#204 - Festinger Vault Settles Dispute With Automattic, GoDaddy Donates $520,000 To The WP Community Collective

Issue #204 | January 28, 2025 | Reading time: 15 mins

Hello!

Today we cover the release of DeepSeek – R1, settlement of Festinger Vault-Automattic dispute, new projects and acquisitions.

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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🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

Festinger Vault has settled their dispute with Automattic regarding trademarks

They have made significant updates to their platform, including removing all WOO and WordPress trademarks and WordPress/WooCommerce themes and plugins originating from Automattic. Festinger Vault will begin reopening step by step this week. One of the most exciting updates is the introduction of our brand-new Festinger Vault plugin with white-label functionality.

📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

WordPress 6.7.2 release planning

WordPress 6.7.2 is scheduled to be the next maintenance release for the 6.7 version and is expected on February 11, 2025.

WordPress Photo Directory: 20K Photos and growing: Thanks to the efforts of dedicated contributors from around the world, the WordPress Photo Directory has now surpassed 20,000 photos, marking an exciting milestone in its growth. All the submitted photos are CC0-licensed.
An update to WordPress.com’s interface: The new interface has transitioned from the Calypso interface to the standard wp-admin WordPress interface.
WooCommerce 9.7: Pre-release updates: WooCommerce 9.7 release, scheduled for February 24, 2025, will bring new changes such as a new React-based Payments settings interface, improved shipping method display, improved block editor performance, and much more.
Developer advisory: pnpm version bump: WooCommerce recently updated the pnpm version from 9.1.3 to 9.15.0. Developers will need to update pnpm in their environments to build WooCommerce.
Beau Lebens stepping into the role of Woo Artistic Director: After a three-month interim period last year, Beau Lebens will lead Woo permanently, as Artistic Director.
Matt Mullenweg hires new lawyers in fight against WP Engine: Automattic and Matt Mullenweg have added new representation, a lawyer who has previously represented Meta and Facebook – Rosemarie T. Ring. The new representation is currently handling the response to a Motion to Intervene filed by Michael Willman.
Unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability in RH – Real Estate Theme: An unauthenticated privilege escalation vulnerability that could have allowed any unauthenticated user to increase their privileges and take over the WordPress site by performing a series of HTTP requests has been patched. All users are to update the latest version immediately.
W3 Total Cache plugin flaw exposes 1 million WordPress sites to attacks: A severe flaw in the W3 Total Cache plugin installed on more than one million WordPress sites could give attackers access to various information, including metadata on cloud-based apps.
Gravatar gets a fresh look: The latest update has some fun new editing tools that let you remove backgrounds, add new ones, and decorate with stickers.
OpenAI launches Operator: OpenAI introduced Operator⁠, an AI agent that can do web tasks for you. It is currently a research preview. The Operator can access web pages using its own browser and interact with the web pages via scrolling, typing, and clicking.
Announcing The Stargate Project: The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States.
cURL Project and Go Security Teams reject CVSS as broken: cURL and Go security teams are publicly rejecting CVSS as flawed for assessing vulnerabilities and are calling for more accurate, context-aware approaches.
Google drops breadcrumbs from mobile search results: Google removes breadcrumbs from mobile search results, simplifying URLs to show only domains while keeping breadcrumbs on desktop.
Google Ads introduces advanced targeting for Performance Max: Google Ads updates Performance Max with advanced controls, improved reporting, and smarter targeting to optimize campaign performance.
Google Analytics 4 rolls out cross-property report copying: Google Analytics 4 now allows copying custom detail reports and explorations across properties, streamlining configuration management and freeing up more time for data analysis.
DeepSeek is breaking the internet: A Chinese startup called DeepSeek released R1, an open source artificial intelligence model that’s sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and beyond. R1 is reportedly able to match OpenAI o1’s abilities in math, coding and reasoning, but at between 90 and 95% less of the cost.

💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt acquire Post Status: Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt of Emilia Capital have announced that they have acquired Post Status from Cory and Lindsey Miller. The acquisition includes the brand, the Slack community, the website, and all related assets, which have now been transferred to a foundation in the Netherlands, aptly named Post Status Foundation, transforming the platform into a non-profit.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

GoDaddy donates $500K to support WordPress community

GoDaddy has donated $520,000 to the WP Community which was recently incorporated as a California membership nonprofit for mutual benefit. Besides this, they have also donated $12,000 to PHP Coding Standards, $24,000 to the PHP Foundation, $40,000 to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and is continuing their contributions towards WP Accessibility Meetup and Five for the Future.

