#193 - WordPress.org Property Of Matt Mullenweg, WordPress 6.7 RC1 Released

Issue #193 | October 29, 2024 | Reading time: 15 mins

Hello!

Automattic and Matt responded to a motion filed by WP Engine and the response had the community talking. WordPress 6.7 RC1 has been released and we can expect RC2 later today. Also, the Community Team has paused the SWAG shipping program for the time being.

Don’t forget to subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter, where you can hear more details and discussions about these topics and more.

See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

WordPress 6.7 Release Candidate 1 released

The RC1 is now available for download and testing. We can expect RC2 later today.

WordPress 6.7 field guide published: This guide outlines major developer features and breaking changes in 6.7 and is published in the Release Candidate phase to help inform WordPress extending developers, Core developers, and others.
What’s new in Gutenberg 19.5: The latest version enhances the zoom in/out experience, removed the verb toggle from the Block Inserter button, and more.
Pause on SWAG Shipments for WordPress Events, WordCamps, and Meetups: After the Community Team could no longer ship SWAG via the Mercantile store, several temporary alternatives were implemented but none of it was a permanent solution. The Community Team has now decided to officially pause the SWAG shipping program due to a lack of many Community team contributors available, and they will resume it once a sustainable solution can be researched and established.
Celebrating 1,000 Block Themes in the themes repository: The themes repository now has over 1000 block themes and the first block theme was Armando, crafted by Carolina Nymark. The top three block theme authors are Automattic with 116 themes, followed by Creta Themes with 41 themes and VW Themes with 39 themes. Anne McCarthy also published a post to celebrate this great milestone.
WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials, arousing suspicions: Organisers of WordCamps, community-organized events for WordPress users, have been ordered to take down some social media posts and share their login credentials for social networks.
New Google Trends SEO documentation: Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.
Google revises URL parameter best practices: Google updates Search documentation with standardized URL parameter guidelines, recommending “=” and “&” for optimal website crawling.

🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

Automattic and Matt Mullenweg Responds to WP Engine

Automattic and Matt Mullenweg respond to a motion filed by WP Engine: The response has caused quite a stir as it highlights, “ WordPress.org is not WordPress. WordPress.org is not Automattic or the WordPress Foundation, and is not controlled by either. To the contrary, as Plaintiff itself acknowledges, WordPress.org is Mr. Mullenweg’s responsibility.” WP Tavern has more details on this.
WP Engine published a timeline of events: The timeline highlights their most recent actions and statements.
Matt threatened Jason Coleman to take over Paid Memberships Pro: Jason Coleman, co-founder and CEO of Paid Memberships Pro said that Matt Mullernweg sent him a direct message on the WordPress.org Slack Workspace threatening to take over Paid Memberships Pro, “take over your listing and make it a community plugin like we did to ACF”. The Repository has verified that a Slack conversation did take place between the two.
Delicious Brains blocked from WordPress.org: Users of WP Migrate Lite, WP Offload Media Lite, WP Offload SES Lite, and Better Search Replace are required to perform a one-time manual update to the latest version. After this one-time manual update, users will receive security updates as soon as they’re available.

Some writings/discussions on the subject:
WordPress on hiatus: From Andy Fragen

I can’t run a business like this’: Why the WordPress row matters: From BBC

AspirePress is what the WordPress community needs today: From Scott Arciszewski

So long WordPress: From Chris Wiegman

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

A collection of web security and vulnerability news and updates for the past week

Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (October 14, 2024 to October 20, 2024)

There were 221 vulnerabilities disclosed in 205 plugins and 4 WordPress themes.

Fake “fix it” pop-ups target WordPress sites via malicious plugin to download trojan: Sucuri discovered a new malware campaign targeting WordPress sites through a fake plugin, universal-popup-plugin-v133, which delivers deceptive browser fix pop-ups. This malware leverages social engineering tactics to deceive visitors into downloading malicious files, compromising their systems.
WordPress vulnerability report — October 23, 2024: Weekly report from SolidWP

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

Be one of the first ones to explore some fresh plugins and themes

Dossier theme

A portfolio theme

Accademia theme: A theme for schools and universities, personal blogs, and general websites.
Party Corp theme: A theme designed specifically for event management companies, party planners, and corporate event organizers.
PassiveWP plugin: All-in-one affiliate marketing plugin.
SureForms plugin: A new form builder plugin.
JetProductTables for WooCommerce plugin: This allows users to build responsive product tables for WooCommerce product lists in WordPress.
Gallery Modals plugin: This plugin adds modal popups to gallery images, providing a download button and a link to view image details.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Introducing CommandUI

CommandUI, created by Calvin Alkan, allows users to install plugins, search CPTs, and navigate your site, all from a globally available command bar.

