Issue #203 | January 21, 2025 | Reading time: 16 mins
Hello!
Today we cover Michael Willman, CEO of Redev filing a motion to intervene in the WP Engine lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg, GoDaddy faces action from the FTC 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 Kinsta, Omnisend, and InMotion Hosting
🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN
Michael Willman, CEO of Redev and moderator of the r/WPDrama subreddit, has filed a Motion to Intervene in the WP Engine lawsuit against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg. Willman claims the feud between Automattic and WP Engine, exacerbated by Mullenweg’s actions, has caused him significant harm, including financial loss, panic attacks, depressive episodes, and damages to his reputation.
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
In response to WooCommerce developer Rodolfo Melogli’s open letter to Matt Mullenweg on X, Mullenweg expressed concerns about the ongoing legal battles. He stated, “The lawsuits will go years and could potentially bankrupt me or force the closure of WordPress.org. It also takes a huge amount of time — there is no “lawyers work on that”.
- The founding documents of the WordPress Foundation: An X user “sneakytits85” recently drew attention to the founding documents of the WordPress Foundation and he highlighted that, “when the foundation was created, Mullenweg said the repo (the part of .org that matters here) was and is to be controlled by the foundation.”
- Design plans for WordPress 6.8: The focus will be on polish and fix, clearing ‘needs design feedback‘ issues.
- 2025 Community Team Reps announced: The three new reps are Aditya Kane, Pooja Derashri, and Kasirye Arthur. Shusei Toda will continue into his second year as a team rep along with them.
- Drupal CMS 1.0 Launched: Possible alternative amid WordPress’ ongoing turmoil: With the recent turmoil in the WordPress ecosystem, including legal battles and community unrest, many users are seeking alternatives. Enter Drupal CMS 1.0, launched on January 15, 2025, to celebrate Drupal’s 24th anniversary, may offer a compelling option for migration.
- WooCommerce 9.6 released: The latest version is here and some of the changes are a merged Brands Plugin into the core, improvements to the product summary block, several API updates, and more.
- Developer advisory: Coming soon mode by default: In WooCommerce 9.6, the team is changing the default behavior for fresh installations to ensure new stores start in “Coming Soon” mode. The team has also published another developer advisory for the Product review form template version update, as from WooCommerce 9.6, the single-product-reviews.php template markup has been updated to include an autocomplete attribute. Another developer advisory Block Checkout field entities has also been published.
- Order DataStore Caching — A new approach to optimize WooCommerce performance: WooCommerce 9.6 will introduce a new feature, gated option to enable caching of raw order data within the HPOS data store layer. They have also introduced a new filter that allows cart item images to be modified in the Cart and Checkout blocks. The filter works by modifying the result of the Store API request. The new hook is named woocommerce_store_api_cart_item_images.
- FTC orders GoDaddy to fix poor web hosting security practices: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will require web hosting giant GoDaddy to implement basic security protections, including HTTPS APIs and mandatory multi-factor authentication, to settle charges that it failed to secure its hosting services against attacks since 2018.
- Improving Fediverse engagement with the reactions block: With the Reactions Block, likes and reposts from Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms are automatically added to the end of your posts.
- Gravatar is giving away free custom domains: Gravatar users can grab custom domains for free and use them anywhere. The custom domain can even be used as the Bluesky username. The custom domains are free for one year.
- WordPress skimmers evade detection by injecting themselves into database tables: Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a new stealthy credit card skimmer campaign that targets WordPress e-commerce checkout pages by inserting malicious JavaScript code into a database table associated with the content management system (CMS).
- Google retires Web Vitals extension, moves everything to DevTools: Google has officially shut down its Web Vitals Chrome extension with the release of Chrome 132. All its key features are now fully integrated into DevTools’ Performance panel, making it the go-to tool for measuring Core Web Vitals.
- Google Ads phishing scams target ad buyers: Phishing scams targeting Google Ads accounts are draining ad budgets, disrupting campaigns, and exposing advertisers to reputational risks.
