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It’s no secret that tools boasting Artificial Intelligence are popping up all over the place. That most certainly includes WordPress. And now Auttomattic’s WordPress.com is running an experiment to see how the technology might benefit users.

As reported by blogger JenT at WPcomMaven, the managed hosting service quietly added two AI-powered blocks to the Block Editor. The AI Image and AI Paragraph blocks are aimed at helping content creators.

As the name suggests, the AI Image block allows users to generate an image that can be inserted into a post. And the AI Paragraph block will “read” your post’s content and generate follow up text.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg confirmed the new features on Twitter, but made no promises regarding how long they’ll stick around.

Meanwhile, Automattic engineer Artur Piszek published a brief post introducing the blocks and answering questions in the WordPress.com support forums. Based on the conversation, it looks as though this could be a commercial add-on in the future.

The technology is being branded as “Jetpack AI”, and was built in conjunction with OpenAI.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

The first-ever WordCamp Asia is set to take place from February 17-19 in Bangkok, Thailand. If you’re not able to attend in person, you can still watch a live stream of the event. Recordings of each session will also be posted on WordPress.tv at a later date.

WordPress.org has kicked off a monthly feature called “What’s new for developers?” Written by Justin Tadlock, February’s post outlines several key changes that impact theme and plugin authors. You’ll also find links to the site’s latest educational materials. This resource looks like a win for the WordPress developer community.

Cost cutting measures have continued to hit the tech industry hard. Domain registrar and hosting giant GoDaddy is among the latest to announce staff cuts. In a February 8 letter to employees, CEO Aman Bhutani said the company would cut approximately 8% of its workforce. 

The devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria have impacted millions - including members of the WordPress community. Developer Baris Ünver shared his story of survival on HeroPress and provided several ways to help those in need. The WP Minute would like to take this opportunity to share our support for everyone who has been affected.

From the Grab Bag

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

• 
  WordPress 6.2 Beta 2 has been released. This version includes 292 enhancements and 354 bug fixes.
• According to security firm Sucuri, nearly 11,000 WordPress websites have been infected by malware that redirects users to scam sites. At last report, no specific vulnerability had been found.
• The team behind popular plugin iThemes Security have announced that they’re teaming up with security research firm Patchstack. The company will provide vulnerability details within the plugin’s site scan feature.
• Matt Cromwell has announced that new episodes of the WP Product Talk podcast will be starting up again this week. Katie Keith of Barn2 Plugins will join on as a co-host.
• What would WordPress’ 20th birthday celebration be without an appearance from Wapuu? A commemorative version of the virtual mascot is now available for download.
• The WordPress Design Team has released mockups for a planned redesign of the Block Pattern Library. It’s the latest in a series of design revamps for the site.
• Internet Explorer is dead again, sort of. An update to Windows 10 will finally disable access to the since-retired browser. But not so fast - a few versions of the OS will still keep the app around for the time being.

Video of the week

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Join The WP Minute as we take you on a tour of the new AI-powered Image and Paragraph blocks at WordPress.com.

https://youtu.be/D9LYfjnHMdw

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

• Matt Cromwell
• Birgit Pauli-Haack

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WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for release on March 28, 2023. But it’s never too early to start preparations. Therefore, you may want to check out the first beta release, which is now available for testing.

The first major release of 2023 brings a plethora of enhancements to the Site and Block Editors. Some features, such as color coded template parts within the Site Editor, focus on improved usability. But there are a few big picture changes as well.

For one, the ability to search and download Openverse images will be included in the Block Editor. This allows anyone to grab Creative Commons licensed media from within their website. Also included are a revamped Navigation block, a Style Book feature for creating custom styles, and sticky blocks.

To see what else is new, GoDaddy Pro's Courtney Robertson has published a detailed guide on WordPress 6.2.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

When it comes to WordPress core, newer doesn’t always mean faster. Core committer Adam Silverstein has submitted a proposal to change that. According to a report from WP Tavern, Silverstein’s proposal calls for automated performance monitoring. The goal is to catch potential problems before they reach the average user.

Last December, we reported on the WP Community Collective (WPCC). The not-for-profit organization aims to financially support contributions to the WordPress project. This week it was announced that Alex Stine has been selected as the first WPCC Fellow. Stine is currently a member of the WordPress Accessibility team and will continue in that role. The WPCC is still looking for donations in order to fully fund Stine’s fellowship.

Twitter recently announced that free access to its API will no longer be available as of February 9, 2023. That’s likely to impact both WordPress plugin developers and end users. Core contributor Mika Epstein posted a notice about the change and asked developers to investigate what this new policy means for their products.

