Let’s start with the good news, before we get into the…not so good news. Matt Mullenweg announced that CC Search is joining the WordPress project stating that the WordPress community has long advocated for a repository with GPL-compatible images. I think this is timely and needed with the not-so-recent announcement of Unsplash being acquired by Getty Images. Now time for the not so good news — What the FLoC?! First, what is FLoC? Well, here’s the definition straight from Google: Federated Learning of Cohorts, FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out its “interest cohort”, which will be the same for thousands of browsers with a similar recent browsing history. The browser recalculates its cohort periodically, on the user’s device, without sharing individual browsing data with the browser vendor or anyone else. One might think that sounds…okay? Well, until the Electronic Frontier Foundation chimes in stating FLoC is a terrible idea. “The third-party cookie is dying, and Google is trying to create its replacement.” “Google is leading the charge to replace third-party cookies with a new suite of technologies to target ads on the Web. And some of its proposals show that it hasn’t learned the right lessons from the ongoing backlash to the surveillance business model.” “FLoC is meant to be a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers. The technology will avoid the privacy risks of third-party cookies, but it will create new ones in the process.” Alrighty, now I’m a little concerned along with WordPress contributors who want to treat FLoC more as a security concern than a privacy concern. Read through the comments to find the different takes around the community. There’s even a Trac ticket to monitor the concern. Pull up a seat at the Tavern Pour yourself a cold one over some of this week’s notable articles from the Tavern! The upcoming Pattern Directory is set to launch with WordPress 5.8. The Jetpack team has launched yet another project, called Jetpack Boost. Interesting to see them launch this as a standalone plugin since Mullenweg has always flexed on the fact that Jetpack is modular. An interesting conversation around banning companies that run competitive ads against WordPress from sponsoring WordCamps is open, well, until today. Check out the conversation happening in the thread on the post. I think on the surface that makes sense, but then there’s also the grey area of even how Automattic leverages the cross-branding of WordPress. Time for the grab bag! Get Ellipsis https://getellipsis.com/blog/user-personas-for-wordpress-businesses/DoTheWoo https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-core-and-blocks-with-grzegorz-ziolkowski/GravityForms 2.5 https://www.gravityforms.com/two-five/Brainstorm Force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLY_JnFeW7U ★ Support this podcast ★

Full Site Editing; we’re almost there We’re almost there with Full Site Editing in WordPress core. During the meeting that was happening the same day our last episode went live, the team made the decisions for WordPress and the parts of Full Site Editing hitting version 5.8: Improvements from Gutenberg 9.9+.Introduce new blocks (Query, Site Logo, Navigation, etc).theme.json mechanism.Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template.Widgets Screen & Block widgets in Customizer.Design tools: Duotone, Layout controls, padding, etc. What won’t make it? Global Styles and Site Editor. If you’re left yearning for some Global Styles, Frank Klein’s got you covered with an in-depth tutorial on his YouTube channel and the fine folks at WordCamp Miami hosted a livestream Mega Meetup which covered all things Full Site Editing. Okay okay, still hungry for more? Gutenberg Times has a complete wrap up, be sure to listen to the latest episode of the Gutenberg Changelog. It’s time to get down to business. Popular WordPress caching/speed plugin WP Rocket is joining group.one a large European internet services conglomerate — including one of the largest web hosts in Scandinavia. WP Media is joining group.ONE as an independent brand. Each company focusing on what it does best to the benefit of our customers. we are maintaining our own identity and organizationour entire team, including the co-founders, will stay the samewe’ll continue to develop and maintain Imagify, WP Rocket and RocketCDN GravityFlow has a fantastically detailed overview on how they put customer service front and center for impressive year over year increases in product renewal. If you’re looking for two interesting (with air quotes) tools to uncover what WP businesses are for sale or you just wanna snoop: Check out PluginRank Acquisition page and Shahjahan Jewel’s PluginStat website for some fun data. Do it Live! With events. I thought it would be useful to mention some events that caught my eye — but you don’t have much time left to register. GoDaddy Pro is hosting a slick looking online event called Expand 2021 kicking off on April 27Elementor is putting on a training about Google’s upcoming web vitals a mere 1 day later on April 28thPage Builder Summit, which you have plenty of time for, is opening it’s doors on May 10th – 14th Now time for the honorable mentions Go to the WP Weekly Sponsor page and support Davinder — he has an opening for you. I can’t stop learning about the no code movement and the opportunities around it, check out my latest Matt Report episode with Kieran Ball Lastly, thanks to Lesley Sim the co-creator of Newsletter Glue, the fantastic plugin I use to put this email together. I know I didn’t have a link last week and she quickly opened up my eyes to some of the amazing templating features it has — using native Gutenberg. ★ Support this podcast ★

Welcome to the first official episode of The WP Minute and I’m officially slapping the “beta” tag on to this thing. I’m still working out how I produce the show and fill in these posts, for now, here are the links mentioned in today’s episode. Kadence WPhttps://www.kadencewp.com/blog/kadence-wp-is-joining-ithemes/?ref=376Matt Mullenweghttps://ma.tt/2021/04/wix-dirty-tricks/Avishai Abrahamihttps://www.wix.com/blog/2021/04/letter-from-avishai-abrahami-to-matt-mullenweg/Joe Casabonahttps://casabona.org/2021/04/wix-wordpress-marketing/WP Tavernhttps://wptavern.com/will-full-site-editing-land-in-wordpress-5-8-a-decision-is-forthcomingUdaipur Timeshttps://udaipurtimes.com/people/obituary-puneet-sahalot-cofounder-udaipurtimes-rest-in/cid2703347.htm ★ Support this podcast ★

If you want to know why I started another podcast in the WordPress space — well — look no further. I’ll cover how I came up with this crazy idea and what I might be introducing next for the show. ★ Support this podcast ★

Welcome to The WP Minute — its your WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Listen to the debut trailer to find out more details behind the podcast. If you’re looking for a weekly WordPress news podcast that gets you the headlines in under five minutes or less — you’ve come to the right place! ★ Support this podcast ★