- Google causes Global SEO tool outages: Google is blocking search result scraping, causing global outages at rank and keyword tracking services.
- Google is requiring JavaScript to block SEO tools: Google Search confirms it’s requiring JavaScript to block bots and scrapers, like SEO Tools.
- Google rejects EU’s call for fact-checking in Search & YouTube: Google has reportedly told the EU it won’t add fact-checking to search results or YouTube videos, nor will it use fact-checks to influence rankings or remove content. This decision defies new EU rules aimed at tackling disinformation.
- .AI domain migrated to a more secure platform: The .AI domain successfully migrated to the Identity Digital domain name registrar, giving it greater reliability and security.
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- group.one has acquired GTmetrix: GTmetrix, a globally trusted authority in website performance testing and monitoring has been acquired by group.one.
- DeoThemes is open to acquisition: Aleksandr Samokhin announced it via X and the acquisition of DeoThemes will provide access to source code, brand assets, domain, and social accounts.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
WordCamp Asia 2025, set to take place from February 20-22, 2025 in Manila has announced its scholarship recipients. The two scholarships, the Kim Parsell Scholarship and the Diversity Fund Scholarship will support the recipients financially by covering the travel and accommodation expenses along with event tickets.
The recipients of the Kim Parsell Scholarship are Zeel Thakkar and Pooja Derashri and the recipients of the Diversity Scholarship are Makarand G. Mane and Astha Jain.
- “Start using WordPress pathway” is now complete: All three courses have been published and target beginner, intermediate, and advanced WordPress users.
- The WhiteHouse.gov website is powered by WordPress: Matt Mullenweg announced this via X and the website is hosted on WordPress VIP.
- Ryan Duff on Jetpack and data collection: Ryan Duff criticizes the role of Jetpack in data collection and refers to an earlier scenario where Matt Mullenweg reportedly rejected Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s proposal to adopt an opt-in telemetry feature in WordPress core that collects anonymized data on feature and functionality use.
- Kevin Geary on how you cannot sort child posts by publish date: He notes that when the date filter is used, the child hierarchy is removed thereby making it impossible to distinguish between parent and child posts. Several community members expressed their opinions on it and even Matt Mullenweg commented, “Patches welcome!”.
- Kevin Geary’s three-point list to fix three big issues in WordPress: The three issues that he has identified are the dependence on plugins, the block editor experiment that had too much investment in terms of both time and money, and finally the design aspect. Now to resolve this he suggests including basic SEO controls, custom tables, and more, unifying WP UI/UX, and developing a single, standard, design-agnostic, official block theme on a unified framework.
- Signing WordPress packages and updates: Kaspars Dambis’s guide to WordPress package signing where he discusses the current state and the proposed distributed workflow.
- CMS usage distribution in United States: Squarespace leads the chart with 18.21%, followed by WordPress (15.45%) and GoDaddy Website Builder (10.84%).
- Human Made has been recognized as a Living Wage Employer: Human Made has announced that they have been officially accredited as a Living Wage Employer. The official recognition comes now, though they have met the criteria for an extended period.
- Top accessibility issues found in 2024: Equalize Digital’s 2024 audit report revealed around 255 unique accessibility problems with the most common issues being color contrast being insufficient, color contrast insufficient in ui component, and status message not announced.
- Elementor web.fwrd 2025: Elementor has unveiled several new offerings with the first-ever web.fwrd 2025 event such as a new AI Site Planner, Send(marketing platform built for WooCommerce), Editor V4 (an update to its existing editor), improvements to Elementor hosting and more.
- Trying out the brand new Drupal CMS 1.0: Maciek Palmowski tries out the newly launched Drupal CMS and provides a brief comparison to the experience of using WordPress.
