The WP Minute

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It’s the WPMinute! I am Liam Dempsey with the following news and updates.

This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com.

You know how it goes, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links.

In The News

Jetpack is acquiring WPScan. WPScan is being used across the WordPress ecosystem to identify vulnerabilities in WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Besides creating an outstanding security offering, Jetpack’s goal for this acquisition is to make malware data and APIs more open source. As part of the acquisition, two of the WPScan founders, Ryan Dewhurst and Erwan Le Rousseau, will be joining Automattic to continue their work improving security for the WordPress ecosystem. WPScan will continue to operate independently in the near term and may be integrated into Jetpack Scan in the future.

There has been a lot of news around core updates on make.wordpress.org. There is a core editor improvement with a new view that lets folks have a space to focus specifically on editing a single template part (like the header or footer). You will be able to access this mode in a few ways once Gutenberg 11.9 is released. If all goes well, then in WordPress 5.9.

Around the FSE program (Full Site Editing that is) the team went into round three of questioning that was gathered through the FSE outreach program. There were many questions around themes, the customizer and fonts. Keep your eyes open for a round four.

Paul Lacey recently spoke with Vikas Singhal of Express Tech & InstaWP on the WPMinute about his company’s upcoming FSE (Full Site Editing) Theme Launch.  It was interesting to see a practical implementation of FSE design. The theme is called Guten and launches in December. You can check this out on the WPMinute to get a review of the FSE Theme implementation and design.

Spencer Forman also at the WPMinute spends time talking about how many more theme years are we going to see? Are we ready for a default theme that flexes Gutenberg’s block-based approach over a designed theme like Twenty Twenty? Go listen to Spencer’s take on the release of styled themes with major WordPress releases.

Justin Tadlock, at the WPTavern, wrote a great blog post on the third-party plugin WooCommerce and asked the question Where are the Block Themes for WooCommerce? WooCommerce is a third-party plugin and is unrelated to the core WordPress and Gutenberg projects. But as we know, WooCommerce is owned by Automattic. So, one can assume that there is some crossover among developers. For a deeper look at what is ahead, read Peek into the WooCommerce Blocks Roadmap, which is developer-specific. You may come to the realization that the size and scope of WooCommerce Block integration is not simple and far off for FSE.

SEO

Google has announced that it’s renaming Google My Business to Google Business Profile. Google has explained that the existing Google My Business web experience will eventually transition to primarily supporting large multi-location businesses. Local SEO experts have been quick to react to the update. If SEO is included in your WordPress space go check out the changes that are coming.

In other SEO news….RankMath, with over a million installs annonces Content AI to take the hassle out of writing. That is a great idea for many who are writing that specific content for organic SEO. RankMath will hold your hand while you write content to see if it is worthy of Search Engine Rankings.

Events

Wordfest Live is back in March 2022. The deadline for the call for speaker submissions is December 6, 2021, at midnight UTC. The organizers will start to notify speakers from December 16, 2021, onward. Wordfest is seeking proposals on a wide variety of topics. Go check out the details on their site if you are interested.

WooCommerce

BobWP announced his first Do the Woo partnership with PostStatus. Bob has been friends with Cory Miller for a long time and it made sense at this time to partner with somebody he mentions a lot in the WordPress space on his podcasts. Congratulations Bob and Cory!

From Our Contributors and Producers

We have been reporting for weeks how different it is for developers and writers coming into the WordPress space with the changes to core and the addition of Gutenberg. Tom McFarlin shares his perspective about both on his blog. Tom is an experienced WordPress developer and you may have followed his writing over the years. He writes that although WordPress is a different set of technologies now, it’s not very different for somebody getting started in programming in any discipline. Developers need to learn different technologies and make them work. He shares several points in his post and it is definitely worth it to take the time to read.

Speaking of WordPress development, Aaron Jorbin shared his development toolchain while he was building the Post Format Block. Aaron covers three tools (wp-scripts being his favorite) in his post that can improve the quality of your code and allow you to focus on things that matter instead of the repeatable tasks that happen in the world of development.

Over on the WPTavern, Nathan Wrigley interviewed Tara King. Tara has recently started working for Automattic in a developer relations role. Tara will lead a newly formed team who will get out and try to understand the pain points that people are having with the new Block Editor and Full Site Editing. She is encouraging developers toward a Gutenberg future and wants to hear from you.

The WebDevStudios team was over on PostStatus discussing the Legend of the Headless WordPress site. They answer t...

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Today’s episode is a special report by WP Minute correspondent, Spencer Forman.

How many more theme years are we going to see?

The Twenty Nineteen, Twenty Twenty, Twenty Twenty One and so on — seem like a strange naming convention bordering a simple novelty tradition.

