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WordPress drama, but also good news
Hot week for Matt, WP Engine customers and the whole WordPress community. The drama continues but there are also good news!
Join Live!
Join the live session on YouTube where we're going to discuss together all these news and have a good WordPress chat!
Streaming October 2
Trending in WordPress
WordPress drama recap
If you run a big and successful company based on WordPress, let's say a hosting company, you should be in good relationship with Matt Mullenweg and you should embrace the “giving back to open source” concept to support the whole WordPress community, otherwise, you are putting at risk your clients, your business and ultimately the whole WordPress ecosystem.
Read the full recap
WP Engine is one of the biggest WordPress hosting companies in the world. But WP Engine is not WordPress.
The CEO of WordPress asked them to pay a fee for the massive use of the WordPress trademark in their marketing and/or to contribute back to the community through sponsored hours of their employees.
Silver Lake, the private equity firm that runs WP Engine, did not want to negotiate a way to contribute back to WordPress and Matt states that he tried to do a deal with them for several months.
Matt attacks WP Engine and Silver Lake publicly at WCUS 24 (September 20) mentioning the “tragedy of the commons” and the fact that companies like WP Engine that takes without giving back are hurting the WordPress ecosystem, legal actions followed from both sides starting from WP Engine.
Few days later Matt banned WP Engine from WordPress.org (September 25), blocking the access to automatic plugins and themes updates for all WP Engine customers, the ban was then lifted (September 27) and postponed to October 1.
At the moment there are no public announcements from Silver Lake side, but there is a transparent and detailed interview of Matt Mullenweg done by Theo Browne (September 29) where we can better understand the main aspects of this WordPress drama.
UPDATE: WP Engine has announced (October 1) they have deployed a custom solution to provide automatic plugin and themes updates for all customers from wp-admin.
Monster Awards!
The most famous WordPress contest entirely based on community votes where you can support with a thumbs up all your favorite products, services and people in the WordPress ecosystem!
You can submit your favourite WordPress creators and businesses and vote until November 20.
WordPress Core
On the road towards WordPress 6.7
WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is ready for testing!
Playground link to test in browser.
What's new?
- Twenty Twenty-Five theme
- Zoom Out to Compose with Patterns
- Media improvements (HEIC support)
- Expanding Block Supports (border and shadow extended to most blocks)
- Preview Options API
- Refined Data Views
- Manage Block Bindings Directly
- Simplified and Smarter Query Loop Block
- Edit and Control Font Size Presets
- View Meta Boxes in the iframed Post Editor
- Template Registration API
My WordPress core wishlist
Do you have a WordPress core wishlist for next releases?
Mine is simple: responsive and hover settings for all Gutenberg blocks.
Review Highlight
Independent Analytics: WordPress analytics plugin
I was looking for a Google Analytics alternative, hoping to find something easier, nicer and fully GDPR compliant, well … Independent Analytics is a lot more than that.
What do you think about this plugin?
Plugins News
LMS, Forms, SureCart, Emails
Tutor LMS Beta 2 is now live! You can test it and submit your feedback.
LearnDash Reports and Pro Panel 3.0. A new interface to read and customize your learners and courses performance reports.
SureCart has now a whole new reporting dashboard called Pulse and a lighting fast reporting engine to analyse and export all the ecommerce data. Also: SureCart Beta 2 is now available for testing, features highlights in latest Adam's video.
Try SureForms beta, the promising form plugin from the SureCart family.
Site Mailer plugin from Elementor for high deliverability of all your WordPress transactional emails. Here my video review of the plugin.
Themes News
Waiting for Divi 5
Divi 5 public Alpha is finally here! If you have a Divi license you can go and download it from your dashboard, it is blazing fast but Elegant Themes CEO, Nick Roach, warns that there will be still a lot of bugs and missing features, so use it only for testing purposes!
I explore some of the features and the new Visual Builder UI in this video.
Builders News
A few block plugins to test
I would recommend you to test these plugins if you plan to use the block editor in your next projects.
- Stackable: my favorite in terms of UI and flexibility, only negative point is that it can become slow in the backend if you build complex and long pages.
- Spectra: many type of blocks and good flexibility in layout settings, not so fun of the UI and UX.
- Nectarblocks: looks promising, beautiful UI, great WooCommerce integration, they have a native and free classic theme.
- GutenKit: aggressive development adding powerful features very fast, interesting CSS variables approach for global styling and design system management.
- GreenShiftWP: lot of block designs for affiliate marketing websites, very fast loading times, good animation system. It integrates very well with my favorite classic theme: Blocksy.
The Hosting spot
Quick bits from Kinsta and SiteGround
Kinsta offers unlimited free migrations or a new fast 8 hours migration for just 45$. And now you can also add more websites to your current hosting plan directly from Kinsta Dashboard.
SiteGround has a great section on their blog entirely dedicated to online business tips. If you haven't yet, check their new hourly backup service for just 4,99 $/month.
Note: WP Engine removed the WordPress name from their plans on the pricing page and added this foot note to their website:
“WP Engine is a proud member and supporter of the community of WordPress® users. The WordPress® trademark is the intellectual property of the WordPress Foundation, and the Woo® and WooCommerce® trademarks are the intellectual property of WooCommerce, Inc. Uses of the WordPress®, Woo®, and WooCommerce® names in this website are for identification purposes only and do not imply an endorsement by WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc. WP Engine is not endorsed or owned by, or affiliated with, the WordPress Foundation or WooCommerce, Inc.”
WordPress EVENTS
A new WordPress event launched by InstaWP
AnyoneCanWP is the World’s First WordPress Online Hackathon where all kind of WordPress professionals will be able to submit their content.
On the website you read:
While the AnyoneCanWP Hackathon is open to creativity and innovation, we’ve curated 20 specific topics for participants to explore.
Stay tuned! The full list of topics will be revealed on 5th October.
Official WordPress events
Browse all WordPress Events worldwide and find the nearest to you!
WordPress People
Inspiring interviews
I am going to interview WordPress professionals on WP Roads YouTube channel, subscribe to stay in the loop!
Who you would like me to interview? Post in the comments below 💬
Live interviews coming soon!
WordPress Deals
👉 Hostinger Black Friday has begun! Use coupon WPROADS to save even more + get 3 months free
👉 SureForms powerful WordPress form builder lifetime deal + early-adopter discount.
👉 Divi Black Friday is coming soon! Participate to the countdown to win great prices!
👉 Tutor LMS lifetime deal is back!
👉 Blocksy PRO best classic theme lifetime deal.
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