The WP Minute

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It’s a familiar refrain: the WordPress project needs contributors. But getting involved can be difficult for individuals who aren’t corporately sponsored. A new nonprofit organization is hoping to address this ongoing challenge.

The WP Community Collective looks to offer community-funded fellowships to financially support contributions to WordPress. Founded by Sé Reed, Katie Adams Farrell, and Courtney Robertson, the WPCC seeks both individual donations and corporate partnerships.

In its official announcement, the organization vows to promote transparency, community representation, and governance. Its first initiative involves the creation of an Accessibility Fellowship.

The WPCC says it plans to create a formalized organizational structure within the next year.

Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute!

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The latest episode of WP Product Talk covers what happens when your business starts to scale. Matt Cromwell spoke with Jason and Kim Coleman about the process of budgeting and forecasting for WordPress products.

It’s time once again for the annual WordPress Survey. You are encouraged to share your thoughts and let the WordPress team know how you use the software. The survey will remain open throughout the rest of 2022.

ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, has surpassed 1 million users. The app claims the ability to answer follow-up questions and take instructions from humans. And, as WP Tavern reports, it also generated a WordPress plugin on demand. Web developer Johnathon Williams shared a recording of the process in action.

A proposed bill before the United States Congress has Facebook’s parent company Meta threatening to pull news-oriented content from its platform. The bill would allow news outlets to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger percentage of ad revenue. A similar bill was passed last year in Australia.

Another WordPress-related acquisition is in the books. Development firm Strategy11 has acquired the WP Tasty and Nutrifox suite of plugins. The company also owns Formidable Forms, among other popular plugins.

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From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

New Members This Week

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Could you run your entire WordPress product business from a single spreadsheet? Today's WP Product Talk covers what happens when your business starts to scale. From a few hundred dollars, to a few hundred-thousand dollars, this conversation is jam-packed with a wealth of. bean counting knowledge.

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Welcome to a special edition of the WP Minute! Rather than our usual five minute roundup of WordPress news, we’ve recorded an expanded episode this week. Matt Medeiros and Eric Karkovack got together to discuss their picks for November’s most interesting and impactful stories.

Here’s a rundown of links mentioned in the show:

The new WordPress Developer Blog seeks to bridge the information gap between developers and changes to core. Hopefully it proves to be a one-stop shop to learn about new features, deprecated code, and more.

Elegant Themes announced that their Divi page builder will undergo some major changes under the hood. Version 5.0 will eschew shortcodes and become more tightly integrated with Gutenberg.

WordPress 6.1 said goodbye to the venerable “Just Another WordPress Site” tagline. New installs will feature an empty tagline, though the phrase will live on as placeholder text.

Mike McAlister’s concept for an OpenPress plugin sparked a lot of discussion. It would turn WordPress into a microblogging platform and allow other websites to subscribe to your content.

When it comes to WordPress, Eric Karkovack has a few simple hopes for 2023. Hint: they’re more about community than fancy new features.

The WordPress community spoke up, and Meetup.com listened to concerns about its use of an accessibility overlay. Now, they’re working together in an effort to make the platform accessible by tackling problems at their roots.

If you’re a fan of the puzzle game Wordle, check out WordlePress. Ross Wintle’s creation mixes the fun of the original and challenges your knowledge of core WordPress PHP functions.

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The annual State of the Word event has been scheduled for December 15, 2022 from 1:00 - 2:30pm EST. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will take to the microphone to discuss the year that was and what lies ahead.

The event will take place in New York City and will also be live streamed. If you’d like to attend in-person, there’s a survey available to fill out.

Meanwhile, you can also submit questions to Mullenweg ahead of time by emailing [email protected] or during the event via YouTube’s chat feature.

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The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack has a wish list of things he’d love to see from WordPress in 2023. More than any technical enhancements, his hopes include better communication, collaboration, and more opportunities to get together for in-person events.

Tom McFarlin contributed to The WP Minute with an in-depth tutorial on working with multiple user metadata queries. He takes us step-by-step through the process of retrieving a custom set of user records.

WordPress.org is launching a blog aimed at developers. Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports that the project is currently in beta testing. The focus will be on new features that impact theme and plugin developers.

According to WP Tavern, the Divi page builder will undergo some major changes in 2023. Version 5.0 isn’t slated to see new features, rather a complete rewrite of its underlying framework. The revamp will be built using React and aims to improve compatibility with the Gutenberg Block Editor.

