The WP Minute

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The Biggest WordPress Moves While Mullenweg was on Sabbatical 

Matt Mullenweg is returning from his 3 month sabbatical, dubbed “Samattical”, which kicked off February 1, 2024. 

He handed the CEO reigns back to Toni Schneider and placed Daniel Bachhuber in charge of WordPress.com in his absence. I thought we’d see the whole organization coast while the open source benevolent dictator dug his toes into the sand, but Automattic/WordPress stayed as busy as ever!

I don’t know how much Mullenweg was involved with all of these milestones — something tells me he didn’t stay as disconnected as he had hoped. Let’s take a look at some of the big moves that happened with WordPress, Automattic, and the community while Matt was away. 

1. The WP Tavern Hunger Games

One of the first major activities to kick off was the search for two new full-time writers to breathe life back into WP Tavern. It was a Hunger Games-esque approach, where 7 or 8 writers, duked it out to be crowned winner #1 & #2. 

Author Brian Coords was the last contestant to publish a post on March 14th, 2024. There hasn’t been any clear announcement on who earned the position or what happens next, and most authors I’ve spoken to are still wondering what’s next for their writing careers at the Tavern. 

2. Woo.com → WooCommerce.com

Something I didn’t have on my Bingo Card was the short-lived woo.com domain defaulting back to the original WooCommerce.com domain. 

“Moving to Woo.com created challenges for our users to find WooCommerce in Google searches, which were made worse following Google’s March update. To address those challenges, we assembled a group of SEO experts and consultants to evaluate the best way to build on the strength of the WooCommerce brand.” Kevin Bates wrote in an update.

3. The Old WP-Admin Dashboard is New for WordPress.com

In another, what’s old is new again, WordPress.com is giving users the ability to “roll back” to a traditional WP Admin interface. It seems there’s no future for the once innovative Calypso project, citing that developers were looking for a more familiar interface when working on WordPress.com sites. 

This might be a sign that more WordPress consultants are starting to recommend .com more to their customers now that the platform has been supporting user installed plugins on the $30/mo+ plans. 

4. Automattic spends an additional $125 Million on Messaging with Beeper Acquisition 

Automattic is pouring money into messaging, with its latest acquisition of Beeper. Which I’m assuming Mullenweg was quite active on during sabbatical. 

I like the idea of Automattic building up a strong solution for messaging. In a world where SEO is getting squeezed and social media feeds being curated by ad-driven algos, we need more direct channels with our readers/subscribers/customers — and I think that’s direct messaging.

It could be an exciting new frontier with Automattic leading the charge, and I’m here for it!

WordPress Studio: The Future of Local Development?

5. WordPress.com Launches Studio App

The new Studio app allows users to run WordPress installs, locally on their computer. 

This is a great way to learn WordPress and develop WordPress sites for free. It’s powered by the same technology that runs the official WordPress playground and gives users the ability to publish their local websites to a temporary WordPress.com account to share with the world. Other hosting platforms like WP Engine and Kinsta offer local development environments making this a natural fit for Automattic to offer.

6. Big Sky: WordPress.com starts waiting list for AI designed websites

WordPress.com decided to throw their hat into the AI web design ring by opening a beta signup for their latest project, BigSky

I’ve signed up to trial the product, but I also signed up for access to Studio before it was released and didn’t hear anything — fingers crossed. If anyone at Automattic is reading this: I have found 100% AI website builders underwhelming. It’s basically machine learning with blocks and patterns that are tagged with keywords that just get mashed together based on the prompt. 

I prefer starting with a collection of professionally designed themes and patterns, but I’m happy to see if they can change my mind! 

That’s not all! 

The above marks 6 of the biggest moves I think happened around the WordPress space while Mullenweg enjoyed some time off. But, that’s not all! 

Here’s a quick list of other notable events that happened over the last 3 months: 

• WordPress 6.5 Launched.
• The Community-lead Make Marketing Team was shutdown in favor of a new Media Corps experiment.
• WordPress.com now supports Github integration
• WordPress.com launched a new public pattern directory
• WooCommerce launched a new update manager

Was there anything on your list that didn’t make it here? Let me know on Twitter/X!

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WordPress is amazing not just because it’s a great tool to publish words on the internet, but that it has the potential to encourage you to learn more about the web — if you want. 

If you remember the golden age of automobiles, enthusiasts would change their own oil or make the repairs themselves to avoid bringing them to the dealership. An act to save a few bucks or just because you loved the idea of doing the work yourself. Back then, cars weren’t powered by computer chips or electric motors — they were mechanically pure — this was your rig. 

