The WP Minute - WordPress news Matt Report & Matt Medeiros

At the time of this publication, thirty-thousand plus eyeballs have landed on John Blackbourn’s tweet that has sparked an event that goes well-beyond #WPDrama this week.
It seems WordPress.com has publicly replicated the .org plugin pages. My peers at WP Tavern and The Repository have covered the many aspects of this debacle. I’m out of energy this week for anything more in-depth, so I’ll leave you with these two things:

Listen to my latest interview with Jon Clark of StellarWP. We’re chatting about marketing automation, YouTube creation, and video games!

The following text is are my thoughts on leadership and future of WordPress…
There are many leaders in the WordPress space, doing great work, and that work quickly gets washed away through a storm of scathing outrage. When Josepha asked the community in her WCUS 2023 talk, “Why is it important that we are thriving?” The answer was, “because WordPress can change a life.”
Words can also change a person’s life.
Simple words like developer meeting can make a WordPress power user feel like whatever’s going on at that table, isn’t for them. WordPress entrepreneur can cast a vibe of WordPress but with Shark Tank, and who wants that? Words that attack or summarize a persons worth through petty insults, that can change a life, immeasurably.
For WordPress to thrive people must want to contribute. Contribute to code, to design, to meetings, and above all else, to the conversations about our beloved software. It’s not about your code, your profits, your 5%, or your lowercase P — it’s that you recognize how open source WordPress empowers us.
It empowers us to do everything I just said — code, profit, 5% — and through this, it creates opportunity.
Opportunity for you, and the people that you impact, through your work, with WordPress. This has a ripple effect. The more people that discover opportunity through WordPress, the wider that ripple spreads to the next person, and to the next person.
Though there’s an odd juxtaposition this week:
A 100-year plan announced at WordPress.com to ensure your life’s work is preserved for a generation to come. But, will WordPress last 100 years like this?
To ask for a hand in helping WordPress thrive across members of our online and offline community in favor of spreading the larger mission: Democratize Publishing. But is that really the mission we’re all on?
You have to want this for yourself and for WordPress.
I’ve been a critic of WordPress for a while. Not to be confused with being outright critical of WordPress. My angle has always been perched at the view of, what I call, the blue-collar digital worker.
When a leader de-value’s someone’s position in a community, they aren’t knocking down one person, but an entire group of people, that feel like their worth is being ripped from them. “If that person isn’t good enough, how am I?” They might ask.
When a leader mocks the accomplishments of one person, there’s another person standing right behind them trying to find footing to reach that very same height of success. “Why should I continue if this isn’t good enough?” They might ask.
This is not thriving, this is soul crushing. Leadership loses the very thing they need in order for WordPress to thrive: Trust.
Trust that people want to wake up and go do WordPress. Whatever doing WordPress means to them.
Trust that we’re all on the same shared mission of The Four Freedoms and to Democratize Publishing.
Losing trust means you lose belief from the people on the mission with you. Sure, people will continue to write Iines of code for WordPress, because they need to survive. WordPress isn’t going to get replaced anytime soon, and most humans aren’t going to walk away from it as a means to their survival.
But they will fall out of love for it, what it meant, and what it could be. There’s no parade for leaders at the of this mission. We arrive home, shut the door, and put our laptops away.
H

If you missed out on WordCamp US 2023, today’s episode will share some of the highlights from the talks of Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I urge you to watch the entirety of their presentations, but to also tweet at us to share your thoughts on the future of WordPress.
Clips include

Mullenweg’s outlook to WordPress 6.4 and Twenty Twenty Four theme.
What does WordPress and Collaboration look like?
WordPress will look different soon
A collab of LMS plugin providers takes shape
“How to keep WordPress thriving” asks Josepha
In the news
Here’s a list of the articles or links, mentioned in today’s episode!

FesteringVault is back with more annoyances.

WordPress Accessibility Day 2023 (Look for an interview with Amber Hinds soon on WP Minute+!)

WP Tavern highlighted These top agencies made a free WordPress for Enterprise PDF.
Allie Nimmons says goodbye.
There’s a new Consortium on the block.


