The WP Minute

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It seems a year can’t go by without the pesky lifetime WordPress license topic popping up to spice up the holiday conversation.

A struggle dating back 7 years ago to the month when Jeff Chandler covered, now defunct, Sidekick.pro where then owner Ben Fox shared his pricing experiments.

When Brad Touesnard purchased Advanced Custom Fields back in June, he was swiftly reminded how hard lifetime license pricing really is. I mean, he did his due diligence, he knew what he was getting into. But the lifetime license woes lingered well before the new owners arrived. Elliot Condon wrestled with it, “get it all for one price forever” that is, until he finally revised pricing for 2020 to build the business a better runway.

Lifetime license holders will get **all** ACF Pro software updates forever. They won’t be required to pay for version 6.0 or any other major or minor releases in the future. They signed up for updates for life, so we’ll continue to deliver on that promise forever. 8/10

Amidst a fumbled start, Brad, did bless all lifetime license holders with access — forever. It’s on Twitter, so it’s permanent in my book.

This isn’t the first pricing rodeo for Brad and company.

When asked about lessons learned with pricing in a 2018 interview with Joe Howard on the WPMRR podcast, Brad had this to say:

“I think the biggest thing that people don’t do is experiment with their pricing.

When I launched Migrate DB Pro, I think the developer license was, $99 per year.

In December of that year, I doubled the pricing. Which would have been totally uncontroversial, except that I changed all the prices for the existing customers as well. I didn’t grandfather it.

And there was definitely quite a bit of blowback. I’d regret doing it because I feel like at that point, it wouldn’t have hurt us to like grandfather those people in but I don’t believe really in grandfathering people in forever.

That’s the same aversion I have to like unlimited things and “lifetime this and that.”

Pricing is challenging, no doubt, and lot has already been said about lifetime licenses.

Should you offer them as a product owner? Clearly the data (and the community) is pointing to a firm “no” at this point. Should the customer expect that a lifetime license actually means a lifetime of free…everything? Read Chris Lema’s take, On Lifetime Licenses.

Paul Charlton of WPTuts posted a reaction video to a recent e-mail sent from Delicious Brains, the new owners of Advanced Custom Fields. In the video, Paul shares his frustration with the ask of lifetime license holders to “pitch in” to keep the development of the popular plugin alive.

Paul was one of the first in line to question what would happen to lifetime license holders when Delicious Brains acquired ACF back in June.

From the current events: Agency Principal, Alex J Vasquez doesn’t seem to have an issue with the ask, stating “ Could this have been said differently? Sure, a better crafted msg would go a long way but I have zero issues with the ask.”

Could this have been said differently? Sure, a better crafted msg would go a long way but I have zero issues with the ask.

Where for folks like Charlton, it “sticks in his throat” that customers are almost feeling guilted into supporting the product. Charlton has no problem if users want to support their favorite software, but is not entirely thrilled when a brand requests it.

After reaching out to Paul for a post-publishing lay of the land, he responded:

“My biggest takeaway is the complete silence from them to be honest. They’ve been tagged in many replies and spin off comments and nothing at all has come back from them.

As for learning anything new, it’s pretty much radio silence across the board. Just speculation and frustration from most commenters.”

UPDATE: An updated quote from Paul after the recent ACF tweet

It’s good to hear Delicious Brains are going to honour the LTD, but maybe it would be a good idea to run future emails through a competent PR company first to avoid confusion.

The ACF Twitter account tweeted:

“Lifetime license customers: We are still firmly committed to honoring lifetime licenses and all future emails. We will reaffirm this commitment. So there is no confusion. Signed, Brad Touesnard.”

When I asked Brad for a comment, that was the tweet he shared and pointed to his previous thread, posted back in June.

Some of our WP Minute Producers have expressed their thoughts in our Discord server:

“Well, Brad is in a tough spot here—there are a ton of these “lifetime deals” with ACF that he inherited and their something of a liability from a business perspective.”

