Issue #201 | January 7, 2025 | Reading time: 18 mins
Hello!
Today we cover Joost de Valk’s call for breaking the status quo, re-opened WordPress.org services, Matt’s controversial post on Reddit, and new projects from the community.
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
🙌 This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend, InMotion Hosting and WP Job Openings
🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN
Joost de Valk in this post voices that,” We, the WordPress community, need to decide if we’re ok being led by a single person who controls everything, and might do things we disagree with, or if we want something else. For a project whose tagline is “Democratizing publishing”, we’ve been very low on exactly that: democracy.” He has also put forth five steps such as the creation of a WordPress foundation-like entity, the WordPress trademark being given to the public, and more.
Matt replied to this via a comment, “I think this is a great idea for you to lead and do under a name other than WordPress. There’s really no way to accomplish everything you want without starting with a fresh slate from a trademark, branding, and people point of view.”
Karim Marucchi also supports Joost and he also expressed his views. Manton Reece also shared his perspective.
- Morten Rand-Hendriksen published After WordPress in which he explains that there are two paths forward for the WordPress community. One is where “Mullenweg releases his iron grip on the project, brings in proper governance, creates a more equitable ecosystem economy, and steps into a role of visionary leader instead of micromanager”. The second is where “The community organizes, takes every lesson learned over the past 20+ years, combines with a vision for what the world will need going into the next 10 years, and builds a new platform to stand on.”
- Hendrik Luehrsen also expressed his opinion, “ The path forward for WordPress is challenging but far from impossible. It requires compromise, resilience, and, above all, collaboration. This is not the time for fragmentation or power struggles – it is a moment to unite, harnessing our collective strengths for the greater good of the platform and its ecosystem….or WordPress to thrive, it must adopt a more inclusive and decentralized governance model. The proposals from Joost and Karim provide a solid foundation for this evolution, but their implementation will require the support of all key stakeholders.”
- Ben May also voiced his opinions in Matt is WordPress post in which he says,”I don’t believe the path forward is about replacing Matt with committees or fighting the project’s natural governance structure. WordPress has thrived under this model for two decades, powering 40% of the web. Rather than trying to fundamentally reshape its governance, we should focus our energy on what matters: building and innovating on this platform.”
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
WordPress.org services, which had been on break since December 20 following Matt Mullenweg’s announcement of a holiday break, have now resumed.
- WordPress Themes need more weird: A call for creative digital homes: Nick Hamze advocates that there need to be more themes that are creative and different. He says, “We need more themes that make people say “Wow!” or “That’s different!” rather than “That’s clean and professional.” The web needs more personality, more risk-taking, more fun.” The community responded to this on X, with many criticizing him sharply.
- Matt Mullenweg asks what drama to create in 2025, community reacts: On Christmas Eve, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg took to Reddit, causing quite a stir by asking what kind of drama he should create in 2025.
- Gutenberg 19.9 released: Gutenberg 19.9 was released, and the notable changes in this version include a new Query Total Block and the support for Style Book in classic themes, along with various other enhancements and bug fixes.
- Nominations for Core Team Reps: 2025 edition: The nominations are now open and the deadline is on Saturday, February 1, 2025. The current team reps are Joe McGill and Sarah Norris.
- Hosting Team Reps 2025: The elected representatives for 2025 are Zunaid Amin, who will continue in the role, along with co-existing representative Lucas Radke.
- Introducing new Themes Team representatives for the 2025: The three reps for 2025 are Acosmin, Ganga Kafle, and Shiva Shanker Bhatta.
- Phase 2 Roadmap of Plugin Check Plugin published: In Phase 1, Plugin Check was released to the community as a plugin available through WordPress.org and in Phase 2 Plugin Check will expand to cover updates made by plugin authors to plugins already in the Directory.
- Hosting WordPress Events for Women on International Women’s Day: The Community Team has put forth a proposal to organize WordPress events for women in honor of International Women’s Day.