All new IdeasWP: Ben Townsend and Brandon Ernst have launched ideasWP, an exciting new project where you can bring your plugin idea to life. Simply submit your concept, and they’ll handle the development. Once it’s ready, your plugin will be listed on their upcoming website, where you’ll earn 30% of each sale.
Announcing WPSummarize: WPSummarize, created by Julian Yanover, will generate a summary of the blog posts with key data highlights for their readers through AI automated summarization.
Lottie Lite for WordPress animations: Lottie Lite allows users to upload and display animations easily, and focuses on simplicity and efficiency.
Improvements to the express checkout area in the upcoming WooCommerce 9.4 release: A few enhancements have been added to improve the express checkout area, both for shop managers and shoppers such as a new feature where merchants can change the height and border radius of all active express payment buttons in the editor, showcasing list of active express payment methods in the editor and more.
WordCamp Europe 2026, call for host city: The application process is now open until Friday 15 November 2024 and the decision on the host city for WordCamp Europe 2026 is expected to be made by Friday 29 November 2024.
Carrie Dils will no longer contribute to the WordPress project: After 13 years of dedicated contributions, she is stepping away from the project.
Another example of Matt Mullenweg and Automattic stifling the #freespeech of the community: Kellie Peterson on X notes how WordCamp Sydney was asked to delete tweets related to WP Engine being removed as a sponsor. She also highlights how a follow-up demanding control of all socials from a wide swath of sizable #WordCamps under the guise of continuity planning was also issued.
Morten Rand-Hendriksen shares the untold story of WordCamp: Developers 2011: In an X thread, he shares the story of the first-ever developer-focused WordPress event — an event that almost didn’t happen and the challenges faced along the way.
A functional prototype exploring the WordPress new admin experience is now available: Saxon Fletcher who previously worked at Automattic, has shared a prototype of the new admin experience project he worked on. The project explored how the new admin experience could be personalized according to user needs, which included content modeling built-in, settings for frame and content panels, and more.
WordPress mirror update: Dustin Snider provides an update on the WordPress mirror which is being worked by 10+ highly experienced contributors, from core contributors to hosting companies to plugin/theme developers to agencies, professors, and more. The mirror is expected to be deployed to Cloudflare and the mirror is around 2.58TB. Along with this a a drop-in plugin allowing a WordPress installation to change its repository settings has also been developed and is expected to be launched soon.
Brian Coords on the noticeable gap in leadership and clear vision: He observes that many people are either leaving the community or finding that their contributions are undervalued, which has been challenging. He also highlights a lack of leadership and clear vision, even though there are still committed individuals working on the project.
ACF can now be installed with Composer: Both ACF and ACF PRO can be installed using Composer.
Huzaifa Al Mesbah receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community: Huzaifa Al Mesbah, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss

Writing a WordPress plugin to generate image alt text with AI Services: From Felix Arntz
HeroPress: What it is, and why it’s so important: From WP Builds
Miriam Schwab and Oliver Sild on security collaboration between Elementor and Patchstack: From WP Tavern Jukebox
In conversation with Taco Verdonschot: From Seriously BUD?
How to know if a website is safe to browse and buy from: From Jetpack
Where did all the Drupal 7 sites go? They moved to WordPress: From Pantheon
How we saved over $36,000 translating our plugins using ChatGPT (and how you can too!): From GravityKit
How compression can be used to detect low quality pages: From Search Engine Journal

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

Snippet: Conditionally unregister patterns: From WordPress Developer Blog
Creating a portfolio site with a block theme and patterns: From WordPress TV
Add custom CSS and JavaScript to any WordPress block in Gutenberg: From Brian Coords
The complete guide to installing WP-CLI: From Delicious Brains

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

Baking High-Performance Websites Tips with WPBakery on October 30, 2024: A live event on Facebook where a panel of experts will share essential tips and strategies for building fast and high-performing WordPress websites.
Rome Core Days on November 8-9, 2024: This will be a two-day event dedicated to WordPress Core developers with round tables, open discussions, and contribution rooms. The schedule is out.
WordCamp Kerala on November 9, 2024: The call for sponsors, speakers and volunteers is out.
WordCamp Romania on November 14-15, 2024: Tickets are out.
WordCamp Malaysia on November 22-23, 2024: Tickets are out.
WordCamp Netherlands on 29-30 November 2024: The call for sponsors is out.
WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: The venue will be the Philippine International Convention Center, Manila, Philippines.
WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: The event will be held at Basel – Switzerland’s Capital for Art and Culture.
WordCamp US 2025 on August 26-29, 2025: The event is in the early planning stages.

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