Issue #200 | December 17, 2024 | Reading time: 19 mins
Hello!
This is it! The 200th Newsletter🥳
Thanks for being with us on this fantastic journey.
Today, we cover the preliminary injunction granted in favor of WP Engine, the return of the ACF plugin, and the removal of the mandatory login checkbox and domain.csv file. The community was also buzzing after the introduction of the new mandatory pineapple pizza checkbox in WordPress.org. Matt delivered the State of the Word 2024 yesterday at Tokyo.
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.
We’re taking a short break for the next two weeks but will return with fresh updates in the first week of 2025!
See you in 2025!
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
🙌 This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend and WP Job Openings
🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN
In a significant legal victory for WP Engine, Judge Martínez-Olguín has granted a preliminary injunction against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. As a result of this ACF plugin has been returned to WP Engine, along with restored WordPress.org access to WP Engine, its users, and related entities and also the removal of the mandatory login checkbox and domain.csv file from WP Engine Tracker.
Regarding the granted injunction, Matt posted on X. “I’m disgusted and sickened by being legally forced to provide free labor and services to @wpengine , a dangerous precedent that should chill every open source maintainer. While I disagree with the court’s decision, I’ve fully complied with its order. You can see most changes on the site. They have access to ACF slug but haven’t changed it… must not have been the emergency they claimed.” Also, Matt Mullenweg rage quit from the Post Status Slack community after the injunction was granted in favor of WP Engine.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
The State of the Word 2024 took place in Tokyo Node Hall in Japan, with the keynote delivered by Matt Mullenweg. This year’s event spanned three hours, with a special emphasis on Japanese culture. Matias Ventura, Gutenberg’s lead architect, discussed upcoming features. WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard said she hopes to resolve the WP Engine issue equitably. Matt also revealed that he’ll work on WordPress for the rest of his life.
- WordPress.org login introduces mandatory pineapple pizza checkbox: The new mandatory checkbox requires users to confirm that “Pineapple is delicious on pizza” before accessing their accounts. This comes shortly after the removal of the previous mandatory checkbox that required users to confirm that they are not affiliated with WP Engine to log in successfully.
- WordPress contributors and community leaders call for governance reform in rare open letter: The Repository reported that a group of WordPress contributors, including long-time core committers and community leaders, has issued a rare call for changes to the governance of the open-source project. The group is urging co-founder Matt Mullenweg to work with the community instead of continuing to act unilaterally.
- Write books with the block editor: You can now use the Block Editor to create electronic books and other documents—all completely offline. This project is still in the early stages and those interested can contribute to it. The demo editor is installable as a Progressive Web App (PWA) in Chrome.
- WordPress 6.7 performance improvements: There were a total of 23 performance related improvements such as improved pattern loading times, auto sizes for lazy loaded images, improved speed of AVIF image generation and so on. WordPress 6.7 shows a regression in performance. While some overhead typically accompanies new features, these declines point to areas where the performance team continues to investigate where these regressions came from and how they can be addressed in the upcoming releases.
- Community Team introduced new off-boarding process: The team has implemented a new off-boarding process aimed at supporting members who may need to step back due to personal circumstances temporarily. The goal is to maintain a healthy and engaged team, welcoming active contributors while respecting the needs of those who may need to adjust their involvement
- Open invitation for 2025 Sustainability Team Reps: Active contributors are invited to self-nominate for the role, with nominations open until January 7th, 2025. The current reps are willing to continue for another year until December 31, 2025, unless there are other nominations or objections before the deadline.
- Leo Gopal & Junko Nukaga stepping down as Community Team Reps: The voting process has ended and the votes are being counted to select the new reps. In 2025, Leo Gopal and Junko Nukaga will step down as reps after two years of serving the community.
- Announcing the 2025 Global Sponsorship Program: The Global Sponsorship Program is now open with an annual fee of $160,000, payable in full or quarterly. By joining, sponsors gain visibility and recognition across events and among attendees. The funds are used to provide sponsorship grants to local WordPress events globally, cover Meetup.com license fees, and support the operating costs of WordPress Community Support.
- What’s new for developers? (December 2024): Ryan Welcher provides an update on the developer-related changes in the last month, including updates to the Gutenberg project, WordPress Core, and other areas.
- ‘Make WordPress’ gets a fresh update: The Make WordPress has also received a refresh. The theme, developed by the Meta and Design teams, has been available for users to preview for a few weeks and has now been implemented.
- WordPress Photo Directory gets a revamp: The WordPress Photo Directory has recently received a visual overhaul. It now uses block-based components and utilizes a child theme alongside the shared WordPress.org parent theme.
- Openverse has introduced a new dark mode: Openverse the vibrant platform for openly licensed media, has introduced a sleek and modern Dark Mode feature. This new site theme is designed to enhance users’ comfort and style as they explore the extensive library of creative resources.