“Brad should save himself a lot of LTD headache in the long term and just stop supporting the...

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Gobble gobble!

WordPress 5.9 will not be released until the beginning of 2022. There were some major blockers identified with the Beta Release and the team thought it best to delay the release instead of pushing through the holidays. Beta 1 was originally scheduled to release last week. Now the overall schedule will be updated to reflect the new date, January 25, 2022 (edit: We said 22nd in the podcast, but have revised it here.)

This will give contributors more time to collaborate further on the release. There is a new video posted on Facebook that covers responsive editing and customization for 5.9. Check this out to see all the new features that are coming. 

Justin Sainton shared how he got the new brand for pagely.com launched with full site editing in WordPress. This article shares how the project was started in January of 2021 but was quickly finished in 8 weeks for the merger and acquisition with GoDaddy. Justin covers some of the pain points of Full Site Editing in Gutenberg that you should be aware of in case you decide to follow this accelerated timeline yourself.

Events

As I mentioned last week the State of the Word will be live-streamed from New York City. That means that you can join the fun either online or in person, on December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm EST! You can join with your local Meetup for a watch party and now you can participate in person in New York City by filling out the registration by Sunday, November 28, but be aware that not all requests will receive a seat due to the venue capacity – set at 50. 

Sabrina Zierden shared the first plans for the largest venue for WordCamp Europe 2022. To work on the plans, they have reopened the Call for Organizers again. It looks very exciting to have live conferences scheduled in 2022. That video looks pretty amazing as an in-person venue.

Security

We should maybe be getting used to seeing Security breaches happen but when it does, it is still so disturbing. This time in a disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission, GoDaddy revealed that they had been hacked. This was not the first time the company was compromised. GoDaddy stated that it has discovered that an “unauthorized third party” had accessed a managed WordPress hosting environment. Up to 1.2 million users were compromised. According to this document, GoDaddy believes that the first breach occurred around September 6, 2021, and investigations are currently underway. Go change all your WordPress passwords if you have accounts with GoDaddy.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Block Building

Do you want to create your own custom block? The Wicked Block Builder is in the WordPress plugin directory. There’s no setup required and you can build blocks in as little as a few minutes. The block builder is still in beta so please make sure you have a backup in place before you give this plugin a try.

The Automattic Theme team has been working on a plugin to help you create a Blockbased child theme. You can use the existing tools to make changes to a Blockbase theme, and then export a bundle of templates and theme.json as a new child theme. Once the theme has been created then unzipped to your WordPress site, you can modify it further. It is a cool tool to go check out.

In the continued discussion around custom blocks, Matt Watson wrote a nice in-depth article about creating Gutenberg blocks over on the WPOwls. The challenge was to build a typical “Owl-Link” Gutenberg “Block” using JavaScript and React style syntax. Matt does a great job of reviewing how to build and apply a block pattern in Gutenberg.

If you are not interested in learning blocks at all, you can check out Webflow’s approach to creating Websites with no code.

BobWP shared that this will be year 11 for him in the WordPress space. His post reflects on people leaving WordPress recently and how the community has been important to him over the years.

The PHP foundation has been created as an open collective to help maintain the knowledge that has been developed over its 26-year history. The language has been actively developed by a huge number of people and in order to have this stick around for another evolution, the foundation has been established.  Many companies have joined forces to keep PHP alive, including Automattic.

Mind and Body Minute

As we are all busy around the holidays while trying not to eat all the pies so…enjoy the clip submitted by Michelle Schulp!

It is a great reminder to take care of yourself, set realistic wellness goals, and approach the season with mindfulness.

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

• Birget Pauli-Haack
• Dave Rodenbaugh
• Daniel Schutzsmith
• Bob Dunn
• Jeff Chandler
• Vinny McKee
• Maciek Palmowski 

New Members:
We would like to welcome Vinny from Wicked Plugins and Patrick Garman from Mindsize. They were quick to contribute this week in the news, and we appreciate it!

