The WP Minute

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Spencer Forman from WPLaunchify has a compelling introduction to the future of WordPress as it relates to large SMB and Enterprise.

Unlike the predominantly consumer or solopreneur user that has helped WP gain 43% or more of the Internet CMS market, Spencer shares a vision for WP that is focused on the amazing opportunities for software authors, agencies, and others to fulfill the needs of Enterprise customers.

This is a huge category that has otherwise not been provided with the type of support and packaging they need or are used to receiving from other software ecosystems.

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WordPress.org is sporting a new design. This redesign leans on the aesthetics of jazz (of course) and leaves more space for content, new typefaces and color palettes. Go check out the new look. 

The second major release of WordPress 6.0 is scheduled for beta on April 12th. This release will follow the same cadence as 5.9 and will aim to refine and iterate on the customization tools introduced earlier this year. The full proposed schedule is now available on make.wordpress.org.

The WordPress Training team is looking for volunteers for the Faculty Program. The Structure proposal has been published and more people are needed. You can help out in four different ways right now and feedback is being encouraged.

WooCommerce

The WooCommerce shipping and tax extension plugin (previously referred to as WooCommerce Services) is available. This plugin helps get your store ready to sell as quickly as possible with new products. They take care of tax calculation, payment processing setup, and shipping label printing.

WooCommerce has set up a developer survey looking for feedback on making the platform better. If you work with WooCommerce and have some suggestions or insights, jump over to the site and participate.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Shopify stock closes down 16% after it warns that pandemic boost will fade. It blamed a deceleration in eCommerce spending after the coronavirus pandemic, the end of government stimulus and consumer spending. This twitter thread by Moiz Ali follows the shopify “cheap facebook” tailwinds and gives us his take on the new war.

If you have a passion for Blockchain and NFTS you will want to take a few minutes to listen to the Do the Woo episode on these subjects. Brad Williams said he could see a world in the not too distant future (maybe even this year) while attending a WordCamp you will get an NFT. The possibilities are wide open.

WPMinute producer, Justin Ferriman wrote a great post about putting a website on WordPress.com instead of self hosting. Justin makes a great case for doing this when you do not need a lot of options and want to use built in features. 

Would you like to be compensated for speaking at an event this year? Atarim is holding their Free Online Agency Summit April 26th-29th, 2022. Vito Peleg made some changes after a discussion with Joe Casabona about speaking engagements. There are now two ways to be compensated and it should be a great event with many speakers.

Richard Tabor launches a new block based theme, Wabi, for writers and publishers. You can see his announcement tweet and download the theme for free on WordPress.org.

Enjoy our contributed segments today by:

• “Woo Minute” by BobWP
• “Mind & Body” by Michelle Schulp
• “Gutenburg Minute” by Birgit Pauli-Haack

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

• Jeff Chandler
• Joe Casabona
• Hauwa Abashiya
• Brad Williams
• Nigel Bahadur
• Davinder Singh Kainth

New Members

A big welcome this week to Matt Cromwell from GiveWP. 

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Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm constantly filled with self-doubt.

Will this experiment work? Can I make it a sustainable publication?

There aren't that many people who _care_ about WordPress news, let alone care to contribute to it. This is a topic I unpacked in my interview with Kim Coleman on funding a WordPress news website. So many have come and gone in this space -- I can see why.

I am grateful, however, when folks like Eric Karkovack step up to become contributors. I'm enjoying his series about the impact WordPress is having on freelancers:

Part 1: What does Full Site Editing mean for freelancers?

Part 2: Is WordPress pushing freelancers away? (published today)

You'll get to hear Eric in today's short interview. If you're interested in becoming a contributor of content, please reach out to me.

The Gutenberg Minute

Birgit Pauli-Haack shares some Gutenberg updates as well. Here are the important links mentioned:

Curated experiences with locking APIs & theme.json

#38333 Global Styles: Saving style variations

Call for Testing: WordPress Media

Italian

Japanese

Gutenberg Developer Hours 2/22 on Meetup

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Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 

News

There have been a lot of people working with the latest 5.9 WordPress release and reporting their successes and failures. Tammie Lister wrote a post about the features in the editor and would like people to quit using the term FSE - Full Site Editing in 2022. The release is not an all-or-nothing proposal yet.

Matt Medeiros created a video on the future of page builders with Gutenberg when a discussion on Discord started with Justin Ferriman, a WPMinute producer. Go check out that video to see if you agree with the future of Gutenberg.

Anne McCarthy writes about some practical ways to lock your projects for clients and users that can make changes to a WordPress website. The new template locking API  that was released in 5.9 along with newer tools like theme.json continues to be modified to adapt to the user experience. 

The WordPress Photo Directory recently hit 1,317 photos and continues to grow. There has been a new Slack Channel created and the team is looking for volunteers and moderators to work on a new site being set up on the make network. The team needs help working through issues in the coming months.

So…

As we head into the iterative part of Gutenberg’s phase 2, there will be changes for the community of users as they continue to look at WordPress. Josepha Haden Chomphosy writes that the Theory of Technology adoption that will come in three parts. Keep visiting make.wordpress.org to continue to get the latest updates.

Security

PHP Everywhere, a utility for web developers to be able to use PHP code in pages, posts, the sidebar, or anywhere with a WordPress Gutenberg block has Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities. WordFence reported that there are three critical vulnerabilities in PHP Everywhere all leading to remote code execution in versions of the software below 2.0.3.

