Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress by Bob Moesta — I want to be a part of businesses that are transformational, not merely transactional. One concept I appreciated from the book is focusing on the customer’s “struggling moment” and nailing the outcome they seek.
The Practiceby Seth Godin — I listened to this on audiobook and it’s very inspirational as only Seth Godin can do, in the realm of Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work, which I gave to my team.
Enjoy! And be sure to share your great reads in #booknook.
In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David Bisset talks with Jon Christopherabout his sale of SearchWP to Awesome Motive. The two talk about what motivated Jon — the sole developer (and marketer) of SearchWP — to part with his plugin. David also asks Jon about his view of search as it exists today in WordPress Core, what he might like to see in search going forward, and what his future plans are.
Also covered in this episode: Jon shares some advice for plugin developers who want to monetize their products and plugins, even if those plugins aren't well-known.
Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡
The second release candidate for WordPress 5.8is available now. It’s still slated for release on July 20, 2021. 🥳
For a more detailed breakdown of the changes included in this release, look at the WordPress 5.8 Field Guide, especially if you are a developer. It’s a great summary with links to all the in-depth details in case you missed something at Make WordPress.
Carlos Daniele has summarized the theme features in WordPress 5.8, including the new widget screens are enabled for classic themes. She notes that in WordPress 5.8, you can only activate block themes with Gutenberg installed. Block themes no longer need to check if Gutenberg is active.
It also looks like WordPress 5.8 will include the latest version of Twemoji, Twitter’s open source emoji library. Version 13.1.0 has a variety of new and updated emojis.
Naoko Takanoprovides a status on translations and reminds volunteers to make some Block Patterns available in their locale by translating them.
Riad Benguellashows how theme authors can use theme.json, in addition to the global styles and settings capabilities, to opt-in into the layout feature for block containers in WordPress 5.8.
A variety of things added some overhead for theme developers. Between traditional CSS styles to support aligning content, new alignments in blocks starting in WordPress 5.0, and users potentially able to change how their inner blocks are positioned and aligned.
“Taking all these variations into consideration has become a very difficult task for theme authors….The block-editor will automatically read this config and provide the corresponding styles in the editor.”
Gutenberg 11.0.0is out — and with efforts focused on the release of WordPress 5.8, this is mostly a “backports and bug fixes” release. David Smith however notes two new features: editing overlay for template parts and reusable blocks as well as support for CSS shorthand properties in theme.json and block attributes. 🐞
What caught my eye was the first section on improving the settings experience. There were “feature requests for additional options for different blocks, desire for more control over spacing… general confusion around why certain settings exist in one place and not another.”
Anne stresses these results are a “snapshot in time” since many things in Gutenberg and FSE are changing constantly, some items have yet to be tested, and some items have already been addressed in some form.
Jon Quachhas created an “experimental” themes.json generator. It lets you set custom colors, add custom color presets, spacing, and typography settings. Useful for theme developers using WordPress 5.8 and beyond. 🎨
Congrats to Helen Hou-Sandi for a decade of contributing to WordPress! Helen tells the story of her first committed patch to WordPress regarding stars in the plugin install screen. Not long after that, she joined 10up.
In retrospect, Helen says, she was “fortunate to be a part of and grow with the WordPress community in the decade since” her early involvement.
Syed Balkhiannounced this week that Awesome Motive is buying SearchWP from Jon Christopher for an undisclosed sum. SearchWP debuted in 2013 and has at least 30,000 active installs making it the most used WordPress search plugin on the market. 🔍
Jonexplains that as a solo developer there were constraints on taking it to the next level:
“I realized that SearchWP may have in fact outgrown my Company of One.”
There were never other companies or offers to consider or explore; Jon describes Awesome Motive as a “good fit.”
Jon is exploring what comes next:
“I really like building things from scratch and seeing what resonates with the world.”
As for the plugin, Syed notes that “aside from the new ownership change, it’s business as usual” and although Jon won’t be following to join the company the rest of the SearchWP team (likely mostly support) will. “We have added more team members from Awesome Motive that will be working on the SearchWP project (including myself).”
I feel the story here is similar, but not exact, to the recent acquisition of Advanced Custom Fields. One developer wanting to hand a popular WordPress plugin over to a team who would take care of it and continue it’s growth. For the same reasons I thought ACF being sold to Delicious Brains was a good idea, I think Awesome Motive’s ownership of SearchWP means more stable growth and not relying on one single person for development and marketing.
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In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David Bisset talks with Syed Balkhiabout the acquisition of SearchWP by Awesome Motive. We get a little behind-the-scenes information ahout how this deal came to be. Syed shares his thoughts on how SearchWP fits in with Awesome Motive's brand and vision of providing support to small businesses.
Also covered in this episode: Syed talks about “plugin developers and entrepreneurs being true” to their mission when it comes to growing and monetizing their products and plugins.
Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡
An online conference that's 100% focused on helping you make monthly recurring revenue work for your WordPress business. Hosted by Joe Howard and Brian Richards. Register here.
