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Exploring the WordPress world
Exploring the WordPress world
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Trending this week in WordPress
β WP Engine has filed an injunction on October 18 asking Matt Mullenweg to give them back access to WordPress.org and the ACF plugin. Injunction pdf document here. WP Engine affirms lots of damage to its business due to the current drama:
WPE saw cancellation requests between September 26 and September 30 increase by 14% as compared to the average cancellation rate request in September prior to the wordpress.org block.
β The hearing is set for November 26 (according to WP Tavern blog, they do not post the source of this info) in the injunction we read that the hearing is scheduled for March 6 2025.
β Automattic responded to the injuction on October 22:
WordPress is open-source software that is, always has been, and remains freely available to Plaintiff. Anyone, including Plaintiff, can visit https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress and download WordPress software for free. Instead, this case is about WordPress.org, a website owned and run by Defendant Matt Mullenweg individually, for the benefit of the community he loves.
Mr. Mullenweg has no contracts, agreements, or obligation to provide WP Engine access to the network and resources of WordPress.org. WP Engine points to no terms, conditions, or permissions that entitle them to such access. Nevertheless, WP Engine, a private equity-backed company, unilaterally chose to build a multi-billion dollar business around Mr. Mullenwegβs website, assuming he would continue to maintain open access to it for free. That was their choice.
β Matt posted on his blog a reply to the injunction saying he is exercising his Freedom to Speech right.
β To follow the evolution “from the WP Engine side” you can check their new WordPress Drama timeline called Ensuring stability and security.
β The WordPress Drama reached the BBC, a short article about how this situation is impacting people working with WordPress and WP Engine.
β WP Drama impacting the community: Pause on SWAG Shipments for WordPress Events, WordCamps and Meetups. Future of SWAG shipments:
While this likely wonβt be prioritized right now as we donβt have many Community team contributors available, it will surely be reconsidered in the future.
β Matt Mullenweg is joining the TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 event in San Francisco.
β Mirroring the WordPress.org repo is a trend in the community: Dustin Snider shared on X his progress on a new WP.org repo mirror with many community members working on the project, Akshat Choudhary, founder of WP Remote (and many other plugins) launched Morpheus on October 1:
Morpheus is a host-agnostic, updates service for all WordPress sites. It works by mirroring all the updates from the WordPress repository. Essentially, it uses it as a source of truth. If your site ever loses access to the WordPress repository, you can use Morpheus in exactly the same wayβnever losing access to updates again.
β Core Days event in Rome, November 8 and 9, check the schedule, a great occasion to meet WordPress core developers:
Core Days is a two-day event dedicated to WordPress developers with the aim of creating a moment for the international community of contributors to get together and meet Core contributors, to discuss the future of WordPress and its evolution.
β A lot of new content is being published around WordPress UI: last week we saw Saxon Fletcher (X), former Automattic designer, sharing his project on the wp-admin new UI. A few days later we had James LePage (X) sharing a test he made using WordPress with a modern sidebar (links X). We also have more plugins aiming to modernise the admin UI (more on that in the Plugins News section).
β Vikas Singhal, founder of InstaWP, reveals the new dashboard UI (links X) for its upcoming restyling in 2025.
β AnyoneCanWP submissions are now visible on the Leaderboard page, check them to get some good inspiration!
β You can rewatch the Kadence Amplify online event for free in case you've missed it.
β WP Townhall a new podcast with Kevin Geary and Mark Szymanski to talk about what is buzzing in WordPress.
β Jack Arturo shard on X his 4M $ revenue milestone with WP Fusion plugin, congratulations Jack!
WordPress Core
β WordPress 6.7 Release Candidate 1 is now available for testing.
β If you want to dive deeper in the 6.7 release check the 6.7 Source Of Truth by Anne McCarthy developer at Automattic.
β A tutorial by David McCan about how to test the beta version of new WordPress releases with the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.
β November 5 WordPress 6.7 Q&A live stream with Jamie Marsland, Nick Diego and Rich Tabor.
Review Highlight
SureForms is a plugin of the “Sure family”, the team that is behind SureCart, SureTriggers but also Astra, Spectra and many other great tools.
I've just made a quick walkthrough of the Pro version of their new form plugin for WordPress. It looks promising and very powerful, definitely a game changer in its field.
Do you like this plugin?
Plugins News
β CommandUI plugin promise to make the wp-admin everyday life more intuitive and comfortable with a centralised powerful command bar to perform every action.
β uiXpress plugin transforms in one click the whole wp-admin into a modern and beautiful dashboard. Lifetime deal available for a limited time.
β WP Interactions is a new plugin that “goes beyond animations, offering versatile trigger and action capabilities. Created by the developers of Stackable.
β MetaSlider plugin has a new website built with Kadence see the full stack (links X).
β SureForms team has published their website along with the Pro version of the plugin and an early adopter discount. interested? See my SureForms review.
Themes News
Classic themes
β The classic themes field is pretty quiet, no massive updates or huge innovation. The only recent interesting move is Kadence Advanced Headers that tries to fill the gap between classic and FSE themes.
β The main “classic players” in terms of quality and active installs are: Blocksy (200k+), Astra (1M+), Kadence (300k+), Neve (300k+), GeneratePress (600k+), OceanWP (600k+), Sydney (100k+).
FSE themes
β These themes are clearly the future of WordPress, but, the whole site editing experience is still not ready to be compared to the power of classic themes or modern page builders.
β A milestone of 1000 block themes in 1000 days has been reached in the wp.org themes repo.
β Ollie is one of the most interesting FSE themes at the moment. You can check out its free version on wp.org or go and find out more about Ollie Pro, maybe it will be the foundation for one of your next projects!
Builders News
β Phlox-Elements add-on for Breakdance Builder keeps adding new cool features like the Product Table for WooCommerce, the Event Calendar and the Quiz Creator elements.
β Divi team is calling for testers to stress Divi 5 Alpha version, help finding bugs and shape together the future of Divi.
β Elementor 3.5 Beta: good enhancements coming to the next release of the most used WordPress builder in the world, estimated release date: today October 28. Conditional CSS loading, new native CSS for smooth scrolling, new anchor offset setting, added pagination feature for the new search widget live results. The Grid Container will be now merged with the Flexbox Container and named just “Container”.
β Geomap β Google Map Block is a simple block to add a Google map in Gutenberg without having to deal with API configuration.
β Wes Theron shared a tutorial on WordPress.tv on how to create a portfolio website with a block theme and patterns (using Twenty Twenty-Five upcoming theme).
The Hosting spot
β Hostinger is the hosting service that I use for WP Roads and many other WordPress projects. Kinsta is the one I think of when I have a huge, scalable project in mind.
WordPress People
β Myself π WP Roads YouTube channel where I share latest WordPress news, tutorial and reviews, exploring the WordPress world.
β Check Mark Szymanski YouTube channel and his live sessions if you want to have precious insights on what's trending in WordPress, and much more.
β The WP Minute good news and tutorials all about WordPress.
π Hostinger Black Friday has begun! Use coupon WPROADS to save even more + get 3 months free
π Kinsta Black Friday has begun! 50% off from all plans
π SureForms powerful WordPress form builder lifetime deal + early-adopter discount
π Tutor LMS lifetime deal is back!
π Blocksy PRO best classic theme lifetime deal
π GutenKit a promising block plugin, lifetime deal on AppSumo
Hey Pascal,
Your WPNews here is amazing. So much work you have put into this, and all interesting topics. Between this and your YouTube work, I don’t know how you keep up with it all, but I’m happy that you do. Thank you.
Thank you Christian! I really appreciate your feedback!