From the Grab Bag

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

• The “freemium” product model is a popular one within the WordPress ecosystem. MasterWP’s Nyasha Green and Rob Howard discussed their experiences with building freemium products on a recent episode of the Press the Issue podcast.
• Applications to attend the 2023 WordPress Community Summit are now being accepted. The invitation-only event for project contributors will take place from August 22-23 in National Harbor, MD, prior to WordCamp US.
• Is there anything ChatGPT can’t do? ZDNet’s David Gewirtz recently wrote about his successful attempt at using the AI tool to build a WordPress plugin.
• Speaking of AI, Microsoft has announced that its Bing search engine and Edge browser will be enhanced by OpenAI technology. A limited preview is underway for Bing, with an expansion due in the coming weeks.
• The WordPress Training team is looking for feedback regarding user learning preferences. Fill out their individual learner survey to let the team know your thoughts.

Video of the week

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The WP Minute takes a closer look at

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Should WordPress move away from Slack and towards the fediverse for project communication? Automattic-sponsored Meta team contributor Alex Kirk thinks so. Kirk has proposed a project to explore switching to the free Matrix open-source federated chat system.

The potential benefits are compelling. For one, there’s something to be said for open-source projects supporting each other. Beyond that, easier onboarding and a variety of available chat clients were also touted.

 https://youtu.be/dq23lJBYtpM 

Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern demonstrated some of these advantages in a recent article. And Kirk’s team has also created a Gutenberg block, Chatrix, that embeds a Matrix chat client directly into any WordPress website.

Slack, meanwhile, has long been the chosen platform for project communication. A move to Matrix will certainly face both technical and philosophical hurdles. We’ll keep you updated as the discussion progresses.

Introducing The WP Minute +

The WP Minute’s goal is to bring you the latest WordPress news in just 5 minutes a week. But we also see the value in going in-depth with newsmakers and discussing important issues.

With that in mind, we’d like to introduce you to The WP Minute +. It’s our new podcast dedicated to longform content. You’ll find exclusive interviews and conversations, bringing you even closer to what’s going on with WordPress.

To kick things off, we spoke with Awesome Motive’s Syed Balkhi regarding the recent acquisition of Thrive Themes.

Be sure to add The WP Minute+ to your podcast apps to get 3 additional episodes featuring Miriam Schwab, Chris Badgett, and Chris Lubkert.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy recently outlined the project’s goals for 2023. The list included finishing up Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, which focuses on customization. But what does “concluding” a phase really mean? Haden Chomphosy provided details on the WordPress Briefing podcast.

Not every WordPress bug gets resolved in a timely fashion. In fact, there are currently 19 Trac tickets that are over 15 years old. But as WP Tavern reports, a new monthly triage session aims to take on these long standing issues. More insight on the project’s goals are available on the Make WordPress blog.

WordPress turns 20 this year. As part of the celebration, a collection of commemorative 20th anniversary logos are available to download. Also look for them to appear on special swag that is scheduled for release in February.

From the Grab Bag

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

• WooCommerce is looking for developer feedback. On February 13, 2023, they’ll hold the first of three monthly chats on Slack regarding WooCommerce Blocks Extensibility.
• On a similar note, the team behind Advanced Custom Fields will hold their first “ACF Chat Friday” session on Friday, February 3, 2023 at 3pm UTC. It’s a chance to ask questions and provide feedback regarding the plugin.
• WordPress developers Aurooba Ahmed and Brian Coords have released the first episode of their viewSource podcast. The episode looks at their experiences with GitHub Copilot.
• As artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent, its shortcomings are also becoming apparent. A look at how OpenAI’s Whisper tool is struggling with an indigenous language is but one example.
• If you’re looking for a job in the WordPress space, Michelle Frechette hosts a weekly Twitter thread of open positions every Wednesday. Check it out and you may find a great opportunity.

New Members This Week

• Carl Hancock, follow @carlhancock and @GravityForms

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

Video of the week

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The WP Minute takes a look at the current state content marketing strategy for WordPress products.

 https://youtu.be/zyutM-DLUv4 

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

• Michelle Frechette
• John Locke
• Abha Thakor

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In today's episode, Matt is talking about the new WP Minute+ podcast and why he started it. 

The WP Minute, which is a five-minute weekly podcast on WordPress news, continues to be produced with the intention of providing busy WordPress professionals with short-form content. The WP Minute+, will feature longer form conversations and interviews, while the original WP Minute will continue to offer short form news. 

Matt Report will live on, focusing on the career side of the digital workforce, through the lens of "blue collar digital workers" who do good work and want to be paid for it. 