That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list

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Download file | Play in new window | Duration: 00:06:51 | Recorded on November 17, 2021

The BIG news this week is that Pagely joined GoDaddy. Pagely, a large managed WordPress host owned by the Strebels, joined with GoDaddy to help grow and cover a larger segment of the market. Josh Strebel writes that his successful company always took the uncompromising position that employees and customers come first. This acquisition will allow GoDaddy to become more like Pagely. The annual Pressnomics conference will continue as well…but may look a little different moving forward.

Congratulations Josh, Sally, team and GoDaddy!

Liquid Web has acquired Modern Trib...

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This is content was sponsored by Connekt. They create handcrafted digital products, like WordPress plugins and themes. This was part of the WP Minute content bounty program where today’s author earned $200 to write and record this post. Thanks to Connekt for helping us create content like this.

Today’s episode is bittersweet.

It’s one man’s take on how Gutenberg has impacted the WordPress community deeply — down to the core. How the weight of control shifting in our space has shuttered him. The constant tug-of-war feeling that splits our community. And with all that, making this his final act for WordPress…for now.

This man is former WP Minute Managing Editor, Paul Lacey. I’ve known Paul for a while, he’s a great person and genuinely cares about the people around him.

He and I both hoped that the WP Minute project was different enough to re-energize his love for the space, but it only masked it temporarily. Ironically, it was through today’s essay/podcast, that reassured that stepping away from WordPress is the best thing for him.

I wish him all the best, and I hope you do too.

By the way, the content bounty program that Connekt supported, Paul wants me to donate the $200 to Big Orange Heart.

Enjoy today’s episode, with Paul.

Change

In the 2015 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic gave the community a homework assignment – “Learn Javascript, deeply”, “because it’s what’s going to allow WordPress to thrive for the next 13 years”. It was a clear signal that something was coming, something new, and something big.  And that something, was change. 

Change in industry can be a great thing, in fact with change more often than not comes great opportunities for those willing and eager to embrace. 

But then there are others that don’t really have a great deal of control over their place within the system, they are forced to adapt and accept.  For those people, change can be bad. 

Fishing Reels, 50 Pence Wedding Rings & The Printing Press

Growing up in a working class family in the 80s, we weren’t poor, but money was tight, and work was always hard.  My Dad was a toolmaker in a precision engineering factory.  He and hundreds of his workmates worked long and hard hours – paid by the hour.  But something kept them together, with a sense of place – the community.  The individuals within the company’s community formed groups – fishing clubs, chess clubs, table tennis and football (soccer) tournaments, reading clubs, dance nights, live music, street parties for the whole families of the workers – all run by volunteers, and self funded by the community itself.  

My Dad specifically was involved in the fishing clubs and competitions, he used his skills to make fishing spools and reels which he would sell to his friends at cost.  He even made his own wedding ring out of a melted down Fifty pence coin with the likeness of Her Majesty The Queen’s distorted image wrapped around his finger on the inside.

Industrial progress, growth and maturity ultimately led to change.  The company was bought out by an American investor and was broken up. New teams from the States were brought in to modernise and capture new business opportunities.  

The precision engineering part of the company was closed to be replaced by a printing press business.  After over 20 years, my Dad lost his job, as did all of his friends. The community broke up, fractured, people lost touch.  You can replace the jobs, but you can’t replace the community, once it’s gone, it’s gone.  

This sense of community is something I’ve had within me for my whole life too.  I’ve always sought out a tribe of like minded people. I was always playing bands in local music scenes, and traveling the UK skateboarding – meeting new people and gaining new insights and experiences.  

Matt’s Memorial

Around the time I finished University I broke my ankle. Slowly, I hobbled away from Skateboarding. But the feel of that community is always with me.  When one of my best friends from those days, Matt, died a few years ago I attended his funeral and over a hundred old friends from the Skateboarding community attended to pay respects, celebrate...