The Matt vs WP Engine issue is resulting in a churn at Automattic. Matt’s ‘Alignment Offer’ has 159 people including the director leaving Automattic. Also in this issue: five new plugins, new mirror of WP Org repository, Kadence’s new header builder, and few surveys to share your opinions in the WordPress land.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- Safe WP Updates… WP Umbrella has released Safe Updates for WordPress feature, promising peace of mind for WordPress and plugin updates. This feature checks for compatibility issues before the update, creates a restore point, and monitors the website’s uptime, visual regression and status codes.
- New WordPress Update Mirror… Akshat Choudhary from WP Remote has launched Morpheus service. It is an open-source mirror of the WordPress .org repository to ensure uninterrupted updates for WordPress websites. This idea is not to replace WordPress org but to provide an alternative to mitigate load on WP Org repository.
- Kadence Header Builder… Kadence users can now build advanced and custom header layouts with the new Kadence Advanced Header and Navigation Blocks that work in the block editor. No need to rely on theme settings for header customizations.
- New FigPress… Jose Tamu has launched FigPress, which allows you to copy and paste Figma designs into WordPress page builder of your choice. As of now it supports Gutenberg, Breakdance, Bricks, and Elementor with compatibility for the default native elements: block/section, headings, paragraphs and images.
- Participate in Surveys… “How Does WordPress Sound to You?”, have your say in WordPress Brand Survey being conduted by WPShout. Todd E Jones over at MainWP shared Site Care Consultants Survey 2024 for participation by folks in the WordPress community.
New Plugins: Motors, Login, Notice, Pixel, WebCam
Motors Directory plugin… Stylemix Themes has released a Motors plugin that allows you to build directory and listing websites for car dealerships, motorcycles directory, boats and yachts listings, and classified ads.
User Login Status… Robert DeVore has released new free User Login Status plugin that shows the logged-in and logged-out status of users. It also has bulk logout feature, allowing administrator to log-out multiple users at once.
Notice on Old Posts… David Allsop has released a free Old Post Notice plugin that allows you to display custom text notice on blog posts older than the specified number of days. You can customize colors and display location.
Sleek Pixel Custom Images… Dennis Yo, the creator of Blockstudio, has launched Sleek Pixel, which allows you to automatically generate featured images with custom content through the power of dynamic open graph.
Webcam for Gravity… add the functionality to capture and upload images directly from the webcam into Gravity Forms with the Webcam Add-on. This is a third party community addon by Ujwol Bastakoti.
New Features: SEO & Optimization Plugins
SEOPress… 8.2v has introduced Site audit feature, a central place to find all SEO related technical problems of your website. The display is grouped into 13 categories and each URL lists the problem with a priority level ranges.
ClickWhale… 2.3.0v has added Keyword Auto Linker, which allows you to define specific keywords that should be automatically linked where ever they appear.
FlyingPress… has introduced Smart Link Preloading feature that predicts where a user will click and it preloads those pages in advance for seamless browsing.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Search and Filter… got a big update with version 3 featuring completely reworked fields, simplified query builder, styles presets editor, and better block integration, allowing building within the block editor interface.
- SmartQuizBuilder… 41.2v update has added new email templates, all shortcodes and merge tags are now grouped in one place for easier access, and the ability to add a ‘Download PDF’ button to any page using new shortcode.
- Global Unsubscribe… Abandoned Cart Pro for WooCommerce plugin 9.11.0v has added global unsubscribe feature that allows users to unsubscribe from all reminder emails with a single click.
- Test Twenty Twenty-Five Theme… WordPress 6.7 will include the Twenty Twenty-Five Theme. You can help test this theme for various new features like patterns, color palettes, templates, section styles, and data views.
- Core WordPress… WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is now available for testing. It includes 500 enhancements and over 500 bug fixes for the editor. WordPress 6.7 is scheduled for November 12, 2024.
- WooCommerce Release Moved… WooCommerce 9.4, originally scheduled for October 21, 2024, has been pushed ahead by two weeks to November 4, 2024, to align with the release of the WordPress 6.7 version.
- WordCamp Tickets… the second batch of tickets for WordCamp Asia 2025 is sold out; Micro Sponsor tickets are available, or wait for the next batch of regular tickets. Also, the next batch of regular tickets for WordCamp Delhi 2024 will be available soon.
New Features: Payments & Events Plugins
Paymattic… the 4.6.0v update brings fresh UX/UI for a better user experience, along with many other features like multi-column layouts, free offline payments option, and a reporting dashboard now included in the free version.
WP Simple Pay… 4.12.0v has added the setting for automatic recurring subscription opt-in, allowing your visitors to enroll easily into recurring subscription plans for your digital products.
FooEvents… has added an Attendee Listing Block to easily display a teaser list of attendees on your website. There is also a new FooEvents Calendar Block in the 1.7.4v update to add calendars to your posts and pages.
FluentBooking… has added Elementor integration in the free version of the plugin. It has also added a new file field that will enable your attendees to drop important files or resources before appearing in the meeting.
Quick Bits 👍
- TranslatePress website got a fresh new look makeover, neat!
- Popular Brands functionality now free in WooCommerce core.
- Check all new WooCommerce Release Calendar for developers.
- Video: See how accessible are Form plugins to screen reader.
- There are 0 plugins in review queue, incredible job (Links X).
- A refresher guide on core contributions & badges at WP org.
- Automattic extends support to the Social Web Foundation.
Matt vs WP Engine: ACF, Hosting Page, Alternatives
ACF In Question… users of the free version of the ACF plugin were having issues getting updates via the WordPress org website. The ACF team has provided a workaround mechanism for ACF plugin updates going forward. Matt Mullenweg asks the community for ACF alternatives (Links X) and the migration process.
WordPress Org Hosting Page… as per the latest update, “Update the hosting page, per matt” – the WordPress Org Hosting page has removed the WordPress .com and replaced it with Pressable Hosting. Also, there is a prominent link to Five for the Future of every hosting service listed on that page.
Matt Mullenweg asked (Links X) for alternatives to power WordPress .org, which serves 30k requests a second at peak. Responding to this (Links X), Matthew Prince – Co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, “We’d be happy to donate the capacity to power WordPress .org for the community”.
159 People including Director leave Automattic
Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress project, has decided to leave after being there for nine years. Additionally, 159 people (8.4% of the company) have left Automattic, taking the “generous buy-out package”.
Matt referred this as Alignment Offer which included, “if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher”.
Matt vs WP Engine: In the parody mode!
Well, someone made the Automattless website along the lines of the Automattic website – you have to read what’s there for some profound thinking. Event Matt shared this and wrote (Links X), “I want to hire whoever made”. While Peter Wilson shared (Links X) Woofpress, the original K9 based parody fork of WordPress.
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