The State of Enterprise WordPress Survey 2024: The survey saw the participation of 100 organizations like Amnesty International and The Times to Princeton University and the University of Liverpool. One of the clearest takeaways from the 2024 survey is that enterprises chose WordPress for the same set of key features. 96% of respondents cited extensibility as a top priority, while more than 9 in 10 enterprises highlighted functionality as a standout factor.
2024 Annual Spam Report published:The United States and China are the largest sources of spam. 69% of spam targets websites using WordPress, making it the most spammed CMS due to its widespread popularity.
Mary Hubbard and Matías Ventura to speak at PressConf: Mary Hubbard is the Executive Director of WordPress and Matías Ventura, the Lead Architect for the Gutenberg Project will be at the PressConf event to share their expertise.
Gutenberg 20.1 takes Full Site Editing inside the block editor: Brian Gardner on X noted above this development in Gutenberg 20.1. As a result of this pages display the header and footer.
ACF and ACF PRO 6.3.12 are now available: This release includes bug fixes when using ACF in the block editor, as well as clarifying error messages when a security nonce causes validation to failed.
WS Forms 1.10 released: The latest release introduces a new form styler called WS Form Styler which offers a no-code interface to adjust over 400 design elements. Other changes include accessibility and performance improvements and more.
The WPML 4.7 Release Candidate is now available: WPML 4.7 introduces a new translation dashboard, updates to the Advanced Translation Editor, and the production version is set to introduce Glossary Retranslation.
James LePage shared demo of building an eCommerce website with his voice and AI: Amazing right?
Rich Tabor is looking for ideas to make the Block Editor’s welcome guide better: Share your ideas soon.
Lex Fridman may do a podcast with Matt Mullenweg: If you have questions/topic suggestions, please share.

🚀 NEW PROJECTS

Cloudways Copilot launched: The Cloudways Copilot has been launched in public preview and the initial feature set comprise of AI-powered insights. The AI insights monitor the website 24/7, automatically detecting issues and diagnosis along with recommendation on how to solve the problem. The other features set to arrive soon are “ Automated Developer Workflows” and “Automated Resolution”.
Wordfence expands its Bug Bounty Program with a new “Refer-A-Researcher” Program: This initiative is designed to reward top security researchers for bringing new talent into the exciting world of security research.
Robert DeVore released Plugin Pal and Deep Blue: Plugin Pal is an AI-powered WordPress® Plugin Generator while Deep Blue automates Bluesky Posting with AI.
Desktop app for reading your WP debug.log from Jonathan Bossenger: Built with Electron and React, it monitors WordPress debug logs in real-time. Its code is all AI-generated.
Daan van den Bergh released WP-CLI Strip Database Dump: It is a tiny plugin, which adds shorthands to WP-CLI which allows you to easily create database dumps and exclude sensitive data.
Johnathon Williams released QuickLink Pro plugin: An intelligent link management solution designed specifically for the block editor.
Retraceur, a WordPress fork from former BuddyBoss lead, Mathieu Viet: The fork is now available and it includes changes such as Gravatar is replaced by Libravatar, WP Emojis were replaced by OpenMojis, all references to the WordPress® trademark were replaced by the “WP” or “Retraceur” terms or removed and so on.
Introducing Minnow Transmuter: A new project from Austin Ginder, Minnow Transmuter can be used to transmute code from WordPress into something new.
All new StellarPay plugin from StellarWP: A new plugin that allows users to connect WooCommerce to Stripe.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

Tips and tools for managing your freelance WordPress business: Eric Karkovack shares advice for wrangling various aspects of business and workflow. This includes how to streamline the business side, tracking finances, use of AI and more. From The WP Minute.
The current state of block themes and a reassessment: David McCan explores the current state of WordPress block themes where he looks at the most popular ones, the current stats, the theme.josn file and more.
A call for better naming conventions in page builders: Kevin Geary highlights how poor naming by page builders creates a bad user experience. He shares how this influenced naming conventions for Etch, a next-gen visual development environment for WordPress, and suggests clearer alternatives to confusing terms.
Supporting Open Source, contributors, and WordPress: GoDaddy shares their contributions to WordPress and open-source platforms like OpenJS Foundation, PHP Coding Standards, PHP Foundation etc. GoDaddy has openings in India now.
Top WordPress conferences and events to follow in 2025: CloudFest has spared you hours of researching for events to attend this year.
I built an app with AI, now I’m scared for WordPress: Matt Medeiros shared his journey of embracing AI coding and how it’s transforming WordPress and the broader tech landscape. Mullenweg replied, “Now go back and watch my 2023 SoTW. ☺️ I told you this was coming.”
Reflections on Gutenberg Times and Do the Woo with Birgit and BobWP: In this episode of On WPCommunity, BobWP talks with Birgit Pauli-Haack, a well-known figure in the WordPress community and editor of The Gutenberg Times. They reminisce about their combined 14 years in WordPress, discuss the evolution and future of Gutenberg, and share personal anecdotes about their podcasting journeys. From Doo the Woo.
Tammie Lister on modern theme development and artistic exploration: In this episode of WP Tavern Jukebox, host Nathan Wrigley is joined by Tammie Lister. They discuss the shift from classic themes to Full Site Editing and theme.json, her personal artistic endeavors, and so on.

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

One hook to rule them all: The many faces of block categories: From WordPress Developer Blog
How to add a favicon to your WordPress site: From Jetpack
A MailPoet engineer sets up the WooCommerce monorepo: From WooCommerce
Revolutionize your WordPress development with Cursor AI: From WordPress.com
Demo your Woo extension with WordPress Playground: From Woo Developer Blog

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

WordCamp Pune on 2nd February: Tickets are 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

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