• https://twitter.com/syedbalkhi
• https://thrivethemes.com/
• https://awesomemotive.com/
• https://thewpminute.com/support

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What’s on tap for WordPress core in 2023? Project executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy recently outlined some big picture goals. By design, the post is light on detail. Haden Chomphosy says the list represents a view from “10,000 feet”.

Perhaps the biggest item mentioned is the completion Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, which focuses on the customization of the Block and Site editors. From there, the project will begin exploring Phase 3, where collaborative functionality will be on the table.

Other areas of interest include improvements to media management, adding Openverse search in WordPress core, and the return of the WordPress Community Summit.

The goals are ambitious and there is a lot of work to be done. With that, Haden Chomphosy also put out a call for volunteers.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

For WordPress product makers, identifying a target audience can be challenging. There is often difficulty in balancing new features, support, and marketing. After a few years of catering to publishers of all sizes, Newsletter Glue’s Lesley Sim has decided to train her product’s focus on newsrooms and media companies. In a blog post, Sim explained the reasons behind the shift and what it means for current customers.

The folks at Awesome Motive have made their second major acquisition this month. This time around, they’ve purchased Thrive Themes. Known for the Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder products, the company also touches on the LMS, automation, and marketing niches.

Wordfence has released their annual State of WordPress Security report. Takeaways include a higher number of reported vulnerabilities, while fewer of them were categorized as “critical unauthenticated”. One constant is the need to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date. Neglect is still a huge factor when it comes to security.

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The lines between the open-source WordPress.org and its commercial counterpart WordPress.com (owned by Automattic) have long been blurred and confusing. So much that commercial offerings from Automattic’s suite of tools were integrated into the official WordPress mobile app.

That’s about to change. As Sarah Gooding of WP Tavern reports, features that rely on Automattic products are moving to the latest version of the free Jetpack app.

This means that users will need the Jetpack app to access site statistics, comment notifications, and the Reader content discovery feature.

 https://youtu.be/i8t1KRbsvzQ 

In a blog post announcing the change, WordPress.com says that site data can be automatically migrated from the WordPress app to Jetpack, provided you have the latest version of both installed on your device. Meanwhile, the WordPress app will become more focused on the core functionality of the content management system.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

Mailchimp have disclosed a recent security breach - and an account belonging to Automattic appears to have been affected. WooCommerce has sent an email informing users of the situation, but says that “No payment data, passwords, or other sensitive security information is part of this breach.”

The WordPress Theme Directory is in the early stages of a refresh. A post on the Make WordPress blog shared mockup images, with the design looking similar to the recently upgraded News and Showcase sections. Stated goals include improved usability, along with implementing the recently-introduced theme taxonomies.

If you’ve ever wanted to contribute to WordPress core, here’s your chance. WordPress 6.2 is tentatively scheduled to become available on March 28, 2023. The project is currently looking for volunteers to lead various aspects of the release and become a part of the “squad”.

Artwork generated via artificial intelligence is generating lots of buzz - and a high-profile lawsuit. Getty Images is suing Stability AI, maker of the Stability Diffusion artwork generator, for copyright infringement. The outcome could alter the way these tools scrape content, not to mention a user’s ability to safely publish AI images.

From the Grab Bag

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

• MasterWP’s Rob Howard and Allie Nimmons recapped the annual State of the Word event and looked at the biggest challenges facing WordPress.
• WordPress theme and plugin sales platform Freemius have posted a year in review that highlights interesting notes from 2022, as well as plans for 2023.
• WordPress developer Brian Coords wonders why creating an email newsletter within WordPress is still so hard.
• LearnDash product manager Jack Kitterhing opines that it's time to fix the WordPress user experience.
• Brin Wilson recently published a guide to placing ads on Blaze, the new advertising platform for WordPess.com and Tumblr.
• In an effort to support its authors and publications, online publishing platform Medium has created its own Mastodon instance.
• 2023 will see six new privacy laws take effect in North America. MainWP has a rundown of each law and tips for how to prepare for them.

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

• Dennis Dornon
• Justin Ferriman
• John Locke
• Courtney Robertson
• Brin Wilson

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When it comes to adding features to a WordPress plugin, how many are too many? That’s the question facing the WordPress Performance Team with regard to the Performance Lab plugin.

Recent additions of SQLite and WebP image conversion functionality have resulted in some constructive criticism from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. As Sarah Gooding reports at WP Tavern, Mullenweg has asked that these items be spun off into individual plugins.

This jibes with Mullenweg’s previous call to revive canonical plugins. That is, a plugin that's community supported and adds niche functionality.