You rolled up your sleeves, got out your toolbox, and slid under the chassis of your daily driver. Not only were you learning how cars were built, you were extending that knowledge to work on other cars as well. Industry knowledge that lead folks to have a career in automobiles, wherever that took them.

There was a whole economy of DIY auto mechanics — a whole industry, really. 

Chilton Books used to publish guides for the DIYers which included detailed diagrams of the cars they were repair until the internet accompanied by the production of more complex cars laid waste to their business. Breaking apart a car to learn how it worked just wasn’t feasible anymore. 

You could even draw the parallels of open source WordPress to the likes of a closed source Webflow, for instance. 

Sure, you can learn how to build and design website with Webflow — in fact you kinda need to know how to before you dive in — but that mechanical purity is what’s missing. 

In other words, you can’t dismantel Webflow and see how it’s doing its thing, but you can with WordPress. You can’t bring closed source systems to a different hosting server and reconfigure the stack to get it dialed-in for optimum performance or to change where you store your data — you can with WordPress. 

The big debate happening right now is understanding who WordPress is for. What kind of software are we building? It’s certainly trending towards a more competent website builder for the everyday user, but I also think it’s ushering in a new type of developer class as well. 

Developers are finicky. They are mostly stuck in their ways, have their preferred toolset, and come equipped with strong opinions. Artists in the very sense. 

Your typical development stack for WordPress, along with the definition, has been challenged over the last 5 years as page builders became more nascent. If you’re not cracking open Notepad++ to change your theme, are you even a developer? 

Advancements in the Site Editor and the Gutenberg project aside, Automattic has been quietly changing the way people can get started with WordPress faster than ever before thanks to Playground and the recently launched Studio app. 

Now to the point of the article: This is how WordPress is helping beginner developers.

With Playground, you can export the site you build right in the browser as a ZIP download. Want to try a new feature that is only in GitHub and not committed to the release? Pull it from Github and try it out. Studio lets you run multiple WordPress installs locally on your Mac (Windows soon) along with a full filesystem to interact with. Want to share your customized site with someone? They’ll give you temporary hosting on WordPress.com to share the site you built. 

This onboarding into WordPress is lightyears ahead of where we were in the past. Even if you’re a curmodgeoned developer stuck in your ways, you must admit, it’s never been faster to start exploring WordPress than it is today. 

I haven’t even told you about the Block Theme Builder plugin, which allow you to design an entire theme inside your WordPress install, allowing you to package it all up into a nice distributable WordPress theme. 

I love software that makes me feel powerful. A power user, that isn’t quite a full-blown developer, but I can see the other side of the fence and I want to get there.

This is what I love about WordPress. 

I’m not saying this experience is fully baked, and it might even change course, but I think we’ll see a whole new fleet of WordPress developers onboard because of these efforts. A true open source no code solution may be coming soon. 

What if I never posted the news again?

I’m just catching up on all the things, back up from vacation, so I don’t have time to wrangle all the news links again this week.

Which makes me wonder…what if I never did the news links again? Hit reply and let me know. 

Do you come just for my weekly 5 minute take on the state of WordPress? Do you like the curation of links or are you getting that fill from other WordPress newsletters? Hit reply and let me know if we didn’t do the weekly news round-up, how would that make you feel?

See ya next week!

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I recently had the pleasure of meeting Sam Harrison, a professional Webflow consultant and content creator. 

He was open to co-host a WordPress vs Webflow debate with me, while also unpacking how business is going for his services company. Heading into the debate, I spent a a few hours watching his content and really enjoyed his Webflow Components Basics + How to Start a Web Design Business. So why did I invite Sam on? 

Page Builders, especially Bricks, has been the topic du jour of late.

That crowd really wants WordPress to have much more power inside the editor — and I totally get it. These powerful 3rd party tools can be really attractive, and if you haven’t been in the WordPress space for the last 20 years, you start to wonder why our favorite CMS is lacking these features. 

Bricks is often framed as the tool that brings a Webflow experience inside WordPress — all the powerful design and page building tools you could want, surely. I’ve had some conversations with prominent WordPress agencies now offering Webflow as an alternative solution to WordPress. 

It all makes sense…But the choice shouldn’t start at which tool to use, but whether or not you want open source software or a commercial solution for your project.

To simplify: do you care that you have the benefits of open source WordPress (along with the baggage) or does having a single turnkey app provide the best solution? Now how does that play out if you’re selling services to clients?

Sam and I played a little game where we placed the winning cards of particular features of the competing platforms in their respective columns. 

