Since Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp US concluded, the WordPress ecosystem has been in active discussion mode! Also in this issue: Many hosting companies launched AI tools this week. Plus, check out other new releases like WPSites CLI, Kanso Theme, StoreUI, and more.
✅ The WP Awards 2024. Last 48 hours to Submit Nomination of own or favorite WP products. The Call for Sponsorships will close this week. Thanks to Sponsors: GoDaddy, 20i Hosting, Pressable, Crocoblock, WP Division, & Dynamic.ooo.
Platform InMotion with high performance servers for serious WordPress websites, comes with hassle free deployment tools and expert support.
Omnisend is an easy, simple to use email marketing, email newsletter, SMS marketing & automation plugin for WordPress websites.
Patchstack offers the fastest WordPress vulnerability mitigation. Protect your sites with automatic virtual patching & 48-hour early warning for new threats.
Kinsta managed WordPress hosting with unparalleled speed, leveraging Google Cloud and the latest C3D servers, it ensures lightning-fast performance.
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Why Offer Lifetime… for the first time, Paid Memberships Pro will offer a Lifetime Plus License for $1500 (50% off the regular lifetime price of $3,000) from September 27 to 30, 2024. The co-founder, Jason Coleman shared insights on why they offering LTD now!
- Free Woo Course… Christian Taylor has released a free course on building a WooCommerce store from start to finish using the Kadence theme, including setting up hosting, using WooCommerce, recommended plugins, and more.
- New FlyingPress Pricing… promising to provide more value and flexibility, there is a new pricing for FlyingPress plans, with one website plan for $49/year, 3 websites $99/year, 25 websites $199/year, and unlimited websites for $249/year.
- Free Website for Students… university students can now get a free website on WordPress com for one year. This offer is available to the first 1000 students who sign up and includes a free domain name, premium themes, 13 GB storage, and advt free environment.
New Launches: WPSites, Kanso, StoreUI, Bricks LD
WPSites CLI… Andrew Mead shared (Links X) about the release of the WPSites project (GitHub Link), a CLI for quickly spinning up WordPress sites. Just run “wpsites create”, select a template, name your site, and it is live.
New Kanso Theme… Rich Tabor calls it “my best blogging theme yet”, and has released a new Kanso Theme for free. It is a minimalist theme that focuses on writing, publishing, and reading.
More Powerful Woo UI… Rémi Corson shared (Link X) about the launch of StoreUI for WooCommerce users. It is a SaaS WooCommerce admin user interface promising faster, more secure, and easier management of your Woo store.
Bricks LearnDash Addon… Yash Rai has launched the Bricks Extended LearnDash Addon, which includes 35+ elements for building Learndash websites made with Bricks Builder.
WordPress Hosting: New AI Powered Launches
Hostinger’s AI Assistant… the team at Hostinger has launched Kodee AI Assistant, promising quick answers from selecting a hosting plan to navigating hPanel, editing websites, and managing your VPS servers.
GoDaddy Airo Optimizer… the GoDaddy team at WordCamp US is showcasing the upcoming GoDaddy Airo Advanced Site Optimizer feature for easy site optimization process, SEO, content, and accessibility analysis.
DreamHost AI Builder… the WordPress hosting brand DreamHost has launched an AI powered website builder called DreamHost Liftoff for WordPress users. It allows AI website generation with support for images, content, and site design.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Patchstack $5M Investment… the popular security service of the WordPress ecosystem, Patchstack has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round; this investment follows a €2.7M R&D grant received in 2022. Emilia Capital, from the founders of the Yoast SEO plugin – Marieke van de Rakt and Joost de Valk, is a participant in this investment round.
- For Plugin Developers… David Perez has published about the Plugin Check plugin (PCP) and why WordPress plugin developers should use it to quickly check if your plugin meets the required standards for the WordPress org plugin directory.
- Create Multi-block Plugin… Troy Chaplin, at the WordPress developer blog, published a tutorial on creating a single plugin called WP Multi Block that registers two static blocks and a dynamic one.
- Niche Themes Junk… Martin Dubovic spent over 20 hours testing 60+ niche WordPress Themes and concluded that “the entire category was riddled with junk”. This is an interesting read, for sure.