- WooCommerce in 2025: Building a platform for the future: Looking ahead to 2025, WooCommerce is focusing on performance at scale, modernized commerce experiences, and integrating essential features into its core platform.
- Generate test data for WooCommerce with Smooth Generator: Smooth Generator is an open-source tool that helps you populate WooCommerce stores with realistic test data. Instead of manually creating products, orders, and customers for testing, you can generate them automatically with just a few commands.
- Multiple critical vulnerabilities patched in Woffice Theme: The vulnerabilities which included a privilege escalation and an unauthenticated account takeover were patched recently. The users are advised to update to the latest version immediately.
- Ivanti issues critical security updates for CSA and Connect Secure vulnerabilities: Ivanti has released security updates to address multiple critical flaws in its Cloud Services Application (CSA) and Connect Secure products that could lead to privilege escalation and code execution.
- Google launches new ’24 Hours’ view In Search Console: Google launches 24-hour data view in Search Console, offering near real-time insights for website performance monitoring.
- Google announces search updates powered by Gemini 2.0: The new AI Overviews will handle more complex queries, including math, coding, and multimodal searches.
- Google Search Console update: No more analytics data: Google streamlines Search Console Insights by removing Google Analytics data, focusing solely on Search Console metrics for simplicity.
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- WPExperts acquires Advanced File Manager plugin: WPExperts has acquired the Advanced File Manager plugin from Modal Web. WPExperts (formerly WooExperts) is a leading WordPress development company with an extensive portfolio of WordPress and WooCommerce plugins.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
This year marks the 5th anniversary of the charity campaign which will take place from December 23rd to December 29th, 2024. The companies that take part in this movement will donate a percentage of their revenue during this time frame to charity. In 2023, the initiative donated $11,200 to various charities.
- Rodolfo Melogli shared a snippet of a reply email to potential WCEU sponsors: The email requests that the sponsor change “WordPress Maintenance” to “Maintenance for WordPress” to comply with WordPress’s Trademark Policy, with confirmation needed within 15 days to maintain sponsorship eligibility for WordCamp Europe. The discussion saw several community members expressing their opinions on this.
- WordCamp Asia 2025: seventh round of speakers announced: The announced list of speakers includes, Keiko Muto, Stuart Shields, Shipra Sood, Monica Drappin, Michael Drappin, Hari Shanker, and Isotta Peira.
- Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia 2025 to include Human Library: The Human Library, a programme first introduced in WordCamp Asia 2024 is an initiative that invites attendees to engage in one-on-one conversations with experienced WordPress contributors, called “Books”, who share their knowledge, stories, and skills in a personal setting. It’s a chance for attendees to learn directly from the experts in the community, get fresh ideas, ask questions, and get inspired
- New “Lite” plan from Nexcess: The entry-level hosting plan designed for hobbyists, bloggers, and those just starting with WordPress. The plan is priced at $4.16/month when billed annually at $50 upfront and allows one site with 8GB storage, 1TB bandwidth, free SSL and email, and more features.
- Namecheap introduced Singapore web hosting: There are three plans on offer Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business. This will allow for improved loading speeds and low latency for your audience in Asia with the Singapore data center.
- Cloudflare is now enforcing your robots.txt rules: Cloudflare users can now quickly see which AI services are honoring your robots.txt policies, which aren’t, and then programmatically enforce these policies.
- Elementor has added GoDaddy and Pagely staging sites to their Pro Plugin whitelist: This will allow users not to require an additional license on staging environments.
- WPML AI: New language pairs and improvements: This release brings new language pairs, improvements to the German translations, and other enhancements.
- SEOPress 8.4 released: This release enhances the Site Audit feature with AI, improves the Table of Contents and FAQ blocks, and introduces various other enhancements.
- SureForms releases new Zapier integration & form entry exports: SureForms has launched a long-awaited Zapier integration that allows you to seamlessly connect your WordPress forms to thousands of third-party apps.
- James Welbes working on an alternative to the WordPress.org repo: He has shared a demo the same in X.
- WordCamp Buffalo 2025 will be independent of WordPress Central: They abandoned their 2025 WordCamp plans due to the latest WP Drama and are running an independent event.
- Patricia Navarro receives the Yoast Care fund for her contribution to the WordPress community: Patricia Navarro, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
- WP Engine launches Dynamic Plugin Loading: Dynamic plugin loading is a new feature for WP Engine customers on the eCommerce hosting plans. It intelligently determines which plugins are being loaded on each page and provides a framework for disabling unnecessary plugins on a page-by-page basis.