I’ll admit, the odds were stacked against Sam (and Webflow) seeing that he was on my podcast, but WordPress comes out the winner in most areas, so long as you’re siding with the advantages of open source. The ecosystem, the community, the ability to customize the platform — it’s a hard sell to get me to use Webflow. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from Webflow and their users. Let’s face it, it’s not a fluke that they’ve been successful for this long.

Having a comprehensive toolset to design pages makes a lot of sense. Also not having to worry about updates, hosting, and 3rd party software conflicts sounds like a dream that Webflow users get to live everyday. 

Though I noticed that in this short time of exploring Webflow, WordPress isn’t massively behind, pound for pound. And I’m talking specifically just core, not even when you decide to bring in plugins like ACF or Gravity Forms. 

If you like the design tools and interface of Webflow, mixed with their new Components libraries — the gap in WordPress isn’t all that wide. 

However, when you look at something like the writing experience — specifically blogging or posts in general — Webflow isn’t even competing in the same league. Sorry, Sam. 

I guess what I’m saying is, as much as we can learn from the UI/UX and passionate community of Webflow — their team could also learn from WordPress. Heck, Gutenberg is an open source project, even Drupal has a fork. Maybe Webflow could improve their content editor with…Gutenberg? Go open source! 

Let me know what you think! 

Watch the WordPress vs Webflow video: https://www.youtube.com/live/p82lLK56XOE?si=2_1zuEPsKHI7aft7

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March 22 2024

It’s the WP Minute! 

Today we ask, “Who’s responsible for WordPress marketing?” 

Coming up next! 

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Open Source project, posted an idea that shifts the dynamics of the WordPress Marketing team. 

A call for a Media Press Corps. Also known as a Dramatic Shift.

It’s still too early to tell if this initiative will stick, so I won’t comment directly on the idea of a Media Press Corps at the moment. Stay tuned to this space as that story develops.

However, this shift begs the question, Who is responsible for WordPress marketing?

[Classified]

Let me TL;DR it for you first, as my boss at Gravity Forms Carl Hancock says, “It’s the entire ecosystem.” Something I agree with, and not just because he signs my paycheck. 

The ecosystem as a whole has always been the biggest driving force for WordPress adoption. Because WordPress is not a product first organization. It’s not a corporate entity. 

It’s open source software & community. 

Sure, it happens to be lead by Matt Mullenweg who founded the software, who also owns Automattic, can irritate us at times, but also pours a tremendous amount of resources into a project that we all enjoy. Still, doesn’t make WordPress.org a product first initiative. 

There’s no budget, there’s no access to crucial data, there’s no access to social channels, and the marketing team has no influence on the direction of the project. I’m sure I’m missing something else. 

How far could an official Marketing Team take it? An insurmountable task I wouldn’t want to take on. 

Which leaves the marketing of WordPress up to you and I: 

• You’re an agency owner, you’re preaching to clients about the advantages of WordPress.
• You’re a blogger, you’re telling people to own their own content & platform.
• You’re a YouTuber, you’re teaching viewers how to use WordPress.
• You’re a Managed WordPress hosting provider, you’re talking about how fast and scalable WordPress is.
• You’re a plugin author, you’re selling on the idea that you’re making a good platform even better.
• You’re a WordPress Media outlet, you’re informing, educating, and entertaining an audience.

Whether we call it a Marketing Team or a Media Press Corps, WordPress biggest marketing advantages — even in the face of Wix/squarespace Super Bowl ads — is us, like it always has been.

So tell me, how would you spread awareness and brand positioning for WordPress? Got a thought about a WordPress Media Corps? Hit reply and let me know.

Together with The Repository

Coming up in The Repository this week: We unpack the announcement that WordPress is getting a media corps and cover Do the Woo’s big move to WordPress.com. Plus, the latest on the upcoming WordPress 6.5 release.

Not a subscriber? Sign up at therepository.email for more on what’s happening in WordPress – and what everyone’s saying about it.

Important Links

It’s that time again! More link goodies for WordPress news!

• Josepha Haden Chomphosy introduces the idea for a WordPress Media Corps.
• WP Umbrella is getting hit with another wide spread phishing attack.
• Marcus Burnette ponders if we have a “versus” problem.
• WordPress 6.5 is next week, here’s what’s new according to Courtney Robertson. Also see the WordPress 6.5 Source of Truth post by Anne McCarthy
• WordPress dot com now supports GitHub deployments.
• Be sure to register for Using Site Editor in Production for Clients.
• Product owners: Optimize your Readme according to Matt Cromwell
• MasterWP newsletter is shifting focus on AI a majority of the time.
• I discussed WordPress Media with Jonathan Denwood from WP Tonic.
• Video: Use This to Change Your Blocks Everywhere
• Video: The One BIG Update Coming to WordPress 6.5

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Get all the links and the show notes here: https://thewpminute.com/?p=15501

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I think it’s one of the most important default themes WordPress has released in a while. Sure, the design is fairly opinionated, but with the mix of new patterns/blocks available, I think someone with a little WordPress know how (and grit!) will be able to design a solid website for their brand or business. 