With Gutenberg squarely aimed to take on page builders, especially with Full Site Editing right around the corner, we’d be mindful to note that plugins like Elementor ship with only one theme — every year.

Are we ready for a default theme that simple flexes Gutenberg’s block-based approach over an opinionated design? Spencer has a few words to share with you about that today.

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Josh Pollock, a co-founder of Caldera forms, shared how he was able to have a career in development because of WordPress. He writes about all the extra work needed to build a plugin now and how that is impacting the learning curve in WordPress. Josh is working on a new product called Plugin Machine. He has always been interested in helping developers and this looks like an exciting opportunity for new developers coming into the WordPress space. Go check out what is planned for Plugin Machine and sign up for early access.

Sarah Gooding at the WP Tavern shared the latest on the antitrust lawsuit against Google. The Lawsuit claimed AMP was created for the purpose of pushing publishers away from “header bidding.”  The full text of the newly unredacted complaint, which was unsealed by a federal judge last week, references research from internal Google documents. It states that internal Google communications identified header bidding as an “existential threat.”  We will keep an eye on Sarah’s reporting as this concern should continue to be a priority for the WordPress Community.

Jetpack is finally formalizing its approach to agency licensing with a new portal launched this week. The program is aimed at streamlining product setup and account billing records for agencies and professionals who use Jetpack on client projects. Sarah was very busy writing about this as well this week.

Birgit Pauli-Haack shared this blog post from lead architect of the Gutenberg project  Matías Ventura, reviewing theme.json and what’s on the horizon for it. Theme.json allows themes to control various aspects of the block editor, from presets to settings to the appearance of blocks, and was introduced in WordPress 5.8. Matias covers the cool things that can be done with it already and what will be unlocked in the future.

As we have been reporting, WordPress 5.9 is full steam ahead towards the December 14, 2021 release date. The make.wordpress.org website is still showing the raised hand emoji where contributors and volunteers are needed.

Also over on make.wordpress.org there is a redesign of the Gutenberg page. You can review the proposed updates and if you want to get involved, volunteers are welcome.

Search Engine Journal reported that WordPress took a bit of a beating by sharing the Core Web Vitals Technology Report that combines two usage datasets to compare the CMS technologies.  

Events

Sara Gooding, over at the WPTavern, wrote this week about WordCamp US seeking a new host city for 2022. Unlike previous years, community leadership plans to conduct its own city search using a professional events management team.

Buddy is hosting a webinar on How to update WordPress plugins with Git Updater on November 17th.  You can learn how to seamlessly release your in-house plugins without the need of using the official plugin repository.

WooCommerce

BobWP did a total rebrand over at Doo the Woo with WebDevStudios. If you keep up with the WooCommerce news this site is a beautiful redesign that has great navigation to find the all the things you are looking for. Congratulations Bob!

Pagebuilder News

Elegant themes announced on their blog that they have released Full Site Front-End editing for Divi. Now You Can Edit Your Theme Builder Templates And Post Content At The Same Time From Within The Visual Builder. Check out their video for more information.

Security

Wordfence covered a very disturbing remote work scam and presented it as a PSA to the community because it is impacting a lot of folks. An attacker will post a job advertisement on a job board for a position and after you reach out, the scammers pose as people in a company doing the hiring. You may go out and purchase equipment for the job which you were just offered (from a fake company) and then you are left hanging for the costs of the equipment after you have provided personal information. There are several recommendations in the article to protect yourself, but do not apply for jobs through a job board and make sure that the company has a legitimate job posting on their website. 

We had some great finds this week from Contributors and Producers

Stencil joins Namecheap, the second-largest domain registrar in the world. It is only going to get better as Namecheap shares many of the core values as Stencil.

Amber Hinds Tweeted that an accessibility @a11y test engineer, Joyce Oshita has offered to test (free audit) and provide feedback for a #WordPress plugin or theme. 

In the latest ReadME Podcast, lead @WordPress developer

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 It’s the WP Minute!

This episode is brought to you by FooGallery, check out their latest WooCommerce integration to start selling images right through WooCommerce, head on over to Foo.Gallery for more information!

You know how it goes, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links.

In The News

Robert Anderson provides the latest update for WordPress 5.9 on make.WordPress.org. Gutenberg 11.9 will be cut on November 3rd. The merge to Core for this release may be tricky and if you have time to help, they are looking for volunteers for this release.

Sara Gooding over at WPTavern wrote a great article about how Jetpack is splitting out its commercial Backup feature into a standalone plugin that can be used without installing the core Jetpack plugin. The product was built with WooCommerce in mind so that you can restore a site to any past state while keeping orders and products in place. Just a reminder that this is a paid plugin and the backup feature is part of the long-term plan to make Jetpack more modular and less confusing. 