- Celebrating seven years of the Do the Woo podcast: BobWP celebrates the seven-year anniversary of the podcast, reflecting on its journey and evolution. Joined by hosts Abha Thakor, Anne Bovelett, Brad Williams, Dave Lockie, Emma Young, Marcus Burnette, Robert Jacobi, and Zach Stepek, they discuss their experiences, challenges faced in podcasting, and the growth of the WooCommerce community.
- The disbanding of the WordPress Sustainability Team: Chris Lewis, Managing Director at Wholegrain Digital, expressed his views on Matt’s dissolving of the WordPress Sustainability Team.
- Moses Cursor Ssebunya receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community: Moses Cursor Ssebunya, a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.
🚀 NEW PROJECTS
- A new plugin from James Welbes to search and install WordPress plugins hosted on GitHub: The Repo plugin is now available and James Welbes is looking for interested people who can contribute to this plugin as it needs a couple of improvements.
- Broken Image Scanner plugin from Robert DeVore: The plugin helps you identify broken image URLs across all public content types on your WordPress® site. He is also offering Security Audits for WordPress®.
- Meet Agency, a brand new pattern collection for Ollie Pro: The Agency collection offers a bold and modern pattern collection suitable for startups, agencies, and creative professionals.
- GreenGeeks AI website builder: The AI builder can help users create a WordPress website in under a minute.
- Ben Townsend launched a new YouTube channel: The new channel, “eCom With Ben” will focus on WooCommerce, with plans to diversify into other platforms.
- Introducing PublishPress podcast: Steve Burge has launched the PublishPress podcast and the episodes are now available.
- All new “The Nice Show”: Nathan Wrigley and Mark Westguard will lead this new show at WP Builds.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- The blurred line between open-source contribution and ownership: Eric Karkovack discusses the ownership aspect in open-source projects based on the recent WordPress drama.
- When to customize a WordPress plugin or start from scratch: Eric Karkovack goes over various considerations when choosing between a custom solution or extending an existing plugin. From The WP Minute.
- Best practices for WordPress themes in 2025: Mike Davey lists out the best practices when it comes to UI, design, code, development, and deployment. From Delicious Brains.
- The structure of the WordPress community: This article offers an insight into the WordPress community’s structure, focusing on the key platforms, organizations, and individuals that influence the ecosystem platforms. From Hendrik Luehrsen.
- Automattic cuts weekly contributor hours to WordPress.org by 99% – Community members fear ‘beginning of the end’: Martin Dubovic discusses the four possible implications of Automattic’s reduction to contributor hours. It can affect documentation and knowledge infrastructure, security and development concerns, potential WordPress.com/WordPress.org split, and challenges in community governance. From WPShout.
- How to tell if a WordPress plugin can be trusted: Remkus de Vries provides a comprehensive guide to evaluating the trustworthiness of WordPress plugins, emphasizing the importance of careful selection to avoid security risks and performance issues.
- In conversation with Leonardus Nugraha: Bud Kraus is joined by Leonardus Nugraha, where they discuss Leo’s his journey with Hostinger and his work with WordPress, and a few aspects of his personal life.
From, Seriously Bud? - Relatively new things you should know about HTML heading into 2025: A look at the notable developments with regard to HTML. From Frontend Masters.
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- AI Services: Playground walkthrough: From Felix Arntz
- Pull WordPress from prod to local with WP-CLI Bash Script: From Brian Coords
- How to build a Gutenberg plugin to add functionality to the block editor: From Kinsta
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- 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)
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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 👇
With the recent turmoil in the WordPress ecosystem, including legal battles and community unrest, many users are seeking…
Michael Willman, CEO of Redev and moderator of the r/WPDrama subreddit, has filed a Motion to Intervene in…
In response to WooCommerce developer Rodolfo Melogli’s open letter to Matt Mullenweg on X, Mullenweg expressed concerns about…
WordCamp Asia 2025, set to take place from February 20-22, 2025 in Manila has announced its scholarship recipients….
Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #203 | January 21, 2025 | Reading time: 16 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Kinsta, Omnisend, and InMotion Hosting
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