On the other side of the coin, Performance Team members expressed concern that separate plugins may mean less visibility. As it stands, Performance Lab has over 30,000 active installs. A new niche plugin will have to start from ground zero in terms of publicity.

Multiple options are being discussed and the results could mean big changes for similar community-driven plugins.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

As WordPress has grown to power over 40% of the web, the need for knowledgeable experts has increased. But how can we determine who qualifies? The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack looks at the potential impact of a WordPress certification program.

The first major WordPress plugin acquisition of 2023 belongs to Awesome Motive, as they’ve scooped up Duplicator. A website backup and migration plugin, Duplicator currently has over 1 million active installs of its free version. The deal was announced via separate blog posts at WP Beginner and former owner, Snap Creek.

WordPress.com has announced Blaze, a tool that enables site owners to advertise their content on WordPress.com and Tumblr. Websites hosted on WordPress.com have a dedicated page to create their personalized ads, in addition to direct links on their site’s dashboard. Self-hosted WordPress sites can access similar functionality via the Jetpack plugin.

Make sure your installations are up-to-date, as backdoor malware targeting WordPress is on the loose. WP Tavern reports that the software runs on Linux and looks for vulnerabilities across several plugins and themes. Security researcher Dr. Web has the full list of vulnerable software. 

The WordPress Five for the Future initiative is looking for feedback. A recent blog post examines the current “contributor journey” for both individuals and companies. Community members are encouraged to suggest improvements and share opinions.

ClassicPress, the open-source CMS forked from WordPress 4.9, has been contemplating its future of late. The project recently asked community members to vote on a path forward. By a narrow margin, members voted in favor of re-forking based on WordPress 6.0. Because the margin was so slim, project director Viktor Nagornyy is suggesting a hybrid approach to retaining compatibility with WordPress themes and plugins.

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During the 2022 State of the Word event, Matt Mullenweg announced that the WordPress.org theme and plugin repositories would allow authors to categorize their entries as “Commercial” or “Community” products. Not long after, the feature became active.

As Sarah Gooding reports for WP Tavern, authors are starting to opt-in. Examples include Automattic’s Akismet and Jetpack plugins, which are designated as “Commercial”. Meanwhile, default themes such as Twenty Twenty-Three are designated as “Community”.

WordPress developer Ronald Huereca has written a summary of the feature, including the differences between the available categories. Also included is a guide for developers who’d like to opt-in.

Next up (listen to the podcast for more): WordPress Maintenance Minute by Austin Ginder!

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

As one of the oldest WordPress form plugins, Contact Form 7 boasts over 5 million active installs. But it has tended to lag behind competitors when it comes to user interface. Developer Munir Kamal recently announced a third-party extension, CF7 Blocks, that adds block-based functionality. Longtime users will finally have an easy way to integrate their forms into the Block Editor.

StellarWP’s Matt Cromwell has developed a Zapier automation that will provide the daily number of downloads for a plugin residing in the WordPress.org repository. The stats are compiled in a Google Sheet document. Cromwell also breaks down the value of this data in a separate blog post.

2022 was a busy year for WordPress core. Core team representative Jb Audras shared a plethora of relevant data on Twitter to prove the point. For example, there were 2,597 commits made by a total of 988 contributors during the year. The thread features several charts that demonstrate how much work goes into building and maintaining the project. The complete review is available over on make.wordpress.org.

That’s not the only year-in-review worth mentioning. Several other WordPress community members have shared their own wrap-ups, including:

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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.

Video of the week

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Social media is a mess and walled gardens are a risk. Given the current situation, The WP Minute breaks down why WordPress is the most important piece of software for 2023.

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

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Attn: Creators and small brands

Buy a domain. Get some hosting. Install WordPress.

Don’t bemoan about bloated software, legacy code, or that WordPress is too complicated. Start learning the software all over again. Invest time into it. Play with it in the browser before you do anything else if you want to see what you’re getting into.

We’re watching another social media platform burn. Ashes comprised of our followers and years of content. My business of publishing WordPress news is getting hit with a steady decline of referral traffic from, what was, a major source of readers.

I’m forced to be on Mastodon, LinkedIn, and Facebook — again.

How many lessons must we learn about rented land? Feeding platforms that want our content to run a cash machine for advertising profits.

No more excuses. It’s time to learn WordPress, invest in open source, and become part of the community.

We took open source for granted

It’s easy to look back at the last 5 years and point fingers at Gutenberg or FSE for piloting us all in a direction we originally didn’t want to go in.

