A new WordPress era

WordPress key leadership changes, ACF forked, State of Enterprise

– Mary Hubbard is the new Executive Director of WordPress, as announced on wordpress.org taking the role that previously was held by Josepha Haden Chomphosy (X profile).

– Fields API team seeking new leadership.

– An article by James Giroux (X profile) titled Why Is Matt Turning Up The Volume? Gives an interesting perspective on the WordPress Drama. He says:

Matt Mullenweg’s aggressive actions against WP Engine and Silver Lake are not personal but are about protecting WordPress from private equity interests that threaten the open-source ecosystem. This conflict reveals the true cost of maintaining WordPress infrastructure, and it’s a fight for the survival of WordPress’s values and community integrity. It’s uncomfortable but necessary to address the private equity influence that could undermine everything WordPress stands for.

– An opposite point of view article titled “back into the shade” was written 14 years ago highlighting possible “management problems” regarding Matt Mullenweg having the complete control of the WordPress trademark in his hands.

– A more recent article by David Heinemeier Hansson titles “Automattic is doing open source dirty” (October 8) and it also has an interesting point of view on the current situation.

– WordPress.org forked the popular plugin ACF (Advanced Custom Fields) owned by WP Engine and called it SCF (Secure Custom Fields), many developers and community members, including WP Engine and ACF, are calling this a take-over of the original plugin since SCF is using the “old” ACF slug on the wordpress.org repository and it is keeping the same user base (2M+ active users). WordPress.org invoked the point 18 of the plugin repository guidelines to perform this action.

– NitroPack plugin team has been banned from WordPress.org, if you are a user of this plugin you'll need to follow these instructions in order to continue receiving their updates.

– The State of Enterprise WordPress survey is helping shaping “an annual snapshot of the enterprise WordPress sector”, the 2024 survey is now open. Here you can read the 2023 report.

WordPress 6.7 Beta 2

WordPress 6.7 Beta 2 is ready for testing.

Ive tested the new Twenty Twenty-Five theme coming with this new release and it looks very promising for those of you that want to experiment or are already using the FSE approach.

Watch me building a basic website using the new Twenty Twenty-Five theme.

SureForms a new form builder plugin for WordPress

If you're looking for a good plugin to create contact forms directly in the block editor then SureForms is the right choice.

It has a generous free version, and soon will have a Pro one, offering lots of advanced features like:

• saving form entries to the database,
• sending custom confirmation notifications,
• custom thank you page redirections after submit,
• building forms using AI,
• and much more!

Watch my video review and tell me what do you think about this plugin, personally I have just installed it on many of my websites and I'm looking forward to see the Pro version release!

ACF and SCF, Automatic CSS, SureCart, SmashBalloon

– ACF and SCF clarification: if you want to continue using the original ACF plugin and receive updates directly from ACF team and WP Engine servers you will need to download this version of the plugin, install it, and then update as always when there will be new releases, all the updates will come from ACF. If you want to use the new forked version of ACF, called SCF, you can simply install it from the plugins directory. Info: if you are a WP Engine customer or you are using ACF Pro, you'll have automatically installed the original ACF version.

– Automatic CSS from Kevin Geary has a new Texture and Overlays feature in V 3.1.2 and here is Kevin tutorial.

– SureCart V3 RC1 is ready for downloading, here Adam's video with some important information and recommendations.

– SmashBalloon has released a new update to embed YouTube videos comments on your WordPress website and a new TikTok embed feature to play TikTok videos inline in your feed on your website.

My favorite theme is…

– I keep testing new themes both FSE and Classic ones, but at the end of the day, my favorite theme is still Blocksy Pro.

Spectra, Divi 5

– Spectra has reached 1M+ active installations on WordPress.org go and check out their celebrations promotions on Spectra Pro.

– Divi 5 public alpha V1 is now out.

SiteGround

– SiteGround, since May of this year, is continuing to deploy a gradual and automatic update of all their hosted WordPress websites to use Php 8.2, if you are running on an older version of php you should carefully check your plugins and themes to verify they are all compatible. Php 7.3 won't be supported anymore in 2025.

– Kinsta adds two new Google fast C3D VMs in Mumbai and Las Vegas.