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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

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

“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.

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