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There’s a solid batch of headlines this week that I think you’ll find interesting before you head out to WordCamp US next week.
Speaking of, if you’re headed to WordCamp next week, be sure to say hi! I’d love to hear more about your experiences with the WP Minute and any feedback you might have. The entire WP Minute squad will be there like Me, Eric, and Raquel.
Equalize Digital is blasting off into outer space — literally!
NASA selected Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker for automated accessibility testing in WordPress. To make reports easier to understand for non-developers, Equalize Digital developed the front-end highlighting feature. This feature adds a “view on page” link to each issue in Accessibility Checker’s reports that, when clicked, takes users to the public view of the web page, highlights the element with a dashed pink box around it, and shows a panel explaining the issue and how to fix it.
The WP Community Collective Successfully Funds the First Fellowship for the WordPress Contributor Community.
The WP Community Collective is proud to announce the successful funding and launch of their inaugural Fellowship program, the WPCC Accessibility Fellowship. Long-term WordPress contributor Alex Stine was selected by the WPCC as the inaugural Accessibility Fellow as a result of his expertise in accessibility and seven years of experience as a WordPress contributor.
group.one strengthens WordPress commitment with acquisition of BackWPup.
WordPress plugin BackWPup is joining group.one, along with two newly acquired plugins Adminimize and Search & Replace, adding to the group’s growing WordPress ecosystem. group.one acquired the three WordPress plugins with a combined base of more than 1.1 million users from German WordPress agency Inpsyde GmbH, bolstering the group’s WordPress offering alongside flagship products WP Rocket, Imagify and Rank Math SEO.
The Make Team announced a new Blocks page on WordPress.org intending to be a strong starting point for visitors looking to see what blocks can do within WordPress and beyond.
Citing the original Github ticket created back in March 2023 from Ben Greeley “Currently, there isn’t a page on wordpress.org that explains in a compelling way what ‘Blocks’ are or markets it very effectively on the website. We have a filter in the plugin directory, which is useful, but that page is lacking the context of what blocks are, what the block editor is, and why it is so exciting. “
My First Million podcast, co-hosted by Sam Parr the founder of TheHustle.co now owned by Hubspot, interviews Awesome Motive founder Syed Bahlki.
2023 has drawn a lot of criticism around AM’s products and how WP Beginner leverages it’s content juggernaut for their products. I thought it was important to include an interview with Syed that didn’t revolve around WordPress, but to understand his approach to business and life.
We have some fresh new content on the WP Minute!
This week Eric Karkovack wrote about what he’s looking forward to experience at WordCamp US next week.
I sat down with Paid Memberships Pro founder Kim Coleman to help me understand how she uses ChatGPT for her content and marketing needs.


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We have a packed episode today chock full of WordPress news goodness, including some audio clips from Courtney Robertson, Jeff Chandler, and Rich Tabor sharing what they love about WordPress 6.3. 
First up, Aurooba Ahmed shared her new project wphelpers.dev which gives you a snazzy UI for all core WordPress blocks and their functionality. 
You can expand each block and peel back the JS-y goodness that each block is powered by. Direct link right to the GitHub repo, and more developer features. If you’re coding blocks or beginning to learn WordPress development, you’ll want to bookmark this site. Post Status announced their upcoming WP Career summit.
Join us for the WP Career Summit If you’re looking for a career in WordPress, want to host a talk, or find out how to reach potential employers you won’t want to miss everything happening on October 20, 2023 when the summit kicks off. 
The WP Tavern covered a recent story pertaining to the massive backlog of plugins to be reviewed at WordPress.org. The list includes over 900 plugins awaiting approval. Sarah Gooding cites “The volunteer team responsible for reviewing plugins has undergone significant restructuring after the departure of long-time contributor Mika Epstein”
WordPress 6.3 is here! Pressable and GoDaddy have you covered with a top-to-bottom look at all of the great new features. Stick around to the end of the episode to hear more from our special guests about their WordPress 6.3 goodness.
Anne McCarthy posted an overview on how to produce WordPress demo videos for official WordPress release announcements. 
I applaud the team for opening up this marketing effort to the greater community. The article is ripe with guidance on what to consider before creating a video tutorial, and how the overhead of creating an asset like this might need to be dispersed throughout many contributing members. 
I do have a hot take here: As a content creator, make your own video tutorials and post them on your own YouTube channel, blog, or social media platform before committing to something like this. 
While this might be the only way someone like me could ever get credit for contributing to WordPress, but I’d prefer not to have such a rigid approach to how I show off WordPress — warts and all. 
Before we wrap up, I want you to check out the latest content from WP Minute’s editor, Eric Karkovack. This week he wrote a great piece exploring what it would take for other CMS’s to catch up to WordPress dominance. 
I’m still amazed that the closest CMS to WordPress is Shopify. WordPress is roughly 10x that of the e-commerce platform. 