There was a patched version of the plugin rolled out so if you are using this make sure that you are up to date as soon as possible to keep your WordPress site...well up to date.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Justin Tadlock over at WPTavern wrote a recent article about the Clarity AdBlocker for WordPress. Ads and upsells have been showing up in WordPress dashboards and many in the community have been complaining about it over the past few years. For many that get that exposure through the WordPress dashboard, this announcement was not well-received (to say the least). 

If the default full-screen editing mode and welcome guide in WordPress is annoying when you first visit the edit interface, you can jump over to GitHub to grab the drop-in snippet to disable it.

Some may say that PHP is dead (or dying). There is a comprehensive article over at Kinsta that per W3Techs, PHP is used by 78.1% or almost 4 out of 5 websites. PHP seems to be very much alive and faster than before when updated to the latest release. You can go check out this article for the latest benchmarks.

Are you one of those people who hate working through your inbox and approach it with dread? There is a new interesting email product called Shortwave that provides a new experience with threads, history, and bundles. You should check it out as an interesting tool to organize your email and provide a nicer experience. 

If you are a Beaver Builder Pagebuilder user, it is great to know that they have released a free library of courses.

Next up is the Creator Minute from our producers Michelle Frechette

and our Simplified Business Minute...Sam Munoz

“WP Career Summit” by Michelle Frechette

Transcript

This is Michelle Frechette with your WP Community minute. April 8 marks the first-ever WordPress Career Summit. Tracks will be dedicated to those looking for jobs and for employers. The job seeker track will include sessions geared toward helping those look for employment with talks about the job search, applying, and interview preparation.

The employer track will include sessions around recruiting, onboarding, managing remote teams, and more.

Over the last few years, I’ve watched people searching for jobs, and I’ve seen companies posting openings. The job market has been difficult for many. My hope is that a career summit like this will help both sides of the hiring table, while also allowing sponsors to show why you should apply to work for them. Sponsor spots are still open. This is a Post Status event, and I’m the organizer, so reach out if you have any questions. WP Career Summit is free to attend. For more information and to register, visit wpcareersummit.com!

“Simplified Business Minute” - Sam Muñoz

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

• Daniel Schutzsmith
• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Joe Casabona
• Jeff Chandler
• Dave Rodenbaugh

New Members

We would like to welcome Thomas Maier  Founder and CEO of Advanced Ads and webgilde GmbH to the WPMinute. 

If you haven't noticed, the WPMinute got a fantastic new paint job...more than a paint job...also under the hood. This thing is screaming fast. Thanks to Mike Oliver for designing the new WPMinute theme for us built on Generate Press. If you are looking for somebody that does amazing front-end design and optimization, look no further than WPMinute Producer, Contributor, and web developer Mike Oliver. Thanks to his hard work on the redesign.

Thanks to you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday.

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Thanks Pressable for supporting the podcast! What hosting should feel like...nothing! https://pressable.com/wpminute 

News

Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, made the news again (this time with the Wall Street Journal). He talks about ‘asynchronous work’ and why he thinks hybrid models will die out.  Automattic employees are already living the work from anywhere model and are able to adjust their work schedules as needed.

Anne McCarthy is back with another round of testing this time for the WordPress Photo directory. By adding your photos here, they will automatically appear in Openverse, a search engine for openly licensed media. Volunteers are needed to test and provide feedback on media-related features in WordPress. Anyone is welcome to contribute, and feedback is open until February 23.

Eric Karkovac wrote a post on the WordPress photo directory. If you would like an understanding of how licensing images came about and to see an early review of WordPress media go check out his article.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Many in the WordPress community have been feeling the weight of growth and change and frankly everything over the last couple of years. Cory Miller shared an update on his “crash and burn”. Many of us are not alone in this area and support Cory along with his team over at PostStatus.

The organizers of WordCamp Europe 2022, were called out recently for a lack of diversity on the Organizing Team. They are addressing that now citing the team cares deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Click the link to read their updated communication.

Angela Jin has started an open discussion on diversity as well over on make.wordpress.org. Make sure to participate in this very important discussion and provide feedback.

Eric Mann wrote a post on his first month using WordPress 5.9 from an experienced WordPress contributor perspective. If you would like to see the good, the bad and the future of WordPress this post is worth a few minutes of your time.

Sarah Gooding over at the WPTavern covered the latest with the German court fining a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-Hosted Fonts. If you are using Google fonts and are subject to European regulations, you may want to review how you are using them to be in compliance.

Sarah’s colleague Justin Tadlock wrote an article stating that Block Editor Sidebar Panels are the new Admin Notices. Product marketers will be interwoven with the editing experience for the foreseeable future. Or until an official mechanism for products to notify users of upgrades is offered in core, as WP Minute correspondent Spencer Forman comments.

Business news!

Convesio Raises $5M in funding to further develop its scalable WordPress Hosting Platform. This funding will help to deliver a consistently fast experience with their customers. 

MasterWP.co, a newsletter for WordPress professionals, announced that Howard Development & Consulting has acquired the publication. 

From Alex Denning

Some news: after 5 years and 249 issues, @BinaryMoon and I have written our final issue of http://MasterWP.co.

@howarddcweb have acquired MasterWP, and will be taking over bringing you insightful, quality WordPress news and analysis from next week.

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

• Jeff Chandler
• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Eric Karkovack

If you would like to contribute news, especially in the WooCommerce space please find us @thewpminute or use our contact form at thewpminute.com and reach out to us.

New Members

We would like to welcome our new member this week Lawrence Ladomery from convesio.com.

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