- Robert DeVore released four new plugins: The IMG A11Y plugin enhances image accessibility by adding fields for decorative image marking and accessibility prompts to the WordPress® media editor. While, the Associated Taxonomies for WordPress® plugin is designed to streamline taxonomy management by enabling you to associate terms within the same taxonomy, and the Site Vitals for WordPress® plugin is designed to help you monitor, evaluate, and improve key aspects of your WordPress® website’s health. The Vertical Gallery Product Display for WooCommerce® plugin transforms your WooCommerce® single product pages by moving the product image gallery to a vertical layout.
- Dave Grey launched two new projects: With FundWP for Stripe users can set up seasonal fundraising or crowdfunding on their WordPress site in minutes. While, the Media Library Essentials plugin adds image usage counts, file sizes, and dimensions to your WordPress media library.
- Kaspars Dambis has created a new plugin that signs all outgoing emails with DKIM: Mail Pilot ensures reliable delivery of WordPress emails by enabling DKIM signing which is trusted by most email clients. It is currently in development and interested folks can get in touch to know more.
- WP Deals is evolving: Ben Townsend is expanding WP Deals beyond WordPress to include SaaS tools, hosting, digital resources, and other essential web products.
- New Do the Woo show coming in January: The new show titled, “ Open Web Conversations” will feature Matthias Pfefferle and Dave Lockie as co-hosts alongside Bob Dunn.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- WordPress isn’t WordPress anymore: Hendrik Luehrsen notes how WordPress’ balance between simplicity and flexibility is tipping in the wrong direction. He stressed that “WordPress has always been a collaborative project, and its future depends on contributions and perspectives from across its community.” From KrautPress.
- WordPress, and what should be on its roadmap: Drawing inspiration from Hendrik Luehrsen’s post, Joost de Valk also expressed his opinions. He expresses concern about stagnation in market share and the challenges of its growth. While competitors like Webflow, Squarespace, and Shopify are thriving, he says that if it weren’t for key tools like Elementor and WooCommerce, WordPress’s market share would likely have decreased even more.
- Editor sidebar madness and Gutenberg: Mika Epstein on how she developed a Gutenbergized sidebar that auto-updates for LezWatch.Tv.
- In conversation with Cory Miller: Bud Kraus is joined by Cory Miller, where they discuss their mutual unfamiliarity, personal battles with mental health, and so on. The episode closes with Bud and Cory emphasizing the importance of not suffering in silence and seeking professional help for mental health issues. From, Seriously Bud?
- Corey Maass on optimising WordPress images: In this episode, Corey talks about the role of social media and your website’s presence on social platforms along with how optimized web-sharing images and shareable web pages on platforms like X and Facebook are important and more. From WP Tavern.
- Enhancing WooCommerce for Accessibility with Amber Hinds: In this episode of the All Things WordPress and WooCommerce Anne Bovelett and James Kemp are joined by Amber Hinds from Equalize Digital. They discuss the importance of accessibility in web development, particularly for WooCommerce shops. They highlight the contributions of the Accessibility Checker plugin and the collaboration between WooCommerce and Equalize Digital to tackle accessibility issues. From Doo the Woo.
- The challenges and opportunities for WordPress professionals in 2025: Fränk Klein discusses five WordPress trends that will continue to accelerate in 2025 and how they present both challenges and opportunities for professionals building client websites with WordPress. From WP Development Courses.
- What writers and bloggers actually think of the WordPress block editor: Karol K focused opinions that either came from bloggers or addressed features and perspectives related to creating content – things like writing and blogging – not building or designing a site. He ended up with 50 opinions of which 26 were positive, 19 negative, and 4 were mixed. From Themeisle.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- WordCamp Ahmedabad on 3-4 January 2025: The schedule is now out.
- WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: Tickets are out now.
- PressConf 2025 on April 23-26: A conference for WordPress Professionals and the tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: WordCamp Europe 2025 is looking for speakers and sponsors
🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK
Again, these are the best deals of the week, handpicked by yours!
EXCLUSIVE DEALS
- 4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
- 10% off on monthly & annual plans at SureTriggers (Coupon Code- WPCONTENT10)
- 15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)
MORE DEALS
- 50% off for the first 6 months on all monthly standard plans at Kinsta
- 50% off 3 months on Liquid Web’s Bare Metal server hosting
- 40% off for Constellation plugin
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by awesome WordPress Companies 🦸♂️🙌
Last but not least, updates from WP-CONTENT.CO 👇
WordPress.org has once again revised the login requirement and now has a new mandatory checkbox that requires users…
Following the court’s granting of a preliminary injunction in favor of WP Engine, Automattic and Matt Mullenweg have…
The Make WordPress has also received a refresh alongside the recently revamped Photo Directory. The theme, developed by…
The WordPress Photo Directory has recently received a visual overhaul. It now uses block-based components and utilizes a…
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #200 | December 17, 2024 | Reading time: 19 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend and WP Job Openings
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