Last week, we reported on Mike McAlister's concept for OpenPress, a plugin that would turn a WordPress install into a syndicated microblogging platform. This week, Alex Standiford expands on the idea and wonders if WordPress might one day have a bidirectional relationship with social media platforms.

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From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

New Members This Week

If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: 

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Lots has changed for the WordPress website building experience over the last 4 years and today's WP Product Talk has been on the frontlines of it.

Richard Tabor joins the podcast to talk about the major changes in Gutenberg, Site Editing, and the future of WordPress. Looking for a healthy dose of what's under the hood of your favorite CMS? Don't miss this episode.

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Hiring is probably the hardest thing to do in any business.

There's so much that needs to go into the interview process, onboarding, and we haven't even begun to think about the actual job description! Lucky for us, Kim Lipari joins WP Product talk to give us all the advice we need to become better employers in the WordPress ecosystem.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it on social media and say thanks to the hosts!

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The 6th episode of WP Product Talk featuring Zach Tirell of WP Events Calendar.

Listen in to find out how to hire and manage contractors for your WordPress product (or agency!) business. If you're a WordPress freelancer, this is a fantastic episode to listen to and reverse engineer to better position yourself with employers.

If you enjoyed this episode, please say thanks to the hosts and consider sharing this on social media!

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The idea of using WordPress to power a social networking site isn’t new. The BuddyPress plugin has offered this functionality since 2009. But Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter (and the ensuing chaos) has WordPress community members taking another look at what’s possible.

Mike McAlister recently shared a concept for OpenPress, a plugin that would turn your WordPress install into a microblogging platform. Your site’s content can then be connected with, and followed by, other sites using OpenPress.

The aim is to build a network of related content that allows creators to maintain ownership. As McAlister puts it, the network “is powered by individuals, but connected as a community.”

Who knows where the OpenPress concept will go. But it’s an interesting proposition for those looking to ditch Twitter and other corporately-owned communities.

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The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack is intrigued by the potential of managed WooCommerce hosting. He took a look at what it can and can’t do to simplify the eCommerce platform.

In an effort to decrease the barriers to contributing to WordPress core, project lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí has proposed using GitHub Codespaces. The tool allows for the rapid setup of a development environment. Sarah Gooding has the details at WP Tavern.

In a tongue-and-cheek effort to compete with Twitter’s new account verification system, Tumblr is selling two “useless” checkmarks for a one-time fee of $7.99. Yes, that’s one penny less than Twitter’s service. The microblogging platform is owned by Automattic. To paraphrase CEO (and WordPress co-founder) Matt Mullenweg’s tweet, two checkmarks are cooler than one.

What’s your top WordPress-related story for 2022? The WP Minute wants to know! Share your thoughts with us on Twitter.

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From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: 

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Feed drop time! Feed drop is when an entirely new podcast shows up in a podcast feed...just like this one! 

I'm sharing my friend, Matthew Bliss' Dead Drop podcast with you. It's just like the WP Minute, short form news, but for the video game industry. From the casual gamer to the sweaty l33t, this podcast has it all for your gaming needs. 

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The advent of WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) has sparked plenty of discussion within the community. But it’s not just the technical aspects that have received attention. Giving the feature a more user-friendly name has also been a hot topic.

On November 4, 2022, WordPress project Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that the feature will be simply referred to as the “Site Editor”.

Simplicity was only one consideration, however. Haden Chomphosy notes that the term can also be effectively translated into hundreds of languages. Given WordPress’ considerable international user base, a consistent name is desirable.

Paired with the Block Editor, the Site Editor name should provide users with a clearer distinction between editing environments.

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When we discuss the challenges facing WordPress, we often focus on WordPress core. However, The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack says that the WordPress Ecosystem Needs Closer Scrutiny. He opines that what happens in the world of themes and plugins can be just as consequential.

The phrase “Just another WordPress site” should be familiar to anyone who has installed the software. It’s been the default setting for the Site Tagline for years - but no more. Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern reports that, as of WordPress 6.1, the tagline is now blank. For the sake of nostalgia, the phrase does stick around in the form of placeholder text.

In the wake of WordPress.org’s removal of active install growth data from the plugin repository, developers are still looking for relevant information. In response, the folks at AyeCode have launched wp-rankings.com. The site scrapes the repository’s popular plugin data and shows historical comparisons for active installations. WP Tavern has more details on the project.

If you couldn’t make it to Spain for WordCamp Sevilla this past weekend, the event has published a virtual tour using the Spatial metaverse platform. Visitors can create an avatar, walk around the space, and access a stream of the event.

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From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

New Members This Week

If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: 

Support our work at https://thewpminute.com/support
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