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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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: 

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State of the Word 2022 has just completed another hybrid presentation.

A mix of livestream on the official WordPress YouTube channel and in-person attendees traveled to NYC to watch Matt Mullenweg and others update us on all things WordPress. We'll cover some of the highlights in today's post. Tune in to listen to the complete recording of the event on our podcast or in the player above.

Thanks for being a WP Minute reader/listener/viewer! Consider supporting us through a virtual coffee or joining our membership.

Video highlights

Key takeaways

Important links

Future Predictions

Questions from the Q&A round

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What’s a web hosting provider’s role in content moderation? WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg recently weighed in.

Mullenweg was a guest on The Verge’s Decoder podcast and discussed the issue as it relates to WordPress VIP hosting. Specifically, he commented on a controversial story that was published in 2020 on the New York Post website. The Post is a WordPress VIP client. 

The story covered material allegedly recovered from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden. Debate over the origins of the material saw both Facebook and Twitter temporarily restrict links to the story.

Mullenweg says Automattic reviewed the matter but ultimately decided not to take action. Automattic has policies in place for content moderation, and Mullenweg referred to them as a “starting point” for looking deeper into a specific case.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

Theme developer ILOVEWP published a report on the most popular WordPress plugins released in 2022. The report uses publicly available data for plugins in the official WordPress.org repository. In all, nearly 4,200 plugins have been added so far this year. Out of that, only 7 have achieved at least 50,000 active installations.

Did publishing platform Substack use unattributed code from open source competitor Ghost? Ghost’s founder and CEO John O’Nolan makes a case in a recent Twitter thread. In a response thread, Substack co-founder and CEO Chris Best says the whole thing is a misunderstanding. Rather, Substack’s custom theming API is merely compatible with Ghost. There’s a lot here to digest. Therefore, reading the threads from both parties is recommended to see where each side is coming from.

What will WordPress freelancers face in 2023? The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack offered some predictions. Upgrading to PHP 8 and navigating an uncertain economic environment are among them.

Development firm Awesome Motive has introduced SendLayer, an email delivery service aimed at WordPress website owners. It requires a free API key and works in conjunction with the WP Mail SMTP plugin. Paid plans are being offered.

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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.

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

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It’s a familiar refrain: the WordPress project needs contributors. But getting involved can be difficult for individuals who aren’t corporately sponsored. A new nonprofit organization is hoping to address this ongoing challenge.

The WP Community Collective looks to offer community-funded fellowships to financially support contributions to WordPress. Founded by Sé Reed, Katie Adams Farrell, and Courtney Robertson, the WPCC seeks both individual donations and corporate partnerships.

In its official announcement, the organization vows to promote transparency, community representation, and governance. Its first initiative involves the creation of an Accessibility Fellowship.

The WPCC says it plans to create a formalized organizational structure within the next year.

Next up (listen to the podcast for more): Michelle Frechette with the Community Minute!

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

The latest episode of WP Product Talk covers what happens when your business starts to scale. Matt Cromwell spoke with Jason and Kim Coleman about the process of budgeting and forecasting for WordPress products.

It’s time once again for the annual WordPress Survey. You are encouraged to share your thoughts and let the WordPress team know how you use the software. The survey will remain open throughout the rest of 2022.

ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, has surpassed 1 million users. The app claims the ability to answer follow-up questions and take instructions from humans. And, as WP Tavern reports, it also generated a WordPress plugin on demand. Web developer Johnathon Williams shared a recording of the process in action.

A proposed bill before the United States Congress has Facebook’s parent company Meta threatening to pull news-oriented content from its platform. The bill would allow news outlets to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger percentage of ad revenue. A similar bill was passed last year in Australia.

Another WordPress-related acquisition is in the books. Development firm Strategy11 has acquired the WP Tasty and Nutrifox suite of plugins. The company also owns Formidable Forms, among other popular plugins.

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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.

New Members This Week

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

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Could you run your entire WordPress product business from a single spreadsheet? Today's WP Product Talk covers what happens when your business starts to scale. From a few hundred dollars, to a few hundred-thousand dollars, this conversation is jam-packed with a wealth of. bean counting knowledge.

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