks is a huge part of ACF and I think it’s a huge part , of the WordPress block editor space.[00:03:36]I love what Elliot has done there, he’s built a bridge really between, the kind of old school, WordPress developers, the PHP and jQuery, and those developers and, the react folks. It’s very challenging to level up on react.[00:03:53]We’ve been doing it ourselves and it’s, very tough. I very much sympathize with folks who are struggling to kind of make that leap from, J query to react. That’s a huge leap. Anyhow, I think I think there’s lots more opportunity there to help folks extend the block editor, make custom blocks using ACF. So we’ll definitely, we’re definitely pumped to work on that project, but also I don’t think Gutenberg is necessarily the best tool for every job inside of WordPress either.[00:04:26]there’s lots of cases where you might want to basically create a database of something. A database of books, a database of staff people or whatever it is. And Gutenberg’s UI is for building websites, but building pages, it’s not, , it’s a layout engine, it’s not designed for entering data.[00:04:46] So I think that’s also where ACF has shined, right? it’s been a wonderful UI for for entering information. And I think that’s where ACF can continue , to shine inside of WordPress.[00:04:59]What immediate challenges does a product like this present to delicious.[00:05:03] The biggest one , is hiring. We’ve been hiring like crazy this year. I think in the last 12 months we’ve doubled the size of the team. We’ve really ramped it up in the last three or four months though, because we knew this was coming.[00:05:18]The good news is we’re pretty much staffed up. we’ve hired pretty much all the developers we need , for ACF at this point. We’re in really good shape.[00:05:29]One challenge that we’re facing is scaling management leadership around our products and adding ACF to the mix here it’s going to put a strain on that some more. So I’m looking at that, adding more leadership management resources to the team, considering even having someone like a COO role.[00:05:52]Someone working with me to scale a company essentially.[00:05:56]Last question to wrap up. What are you most excited about with acf now joining your suite of Delicious Brains products?[00:06:04] Bringing our strengths our user experience and UI strength to ACF and improving that UI, making things, just all that much better. Making the developer experience better. Even improving, the backend code. Elliot , would be the first to admit that there’s areas of the code that are old and dusty that could use some attention.[00:06:28] I’m really excited to ship that stuff to the community. It’s going to be so exciting to push out our first release or our first few releases and see how people react , to the work we’ve been doing.[00:06:43]Thanks for taking the time to do the interview. Brad, if you’ve not seen Delicious Brains before check out Delicious Brains.com and all of the amazing tools they have there. And of course, if you’ve never, ever heard of ACF before, check out advanced custom fields.com, don’t forget to subscribe to the WP mi...

Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute In a surprise tweet overnight (at least here in the US timezone), somewhere in Australia Elliot Condon announced the acquisition of his iconic WordPress plugin, Advanced Custom Fields by the Delicious Brains software company.  WordPress News: ⁦@dliciousbrains⁩ acquires ⁦@wp_acf⁩ | 10 Years of ACF – A truly wonderful time https://t.co/ytgpkcQ0l8— The WP Minute (@TheWPMinute) June 2, 2021 Delicious Brains of course famous for WP DB Migrate Pro and DIY WordPress hosting, SpinupWP. I have reached out to both Brad Touesnard, founder of DB and Elliot for comment, I hope to have those replies back to publish a blog post soon.  Rob Howard, CEO of Howard Development & Consulting announced the acquisition of the Understrap theme framework, ironically in a Medium post. Reportedly a $50,000 investment.  It’s the first time I’ve heard of Understrap:  “The UnderStrap package allows you to quickly and easily build search engine optimized websites with WordPress.” “I anticipate one of our first steps will be the addition of a Bootstrap 5 version (which has already been started as an offshoot project), since that’s been one of the most important roadmap items for a while now.” Not to be outdone on acquisitions, Chris Lema tweets that LiquidWeb has acquired Iconic, makers of a suite of WooCommerce plugins.  Ok, this one is one of the ones I've been waiting for. I'm so thrilled to welcome @iconicwp to the @liquidweb / @stellarwp family.https://t.co/04Lmjw9oe8— Chris Lema (@chrislema) June 2, 2021 “With Liquid Web backing us up, we’ll have more fuel to add to our fire. Our existing team is sticking around and so is our customer-focused ethos. “ WordPress turned 18 this week.But like any other rebelling teenager coming of age, not without its difficulties. When announced the illustrated timeline omitted Mike Little from the lineage of events, but was corrected by Josepha a short time after blowing out the candles.  Get to the blocka! Gutenberg 10.7 updates are out. This release introduces the first iteration of responsive menus in the Navigation block. Anne McCarthy published a call to test Full Site Editing by way of challenging you to build a portfolio page.  I think this is a great opportunity for non-developers to partake in the development of WordPress with a low barrier to entry. I enjoy the work Anne is doing in this space.  Speaking of full site editing, WPMarmite produced a report on data found surveying 127 WordPress theme shops and their adoption of Gutenberg + FSE.  57% of theme shops feature their Gutenberg compatibility.Only 17% of theme shops offer custom Gutenberg blocks.3% of theme shops provide block patterns.17% of theme shops write about Gutenberg (posts about WordPress 5.0 release excluded).65% of theme shops updated or released a theme in the last 3 months. Automattic launches a block based parent theme. Could this be an indication of a future base theme for WordPress proper moving forward, or just a developer tool for Automatticians. Read Justin Tadlock’s post on the WordPress Tavern. Product announcements Formidable Forms looks to shift focus to WordPress users needing a “custom application development” experience with their forms plugin. Former StudioPress founder Brian Gardner has launched Frost.Friend of the show Joe Casabona has refreshed the Podcast Liftoff website. Food for thought Jonathan Wold, Community lead for WooCommerce at Auotmattic, expresses a potential need for an independent “app store” for WordPress. I assume thoughts do not reflect his employer on this one. Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/supportGet the newsletter at https://thewpminute.com/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★