The WP Minute

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A lot of WordPress News this Week

After months of talking about the release of WordPress 5.8, it has finally arrived. Matt Mullenweg announced that “Tatum”, our latest and greatest release now available for download or update is in your dashboard. This release is named in honor of Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist. 

But if you need a thorough review, I recommend you head over to Kinsta’s blog where Carlo Daniele had time to write an amazing summary that covers all the new features of WordPress 5.8. His full-featured post includes a table of contents along with the videos discussing what has been worked on and added in the latest few months. It is a great source for all of the new things in WordPress 5.8.

Speaking of great sources…

Birgit Pauli-Haack covers more WordPress Themes for Full-Site Editing along with their Resources in the latest post on Gutenberg Times. Birgit says: 

“Just remember that themes may be wonky at times until developers have had time to make updates.”

Bob over at Do-the-Woo covers the latest WooCommerce updates. These updates cover the Action Scheduler 3.2.0 and 3.2.1. The AS library from 3.1.6 to 3.2.1 has been updated in this latest release. Sounds fascinating. This release comes with several fixes and an additional database index to speed up performance for sites with heavy traffic. We all love that.

Lastly, Sarah over at WPTavern reports that Tiny, the makers of TinyMCE, have acquired Setka, a content design and editing platform, for an undisclosed amount of money. TinyMCE is used by millions of WordPress users, most visibly in the Classic Editor plugin as well as the Advanced Editor Tools plugin, previously known as TinyMCE Advanced. 

Advanced Editor Tools adds a “Classic Paragraph” block to the block editor that gives access to the TinyMCE editor with configurable rows and buttons. It provides a stepping stone for those who are not quite ready to switch to the block editor.

Events

This is the week folks. Wordfest Live starts on July 23, 2021. It’s the 24-hour festival of WordPress.

From the Grabbag

Changes are being made to meetup.com, the platform where local WordPress events are based. WPCalendar.io will no longer receive any more updates.

If you think we can’t keep up with Acquisitions, join the club. Quite literally, Cory Miller over at Post Status has an Acquisition Tracker and it shows you when a WordPress business was sold and who bought it.

Over on the Matt Report, my latest interview is with Dave Rodenbaugh. He shares he was never even working on a part-time basis with his business Recapture.io. In fact, the way he put it, he was only devoting 10% of his energy into the business while being contracted at a corporate gig he recently had the chance to exit from. Go check out the latest episode.

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Automattic purchases Pocket Casts, a popular podcast app that was facing an uncertain future.

A quote from the creators of the app:

“As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new). We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts”

Recent installs of WooCommerce were hit with a vulnerability which has since been patched. If you haven’t updated your WooCommerce site, please check that as soon as possible.

A quote from the WooCommerce blog:

Our investigation into this vulnerability and whether data has been compromised is ongoing. We will be sharing more information with site owners on how to investigate this security vulnerability on their site, which we will publish on our blog when it is ready.

Pantheon host, known for WordPress hosting and Drupal hosting has raised 100 Million in a Series E round

We were planning to raise in a year or two years down the road. But we have a lot of conviction in where this industry is going and our customers’ needs are pretty apparent, so we used this as an opportunity to accelerate our operational plans for the company.” — Zack Rosen, Pantheon CEO, tells TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/13/webops-platform-pantheon-raises-100m-from-softbank-vision-fund/

From the grab bag

I found EduPack to be an interesting “Jetpack-like” plugin for higher ed

A walk around the search block by Javier Arce depicts how he approaches the design of the Gutenberg search block

WordFest Live starts next week, July 22-23
What is headless and why does everyone seem to want it? Hosted by Miriam Schwab of Strattic and team Yoast

Over on the Matt Report I interviewed Dave Rodenbaugh of recapture.io on how he took that business from part time to full time

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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Great News for the Castos Team in private podcasting

Castos, a leader in podcast hosting and analytics, has successfully closed an investment round of $756,000. With investments by Automattic, Yoast SEO, along with individual investors, Castos will use this additional capital to fuel its advance into the Private Podcasting market.

A quote from Craig Hewlett:

 “On both the individual and corporate investor side I think the investors see the vision that we have for what the Private Podcasting market can mean for Castos and want to help us achieve that potential,” Hewitt said.

Big huge large news: I sold @SearchWP! Lots to say but the words can't fit in a tweeter https://t.co/OdfYlZDYXG

SearchWP finds a new home

Jonathan Christopher tweeted that his product SearchWP has been acquired by Awesome Motive. A quote from Syed Balkhi in the announcement post: 

“As he wanted to pursue the next chapter of his life, we started discussing the future of the SearchWP plugin.

Given our experience running a suite of popular WordPress plugins, SearchWP was a perfect fit for our family of products.”

He goes on to state:

“A WordPress search plugin that a beginner, non-techy, small business owner can easily set up in less than 10 minutes to grow their business.

I sat down with the team, and we have a crystal-clear 12 month plan. A lot of exciting things are coming your way in the coming months.”

Also check out the interview with Jonathan Christopher in this article: Finding an awesome home for SearchWP

Full Site Editing Testing Call #8

Compared to previous calls for testing for the FSE (Full SIte Editing) Outreach program, this round is intentionally targeting a more developer-centric audience compared to site builders or end users. in order to bring high impact feedback for theme.json, a new tool for extenders. You can read more about what to expect with upcoming efforts on make.WordPress.org site.