Gutenberg still continues to be at the top of the discussion

Carlo Daniele, over at Kinsta wrote a detailed development tutorial on Building Custom Gutenberg Blocks.  If you find yourself lost in the huge amount of information that the WordPress Block Editor Handbook provides then this is a great tutorial for you to review. It helps you set up a development environment for Gutenberg Blocks. Just note you may still struggle with JavaScript, Node.js, React, and Redux and as a developer, you should have a good understanding of these.

Another cool tutorial written by Joshua Dailey over at  Web3WP covers an experiment with Wapuu. The information is over on GitHub. Joshua covers how the first experiment includes four distinct web apps that work together for minting the generative NFT Wapuu collectibles. So if you’re a developer interested in NFTs, you can start to build your own art NFT project by starting here.

Justin Ferriman wrote a great post called Matt’s Page Builder, where he talks about the block editor trying to be two things: a place to write, and a page builder. It seemed when Gutenberg was first released it would act more like a front-end page builder – but it was not that at all. Is Gutenberg the great editor replacement? This article led to several discussions about how the editor is “ok” for writing but seems like it’s a little forced as a tool that needs to be adopted for building and writing.

Joe Casabona followed up with a blog post on how the Gutenberg editor has never really been the best place to write. At the risk of rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, he also falls into using the editor for quick posts which seems “good enough”. He presents several reasons why you should write somewhere else then send it to WordPress. You can customize your work, have local backups, write your piece once and publish everywhere. When Gutenberg matures as an editor it may make sense to use it for your own writing.

I remember at one point Google Docs was supposed to copy/paste seamlessly into Gutenberg and it still doesn’t work. Reach out to Matt Medeiros if you know a way to make Google docs work.

There was a lot of activity with PageBuilders this week…

Beaver Builder announced the release of Assistant Pro which they had been working on for some time. Assistant Pro lets you export, import, and save page builder templates and other design assets to the cloud and works with many of the most popular page builders. Matt Medeiros reviewed Assistant Pro several years ago in March of 2019 on his PlugInTut channel over on YouTube. Congratulations to Beaver Builder for the hard work around the release.

Ferdy Korpershoek reviews how you can save all your templates to the cloud using the Page Builder Cloud.

Let’s not forget Layouts Cloud that is the cloud plugin for Divi.

Events

WordCamp EU for 2022 – WCEU is opening the Call for Organizers for WCEU 2022. Even with the uncertainty in the world with COVID-19, optimism is there around Porto (Portugal) 2022. The planning team is looking for people to join the planning team.

From Our Contributors and Producers

A public GitHub repository for WPCloudDeploy was announced marking a new era in the open-source journey for WPCD. Previously, the code was only available for folks who purchased a license. Now it is available for anyone.

Birgit Pauli-Haack tweeted a thank you to Johnny Harris for his dedication and passion for WordPress by becoming a maintainer of the REST API in WordPress Core. 

We welcome Paul Lacey to the WPMinute as the new Managing Editor. Paul is familiar in the WordPress Community and some of you may know him from his previous role on the WP Builds podcast, co-hosting with Nathan Wrigley. Paul devoted a large portion of his professional life to WordPress as an advocate, business owner, and content creator. 

If you would like to get to know Paul a little better, go listen to his interview this week on the WPMinute. The interview focuses on the idea of journalism where folks in the WordPress community can get their short-form content in front of the world. They even discuss the content bounty. By the way, we just put $400 back into the hands of two members, Paul Lacey and Michelle Frechette.

Matt Cromwell and Jeff Chandler had some fun reminiscing through Twitter about Bob Dunn’s article updating a couple of WordPress sites where he had over 100 plugins. This got Bob hunting through the archives for the article and was able to find the video in his dusty archives. It is a good reminder that updating WordPress is often seamless. Enjoy this walk-through through time updating WordPress 4.0.

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

• Paul Lacey
• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Jeff Chandler
• Davinder Singh Kainth<...

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Paul Lacey doesn’t need much of an introduction. You’ve watched him for the last few years on the WP Builds podcast, co-hosting with Nathan Wrigley.

He’s devoted a large portion of his professional life to WordPress as an advocate, business owner, and content creator. He has a deep understanding on how the WordPress economy operates with a deeper connection to the WordPress community.

I’m excited to have him join us to help build this new experience of WordPress news.

Join the WP Minute membership and get involved in the WordPress news. We also have a new Content Bounty available that sponsors one of our members to create a new piece of content.

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