News 

A new WordPress homepage and download page is live but was it done quickly enough? Mullenweg’s perception of how long a layout should take started a lot of discussion about the timing of the release, the number of volunteers on the project…to well…you name it. The comments to the controversy ran the gamut.

Mullenweg’s comments were posted in an article in Search Engine Journal about using the Block Editor. He said:

it’s such a basic layout, it’s hard to imagine it taking a single person more than a day on Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or one of the WP page builders.

Brian Coords wrote an opinion piece on  MasterWP that there may be a leadership problem surrounding the project. This captures how people have felt about the WordPress Community for years. The bottom line is that there are many contributors that want to make WordPress better and need guidance in the project to get there. They want to be a part of the next iteration and keep the community growing and moving forward.

There is a new Twenty Twenty-Three default theme in development and there are many variations that are being proposed. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern reviews what has been proposed and reviewed what submissions look like. This project will close on August 31st to prepare for the October 25, 2022 release.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg designers are considering replacing the current welcome guide with a new onboarding experience. This idea is to show the features available upfront. You should go and check out the design changes proposed and provide feedback over at make.wordpress.org.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce has submitted a Request for Change (RFC) to reduce the size of the woocommerce plugin archive. If you are using WooCommerce you should review how this change could impact debugging your workflows.

Events

There is still time to nominate your favorite WordPress products over at the WP Weekly. This is the second year for the awards and a fun way to support your favorite products.

From Our Contributors and Producers

The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed. The WP Minute member, Lesley Simm tweeted:

Took us long enough. The Newsletter Glue plugin on the repo is now permanently closed.We last made a legit update to it over a year ago. 5 months ago, we added a notice to say we would close it in May 2022, then just didn't. 

Cameron Jones writes in his blog why he is not sold on ‘Five For The Future".  His personal experience about the way to contribute may be shared by others and it should be paid attention to if the WordPress community is to get through this time of growing pains.

A new proposal, published by Automattic-sponsored contributor Adam Zielinski, calls for c