Editor's note: How I imagine the background music to WordCamp US 2022

News

The new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, will be a stripped-down base theme with many style variations built by the WordPress design community. This theme is being released to make theme development exciting again. Jump over to the Gutenberg times to read about variations and see the latest on the “good and bad”. 

WordPress.com has announced that they can build and design a website for new business owners, in four business days or less. If you are on a budget, the cost is $499, plus an additional purchase of the WordPress.com premium plan. It will be interesting to see how this will grow and if it has any impact on the WordPress professional freelance community. 

Security

Wordfence PSA: on September 6, 2022, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team was alerted to the presence of a vulnerability being exploited in BackupBuddy, a WordPress plugin that has around 140,000 active installations. This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information. There is minimal sharing about the details of this vulnerability as it is still an active threat. If you are interested in reading more jump over to the Wordfence website.

Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern wrote an article that WordPress’ Security Team announced it will be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 on December 1, 2022. 

Events

WordCamp US has started!  Michelle Frechette writes about how to make the most of your Wordcamp US experience with fewer participants and dealing with COVID restrictions. Use the official #WCUS hashtag to follow the online WCUS conversation. If you are there, say hi to Raquel Landefeld who is our community lead at the WP Minute.

If you are a new camper, go listen to the Matt Report and Gina Marie Innocent to get more ideas on how to make the most of your WordCamp experience.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Phil Crumm has a thread on Twitter that the WordPress community is uneasy about the growing pace of acquisitions.

His hot take may be correct as the news that GridPane has completed a seed round of funding, including a significant strategic investment from Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, WordPress VIP, and Jetpack. 

Another acquisition

Rocketgenius, the company behind Gravity Forms, has acquired Gravity Flow and Gravity Experts. The acquisition will help the Gravity Forms community by strengthening the portfolio of WordPress product offerings.