Events

WordFest live is coming up July 23rd. You can go and check out the speaker sessions that you do not want to miss!

Grabbag

Many of you are familiar with Troy Dean. Well, he was not a part of an acquisition but a name change and rebranding.. 

Troy Dean states:

“The WP Elevation name was changed to Agency Mavericks to embrace the essence of the community and brand apart — our maverick spirit.”

To honor Ujwal Thapa

The WordPress Biratnagar Facebook group announced last week that a WordCamp scholarship in honor of Ujwal Thapa, who passed away from COVID 19 complications. 

The WordPress Biratnagar community decided on this scholarship to honor his memory.

And finally…face to face WordCamps in 2021?

The WordPress community team is removing the barrier to organizing in-person meetup events for fully-vaccinated people. This is great news and we are very lucky to be able to move forward with scheduled events.

Over on the Matt Report I interviewed Jason Coleman of Paid Memberships Pro on his journey to 100,000 active installs. 

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 at thewpminute.com.

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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Gutenberg, WordPress 3.8 Release, WooCommerce & Jetpack

WordPress 5.8 is still marching along with modifications for release in July. Eighteen bugs and fixes were applied from Release 3 concentrating on polishing existing default themes, fixing bugs in the new block Widget screen, and squashing Editor bugs collected during beta.

WPTavern posted a review of the Gutenberg 10 updates in the plugin. The Query and Query Loop blocks were renamed, hopefully clearing up all the confusion for end users. The Query Loop block has been renamed to Post Template to better represent its purpose within Query, whereas the Query block label now refers to it as Query Loop.

I enjoyed Justin Tadlock’s take on WordPress theme lock-in, in the block-era.

“I do not necessarily see this as a Bad Thing. We have always had these little silos in the WordPress ecosystem, and they have mostly worked out.”

WooCommerce News. The first release candidate is now available for WooCommerce 5. The planned release date is July 13.

Jetpack launched a new mobile app. Automattic has launched a new mobile app for Jetpack, available on iOS and Android. The app features an array of Jetpack-specific features, including:

• Backups and restores
• Security scanning
• Activity monitoring
• Site stats
• And more

Security in the news 

Ithemes Security Pro 7 was released with significant improvements and a redesigned interface.

Tony Perez writes on NOC about how we communicate #wordpress and #security. People focus on all the tools and configurations, and not enough on the actions they’re trying to prevent. He covers his approach in this article about WordPress in the Enterprise.

According to ehackingnews.com Over 800 million WordPress-linked records are leaked in this misconfigured cloud database associated with DreamHost, a popular WordPress hosting platform. A fix was made “within hours” of the discovery.

Grabbag 

• Ninja Forms celebrates 10 years! Congratulations to James Laws and Kevin Stover. https://twitter.com/jameslaws/status/1409589138257371141?s=21
• WPEngine is now offering  Local 6.0 Pro free for everyone. As of June 29, 2021, everyone has access to Local Pro tools and features for free. This is another great tool for developing locally.
• Alex Standiford at WP Dev Academy released his new course that teaches how to build modern, scale-able WordPress plugins quickly. If you’re a developer looking to up your WordPress game, this course is for you.

Just how competitive is the membership plugin space? Learn how Paid Memberships Pro has grown over the last 8 years in my interview with Jason Coleman on the Matt Report.

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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Its the WP Minute!

This episode is brought to you by Search WP. Improve WordPress search by visiting SearchWP.com

You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Checkout thewpminute.com for the links.

Sshh…no major acquisitions this week.

WordPress 5.8 is slated for release on July 20. In just over a month, many users will get their first experience of the template-editing mode. This can be exciting for users allowing them to create custom templates without ever leaving the post-editing screen.

New powerful blocks like the Theme blocks and Query blocks will be introduced.

Beta 3 of 5.8 is available today for testing.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Maps, Sarah Gooding from WordPress Tavern breaks down some of the recent happenings with the MapLibre Project. Citing she even opened a ticket for Jetpack to consider using it in a future release. 

Chris Lema shares his thoughts from the lens of Nexcess/LiquidWeb and other hosting companies on the future success of WordPress. It seems Nexcess might have their own Membership website experience coming for WordPress hosting soon.

WPEngine’s Summit 2021 dubbed “The Digital Breakthrough Conference” launches tomorrow June 24th. 

From the Grabbag

• The WPWeekly hit the 50 issue milestone, congrats Davinder. 
• Joe Casabona shows you how to submit to the WordPress Block Pattern Directory without code.
• WebDevStudios is now a VIP Gold Partner with proven excellence implementing WordPress at scale.
• Gravity Forms celebrate the Gravity Forms Certified Developer Program (Look for more of this from major plugin vendors in the future).
• I enjoyed this conversation with WPBuffs founder Joe Howard and Nathan Hirsh on his podcast about starting FreeUp.net a home for hiring WordPress freelancers. 

If you’re a creator in the WordPress or web tech space, I talked about how you can get a job leveraging your existing content over on the latest episode of the Matt Report.

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 at thewpminute.com

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

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