Or to be cautions when there’s only one VERY influential person calling the shots. Especially when he’s also the CEO of two large tech companies, and responsible for a dozen other products.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy recently restated the Four Freedoms of WordPress, in the 2022 State of the Word:

“the freedom to run the program for any purpose, the freedom to study how the program works and change it so that it does your computing, as you wish.

The freedom to redistribute copies so that you can help your neighbor and the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions, giving the community a chance to benefit from those changes.”

Read our recap of State of the Word 2022.

Name a bigger piece of open source software that has the presence of WordPress, with a more diverse set of users. From engineers, to mom-and-pop pizza shops, WordPress touches a lot of humans.

A community-driven effort, that for the most part, is 99% made in public accessible channels. Slack, GitHub, WordPress.org, meetups, WordCamps, etc. When was the last time you rang Tim Cook about your struggles with iOS? Elon about Twitter Blue?

Not perfect, but It’s the closest thing humanity has to a town meeting for a “utility app” that empowers us to broadcast to the world.

Twitter exodus should be the last warning you need to invest in a blog, a podcast, a newsletter, and RSS.

The flaws you don’t like

Yes, WordPress is complex for a large percentage of the user base.

It costs money in licenses, hosting, and professional services. On the other hand, thousands of people contribute to it, make awesome stuff for it, and create educational material to support it.

An amalgamation of plugins & themes to solve one problem, a thousand different ways. Everyone has a way of doing WordPress. It’s no different than getting a second opinion on a bathroom remodel. “That’s not the way I’d do it!” the contractor would shout.

The messiness is the beauty we share in WordPress.

Adopting change

If I could only reclaim all of the hours I spent trying some shiny new CMS only to come back to WordPress because of Gravity Forms, the baked-in user management, or the flexibility of content management.

There’s a comfort in this app. What’s old is new again, except for maybe the users.

The next two years will cement a place for the blue collar digital workers. The “handy person” of WordPress.

Elite programmers and RISD design graduates aren’t going to be happy, but we are the next generation of builders in the WordPress space.

This new generation might not love the software or the community like us, but they will look at WordPress as a necessary tool to build an online presence decentralized from the legacy social media sites.

Like QR codes in the last few years, RSS feeds will have a massive resurgence in educating a group of people on how your content can be accessed across the web, on a protocol level.

The key to escaping the walled gardens.

Why I love WordPress (and you should too!)

This isn’t a competition over which blogging experience is better or which code base uses less compute power.

It’s about a piece of software, when invested in, shields you from the downfall of the social silos scrambling to absorb our art for profit.

Build a blog, a portfolio, or a web app for free. Head to a WordCamp and meet others. Take part in open slack meetings.

This community is the best part of WordPress. Your investment will be in the most important piece of software for humanity throughout the next decade.

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Matt Mullenweg held court at the annual State of the Word event on December 15. Several topics were touched, including the use of Gutenberg outside of WordPress, the return of in-person Meetups and WordCamps, and the announcement of a Community Summit set to take place in 2023.

Mullenweg also detailed a change to the WordPress.org Plugin and Theme repositories. Taxonomies have been added that allow authors to categorize their products as “commercial” or “community” - among other labels. The goal is to help users better understand the purpose of and level of support provided by theme and plugin authors. The feature is opt-in, and it’s already being put to use by some products.

As usual, the event was packed with insight and information. The WP Minute has a handy summary of key moments, along with a full transcript. It’s accompanied by a video highlight package that condenses the entire event down to just over 16 minutes.

You’ll also want to check out State of the Word recaps from both Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern and Courtney Robertson at GoDaddy.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

There’s a new competitor in the WordPress email newsletter space. WordPress.com Newsletter was announced this week. The feature allows users to publish new posts as email newsletters, collect subscribers, and design a template. Monetization features are in the works with details forthcoming. Meanwhile, our own Matt Medeiros offers his analysis of the product via a new video.

The subject of WordPress nostalgia seems to be popular these days. The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack looks at why that is and how it could help us shape the future of the community.

Security firm Wordfence has released a free vulnerability database API. Hosting companies, security researchers, and individual users will have access to a continuously updated repository of vulnerabilities. The company hopes that the community “will turn this data into free and commercial security products that will improve the security of the WordPress community.”

What does the future look like for ClassicPress? The open source project is a fork of WordPress that retains the TinyMCE-based Classic Editor. A new poll asks users whether the content management system should be “re-forked” to WordPress 6.0 or continue along its current path, based on WordPress 4.9.

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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.

Video of the week

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The WP Minute explores the new WordPress.com newsletter offering, which looks very Jetpack-ish. Because it is. 

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