- WordPress.org makes pineapple pizza checkbox optional: The controversial mandatory pineapple pizza checkbox on WordPress.org’s login form has been made optional. This decision follows a Twitter poll conducted by WordPress.org, in which 81.2% of respondents voted against making the checkbox mandatory.
- A Year in Themes Team – 2024: In 2024 the Themes team closed 39796 tickets, 81.3% of themes submitted in 2024 were approved whereas 18.7% were not-approved. The themes repository now has over 1000 block themes and the Block Theme focus handbook is ready. The top three theme authors were Automattic, Creta Themes, and Ascendoor.
- A Year in the Plugins Review Team – 2024: The Plugin Review Team’s 2024 notable highlights include new security measures such as introduction of mandatory Plugin Check for new plugin submissions, 2FA in SVN, and the renovated Internal Scanner Tool. The team was also able to reduce the review queue to zero for a brief period of time.
- Meet Studio Sync for WordPress.com: The Studio Sync feature allows Studio users to synchronize their local sites with their WordPress.com-hosted sites and also make a local site live with a WordPress.com hosting plan effortlessly.
- WooCommerce 9.5 released: This release was immediately followed by WooCommerce 9.5.1 which is now the stable version. This version brings new product collections, a new WordPress login connection screen, API update, and more. Also WooCommerce 9.6 beta is now available.
- Multiple critical vulnerabilities patched in WPLMS and VibeBP plugins: Multiple vulnerabilities were fixed and it is advised to update to the latest version of both the plugins immediately.
- WordPress Popular Posts plugin vulnerability affects 100k+ sites: The WordPress Popular Posts plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to arbitrary shortcode execution in all versions up to, and including, 7.1.0. All users are to update to the latest version immediately.
- WordPress backup plugin vulnerability affects 3+ million sites: The UpdraftPlus: WP Backup & Migration Plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to an Unauthenticated PHP Object Injection in all versions up to, and including, 1.24.11. Users are advised to update to the latest version.
- Italy fines OpenAI €15 million for ChatGPT GDPR data privacy violations: Italy’s data protection authority has fined ChatGPT maker OpenAI a fine of €15 million ($15.66 million) over how the generative artificial intelligence application handles personal data.
- Google speculates if SEO ‘is on a dying path’: Google’s latest Search Off the Record podcast discussed whether ‘SEO is on a dying path’ because of AI Search. Their assessment sought to explain that SEO remains unchanged by the introduction of AI Search, revealing a divide between their ‘nothing has changed’ outlook for SEO and the actual experiences of digital marketers and publishers.
- Google revives Tag Assistant: Google reversed its decision to deprecate the popular Chrome extension, Tag Assistant, after significant user feedback. This move consolidates Tag Assistant Legacy and Tag Assistant Companion into a single, more efficient tool.
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- Matt Medeiros has acquired MasterWP: The announcement was made on X.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
As of January 2023, active development on our WP Coupons plugin has been phased out. However, the team will continue to provide support and bug fixes. Also, Brian Jackson has announced that WP Coupon is up for sale.
- WooCommerce collects your sensitive information without asking for consent: Sybre Waaijer on X posted about how WooCommerce collects user data without asking for consent. He noted that it consists of about 1000 data points. The data collected includes a unique identifier, domain name, email address, theme, server information, and more.
- SiNC Expands Grant program to empower WordPress contributors across North and South America: This expansion reinforces SiNC’s commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion within the global WordPress community. By extending eligibility to all of North and South America, SiNC aims to further uplift and empower voices that have historically been underrepresented in tech.
- The WP Community Collective announces formal nonprofit incorporation: The WP Community Collective has been incorporated as a California membership nonprofit for mutual benefit on November 13, 2024.
- Ryan McCue blocked from WordPress.org: Ryan McCue the co-lead on WordPress Rest API has been blocked on WordPress.org and from contributing on Trac as well. His Slack account was disabled earlier, but he was still working on GitHub issues and Trac tickets.
- How to stop your plugins & themes from being used on WordPress.com hosting: Robert DeVore created a script that users can add to their plugins and themes to stop them from being used on WordPress.com hosted websites.