Even for the freelancers or agency owners out there, searching to offer a more affordable solution for their clients, I think TT4 can fill that gap. But don’t confuse that with it being a solution on par with Kadence or GeneratePress. Certainly not as powerful as Elementor or Beaver Builder. 

There are large gaps that cause it to fail really quickly. One that stood out to me recently was the lack of mobile design features in the Site Editor. In my latest video, Customize Mobile Views on twenty twenty-four, I demonstrated the lack of simple breakpoint features inside the site editor. 

I’d have folks comment on my channel asking how to change things in the mobile nav, or on a landing page, with no clear direction on how to do it — in the theme.

When the debate of Page Builders vs Blocks comes up, how could we not want to clear up this confusion? 

A few takeaways from Eric Karkovack’s post from the link above: 

1. “Some people aren’t fans of the Site Editor or Gutenberg. They’ll naturally point to its quirks and limitations. Fair enough.”
2. “Perhaps this doesn’t apply as much to block themes. More than anything, they may be limited by the Site Editor. There may be a feature that it doesn’t yet offer. Thus, you must work within its capabilities.”

And this is why there’s such a fierce debate from the page builder audience: WordPress still has so much time to catch up — if ever.

One area I disagree with Karkovack on, at least in the context of TT4 is, “The gap between commercial and free products isn’t as wide**.** You aren’t missing the ability to customize the look and layout. Nor are any crucial features locked down.”

We certainly are missing some of those crucial features for mobile or even a more robust query block, for example. And while I know it’s the Site Editors fault, your average end user doesn’t. And I’m much more critical on the default theme experience because, well, it’s the default theme!

Karkovack encourages us (and WordPress developers) to create a better narrative, which brings me back full circle to where I always land: The core experience is good enough for the masses, but when you need more, you go to a full featured theme or page builder. 

Though, I don’t know if that excuses some of these features missing from the default experience.

I think the core experience of WordPress + TT4 can live along side a freelancer’s toolkit which also includes Kadence or Elementor, for example. Speed and simplicity being the obvious advantage of the former. 

And at the end of the day, I think that’s perfect, at least for now.

And if you invest in that core experience, there are products like Twentig that can supercharge your Twenty Twenty-Four website. I think a 3rd party tool that enhances default themes is very smart. 

Maybe this is where block based themes and the default experience of WordPress lives? Do we need more? Hit reply and let me know. 

Don’t miss this WordPress content

Now it’s time for the links you shouldn’t miss!

• Aurooba Ahmed launches “JS Essentials for WP Devs” with the first lesson dropping on March 4th 2024. Introducing JS Essentials for WP Devs
• Angie Byron reminds us why your peers might not care about your DevRel/community efforts. No one gives a &*^@# about your DevRel/Community Programs (and what to do about it)
• Amber Hinds continued the climb up the mountain of accessibility adoption for .org and other WordPress related websites. Apparently some progress has been made. https://x.com/heyamberhinds/status/1760679617873301882?s=20
• Get a deeper look into Awesome Motive Founder Syed Balkhi’s business mind I this recent interview. How to Compound Your Wealth in Unorthodox Ways with Syed Balkhi
• WP Tavern Launches Writer Hunger Games WP Tavern Launches Writer Hunger Games
• WP Mainline shares how you can make more money with LearnDash LearnDash 4.11.0 Introduces A New Way to Generate Revenue
• Eric Karkovack wants us to clear up the confusion surrounding block themes Clearing Up the Confusion Surrounding Block Themes

Don’t miss our YouTube videos

Follow the WP Minute on YouTube.

• Learn more about Synced Pattern Overrides coming to WordPress 6.5 New in WordPress 6.5: Synced Pattern Overrides ⭐️
• Supercharge your Twenty Twenty-Four theme with Twentig Supercharge Twenty Twenty-Four Theme with Twentig! 🚀
• Customize mobile views in Twenty Twenty-Four Customize Mobile Views on Twenty Twenty-Four Theme 📱
• Your website in a VIRTUAL world! WordPress in the Metaverse?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm4JJXZwszI&t=1s
• (Sponsor) Optimize WordPress images with Optimole plugin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpUDPrzleMw

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