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In this episode of the WP Minute podcast, host Matt discusses various WordPress news and topics.
He starts by highlighting a WordPress.com initiative to encourage people to transfer their domain registration from Google Domains to WordPress.com. Matt also talks about a joint effort by open source projects, including WordPress, to raise concerns about the proposed Cyber Resilience Act in the European Union.
He mentions an article about the new WordPress editor, Gutenberg, and concludes by remembering and honoring two individuals who made significant contributions to the WordPress community. Matt encourages listeners to subscribe to the podcast and mentions available sponsorships.
WordPress.com offers to pay domain transfer fees for the first million

WordPress.com is offering to cover the transfer fee for the first million domains that move from Google to WordPress.com. This also extends the domain registration for an additional year.
WordPress.com commits to matching or even lowering the renewal price that users were paying with Google Domains. This applies to over 400 top-level domains (TLDs) they offer. They also promise to keep domain prices low, only raising them if their wholesale costs increase.
WordPress.com has been a domain name provider for over a decade and is committed to the open and inclusive web. They aim to support users’ ability to truly own their content and identity on the web. Users don’t need a site or hosting plan to manage their domains with WordPress.com.
Link
WordPress, Drupal, Typo3, and Joomla join forces

Open Source Matters, Inc. (Joomla), Typo3, WordPress, and the Drupal Association have issued a joint letter to the legislators of the European Union raising concerns about the proposed Cyber Resilience Act. This is a significant move as these four organizations collectively serve over 50% of the European websites.
The organizations argue that the proposed regulation could undermine effective software practices due to its ban on “unfinished software”. They also express concern that the expansive definition of “commercial activity” could deter the contributions of many developers to open source software.
The groups see this as an opportunity to explain the unique role that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) plays in the software that underpins much of the web and to develop a model for how regulation should be applied to it. They also aim to educate legislators and policy-makers about the shared values that open source communities have with the European Union.
Link
This project is moving hella fast

The author expresses their love for Gutenberg, the block editor for WordPress, but also highlights its rapid pace of development. They note that this speed can sometimes leave developers behind, especially due to the shift from PHP to JavaScript (JS).
The author discusses the challenges of debugging Gutenberg, particularly when encountering errors. They note that unlike PHP, where errors are logged in a file, JS errors are logged in the browser console. This shift in error handling can be confusing for developers used to PHP.
The author criticizes the lack of proper documentation for Gutenberg, particularly when it comes to resolving specific errors. They argue that the current documentation is inadequate and that developers often have to search through GitHub issues to find solutions to their problems. They believe this is one of the reasons why some developers have negative feelings towards Gutenberg.
Link
Remember those that have passed
WordPress dedicates this page to the memory of those we’ve lost. They’ve shaped our project and enriched our community. As we remember their passion and commitment to WordPress and open source software, we celebrate their spirit.
Forever in our hearts, their legacy endures through every line of code and every user they’ve impacted.
Link
From the grab bag!
Here are some other interesting links from the week.

https://www.underrepresentedintech.com/

If you're sick and tired of the WordPress dashboard, maybe you want to give Eric's post, The WordPress Dashboard Needs Some Love, a read. Also in today's episode, I'm reminding you about our other podcast feed The WP MInute+, a free podcast that covers the long form WordPress discussions like my old podcast, The Matt Report.
The conversation I just published featuring CliftonWP highlights a lot of what a modern day WordPress entrepreneur is thinking in this fast paced iteration of our favorite CMS. Be sure to add us to your podcast app! Search for "The WP Minute" and you'll see both podcasts available to follow.


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