- Data Views Update… Birgit Pauli-Haack has published the latest update on Date Views; features now shipped include primary filter visibility, the ability to re-order table columns in view options, and re-balance header area in List layout.
- Delhi and Nairobi WordCamps… scheduled for November 30 and December 01, 2024, tickets for WordCamp Delhi 2024 are now available for purchase. Also, the call for speakers is now open for WordCamp Nairobi 2024, scheduled for November 01 – 02, 2024.
New: Elementor, SocialNinja, Droip, GravityPDF, Cwicly
Elementor Floating Bars… 3.24v update has introduced floating bars in the Elementor builder. This includes over 30 pre-designed templates and three types of floating bars: Call To Action (CTA) Bar, Ticker Bar, and Coupon Bar.
GDPR Ready FB & TikTok Feeds… WP Social Ninja 3.14.0v has added GDPR compliance for Facebook and TikTok feeds. You can now save images from these feeds locally on your website allowing faster loading and optimization controls.
Collection Filter… Droip has added all-new dynamic filter functionality, allowing users to filter posts based on category, tags, and custom taxonomy.
Gravity PDF… 2.0v of Bulk Generator added a setting to merge bulk-generated PDFs into a single document and a descriptive filenames option.
Ciwcly New Update… there is a Cwicly update, Louis did a live stream sharing the new design tab UI in Ciwcly 1.4.2v and reworked Global Elements feature.
Quick Bits 👍
- MemberPress launched Done for You membership site service.
- Matt Mullenweg teased (Links X) the refreshed Cloudup service.
- See how the Speed building battle went at WordCamp US 2024.
- Check all videos and Q&A session from the WordCamp US 2024.
- Special Projects at Automattic published list of open source tools.
- Download Report for Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses.
- Participate in Birthday Giveaway to win EWWW IO & Perfmatters.
WordPress Contributions: Matt on WP Engine!
Before the Q&A Session at WordCamp US 2024… Matt Mullenweg wrote, “Open Source, once ridiculed and attacked by the professional classes, has taken over as an intellectual and moral movement”. Coining the term Ecosystem Thinking which consists of four parts: Learn, Evolve, Teach, and Nourish.
During the Q&A Session at WordCamp US 2024… Matt mentioned WP Engine for not contributing enough. Also, published on the WordPress org website about WP Engine, “how Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102B assets under management, can hollow out an open source community.”
WordCamp US 2024 team thanked WP Engine via tweet. Also, WP Engine published a post highlighting “Over a Decade of Innovation and Contribution to the WordPress Community”. Possibly, both these items were pre-scheduled before Matt’s Q&A session at WordCamp US 2024.
More Continued on Twitter X Platform
Matt Mullenweg opened a poll on Twitter X asking, “should we allow WP Engine to have a booth at the next WordCamp?”. Also, Matt tweeted further sharing this statistic, “450M/yr in revenue, 40/hrs a week of contribution”.
Jeremy Pollock from WP Engine posted this tweet on X platform. Unless otherwise stated, this tweet connects dots to the issue in the context mentioned above.
Coverage from Community Members
Andrew Palmer summed up the complex dynamic of this from various directions as a “A Passionate Critique” over at the new FundWP project website.
Jonathan Jernigan elaborated on this, “You Can’t Single Out Just WPEngine”, and shared the exact hours contributed by various companies.
Kevin Geary expressed this as WordPress’s big “Tragedy of the Commons” Problem, “This wasn’t my first WordCamp, but I legitimately felt bad for first-timers”.
MotoPress Appointment Booking plugin is the easiest way to schedule appointments on WordPress, with beautiful booking forms & online payments.
Trust DeployHQ to handle your WordPress deployments. Our reliable and scalable platform is designed to meet the needs of developers & businesses of all sizes.
20i® Next-Gen WordPress Hosting – Blazing-fast cloud platform with free Staging, Cloning, WordPress Manager, CDN & Edge Cache. No plug-ins required!
Astra is a lightweight, high-performance, popular WordPress theme known for its speed, flexibility, and ease of use. Check new Astra Style Guide feature.
↑ Community Sponsors supporting this weekly