- A new poll on whether you have been blocked by WordPress: Karissa Skirmont on X started this poll after her previous one which was two months ago. The poll has been created using Google Forms and asks questions such as the platform you were blocked, were you blocked/unblocked, and if unblocked whether you are affiliated with WP Engine.
- Barn2 Plugins 2024 year in review & transparency report: In 2024 Barn Plugins generated $1,699,326 total revenue from plugins (18,410 sales) as compared to $1,517,006 in 2023, a 12% increase. They also sold five plugins in 2024 and their total lifetime plugin sales passed 7 million dollars. There are now over 90,000 people using their plugins.
- Wombat Plugins 2024 year in review & transparency report: In 2024 they sold 4,273 new plugin licenses, compared to 3,896 in 2023. That’s a ~10% increase. Their revenue also grew by 29% this year.
- Elementor’s 2024 numbers: Miriam Schwab shared Elementor’s achievements in 2024 and it includes 3 million additional new active installs which increased Elementor’s market share to 11.6% of the web, 8 new versions of web builder, released two new WP plugins: Image Optimizer and Site Mailer, donated to the WordPress Foundation and so on.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
- Robert DeVore released two new plugins: The SEO for WordPress® plugin a modern SEO plugin for managing meta tags, breadcrumbs, and sitemaps and the Delete Inactive Users plugin can be used to delete inactive users based on their role and last login date.
- Duane Storey has created a self-hosted repository: The Not WP Repository is a mostly statically generated site based on Juniper/Server, which is a distributed repository system for WordPress licensed under the GPL.
- Announcing Patchstack API for endless automations: The Patchstack App is now accessible as an API. Every Patchstack Developer account can access the API at no additional cost.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- Ten WordPress predictions for 2025: David McCan shares his ten predictions for WordPress and the ecosystem in 2025. He covers areas such as leadership, AI, forking, and so on.
- Five predictions for B2B Businesses in 2025: The five predictions from MainWP are that building a brand is important, how you communicate with the target audience will be different, the content will be focused on the customers, better insights and interpretation of information is needed this year and people are craving community and authenticity.
- Plugin and theme developers do this now: David McCan talks about the various things that the plugin and theme developers should be doing such as adding a copyright notice, having a copy of your free plugin for download on your own site, and how to develop ways to communicate with free users.
- In conversation with Anna Hurko: Bud Kraus is joined by Anna Hurko, where they discuss her experiences during the war, her current location, and difficulties faced by her family in Ukraine. Anna also explains her involvement in WordPress, mentioning her position as the CEO of Crocoblock and the development of plugins for dynamic websites and more. From, Seriously Bud?
- 2025 WordPress predictions: Matt Medeiros shares his prediction for 2025 as he talks about Automattic, the WordPress community, Playground, AI, and investments. From WP Minute+ Podcast.
- 2024 Annual Spam Report: The United States and China are the largest sources of spam, responsible for 29.68% and 28.32% of spam IPs respectively, totaling nearly 58% of global spam activity. 69% of spam targets websites using WordPress, making it the most spammed CMS due to its widespread popularity. From OOPSpam.
- Namecheap domain insights and trends report: The report reveals that .com is the number one TLD followed by .shop and .xyz. Whereas the .me emerged as the top country-code TLD.
- Cloudflare 2024 year in review: The year in review from Cloudflare reveals interesting data related to internet traffic, adoption and usage, connectivity, security, and email security. As per the post global internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024, Google maintained its position as the most popular Internet service overall, an average of 4.3% of emails were determined to be malicious in 2024, and so on.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- Mastering light and dark mode styling in block themes: From WordPress Developer Blog
- Working with WP CLI for WordPress multisite: From Kinsta
- How to create a personal website: A detailed, step-by-step guide: From WordPress.com
📆 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
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- 50% off for the first 6 months on all monthly standard plans at Kinsta
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- 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 #201 | January 7, 2025 | Reading time: 18 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend, InMotion Hosting and WP Job Openings
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