Thrills and chills return as the local communities in the North Valleys of Los Angeles Counties gather to celebrate all things WordPress from July 17-18. Each year highlights something special about Santa Clarita, and this year it’s amusement park history at Magic Mountain – come along for the ride! 🎢 Register here.
Convenes for two days, August 11-12. 🇧🇷 Register here.
He explains how block plugins “will change the landscape of WordPress editing as we know it today” even if their emergence now seems slow:
“The Block Directory is relatively new — about a year old now — but I’m bummed we haven’t seen higher enthusiasm for block plugins or the Block Directory… I am positive that block plugins will have an impactful role of empowering WordPress users in the future.”
I feel the Block Directory might have opportunities worth considering, but I haven’t used it enough to have an opinion beyond that.
StudioPress this week made some pre-announced changes: ProPlus customers will get access to Genesis Blocks Pro and Genesis Custom Blocks Pro for free while the Genesis Framework and the Sample Theme will also be available for free. 🆓
However, StudioPress made themes will no longer be sold individually. Additionally, “in order to prepare for Full Site Editing themes in WordPres,s” all themes outside of the “top 10” StudioPress made themes will be archived.
Eric Karkovack has an enjoyable interview with Taylor Arndt. Taylor is an accessibility consultant and also blind, “which provides her with a first-person perspective on the challenges of using a typical website.” 🦮
Taylor notes that developers often miss header structure:
“I see lots of times where headings are used as a visual formatting indicator, rather than the real use of a section indicator for a new block of content.”
WP Engine has published a recap of the Speak Up! Black Speakers in WordPress Workshop, which concluded last month. 🙋🏾
“Before I took the workshop, I was unable to identify other African-American/Black speakers in various areas of WordPress (Development, Design, Marketing, etc)” said Joe A. Simpson Jr. “Thanks to this workshop, I was able to make connections and encourage the next wave of storytellers of our Open Source Project and its Community.”
We need more events like this, and based on the feedback from the latest Post Status Survey, many of you think so too.
Andrea Middletonreports the WordPress community team is “removing the barrier to organizing in-person meetup events for fully-vaccinated people, in places where vaccines are freely available.” 💉
The WordPress community team is not expecting or requiring local organizers to organize in-person events for fully-vaccinated people. Andrea simply states that “we’re removing the barrier to doing so.”
Her post lists the conditions for holding an in-person meetup.
Jack Domleo has a set of useful global CSS defaults (with commented explanations) that you can consider adding to your site alongside a reset stylesheet.
🙌 Luca Tumedei, a freelance WordPress and PHP developer, has received a nomination for the Yoast Care fund from Scott Kingsley Clark:
“Luca has been a core contributor, plugin developer, WordCamp organizer and speaker, and a huge help to many people who need automated testing for WordPress-related projects. He’s changed how I write tests for the better, and there’s a ton of awesome work.”
“At the moment, it’s frustrating as a user that upon switching to a theme that overwrites the default color palette you lose access to the rainbow-color set that comes with core.”
Rich proposes a solution that would separate the core palette from the theme palette while making the default palette user-customizable. Also:
“Colors picked locally could automatically become part of the custom user palette so that the next time they want to pick the same color it’s present there. A user should be able to remove a custom color at any time…”
Castos is a WordPress-powered podcast hosting provider with roots in the open-source community through their Seriously Simple Podcasting plugin for WordPress. They recently announced a $756K pre-seed funding round from a number of companies, including Automattic and Yoast SEO.
Cory Miller sat down with Castos CEO Craig Hewitt to talk about this move and how Castos is eager to expand its services in the private podcasting market.
Here are some of the highlights from their conversation:
Craig started Podcast Motor in January 2016 as a side gig while working a sales and marketing job. He used his driving time to listen to podcasts. Podcast Motor still exists as a productized service now called Castos Productions.
Craig started Castos in May 2018.
Fellow Post Status member Brad Touesnard told Craig that Seriously Simple Podcasting was available for adoption or acquisition.
50% of Castos’ current customers are WordPress users, and the rest use something else or might not even have websites.
The current round of funding they raised has around 12 investors, two of which are Automattic and Yoast.
They hit $1M ARR in February 2021.
Craig believes the future of podcasting (and Castos) is Internal Podcasts.
Craig credits being a part of Tiny Seed led by Rob Walling as a key to his success and future.
Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. ⚡
☀️ Employers: Get your job opening in front of many of the best and brightest members of the WordPress community. List your job opening with Post Status today. (Get a 20% discount as a Post Status Club Member!) »
Jetpack 9.9 has been released with a revamped image carousel and improved compatibility with WordPress 5.8. 🎠
🔌 If you work with translations, Pedro Mendonça has two plugins for you:
Preferred Languages allows users to choose multiple languages for WordPress. This is helpful to create a “fallback chain” if you don’t want English to be the preferred backup language.
Translation Tools allows you to easily change the language of your WordPress install, and it works with Preferred Languages. In a recent announcement, Pedro Mendonça at Jot explains how Translation Tools will work with WordPress 5.8.
WP Rocket recently pointed to an updated section on their blog sharing approaches of how to remove or reduce unused CSS. 🚀
One tip: If you are choosing a WordPress theme, look for one that’s as lightweight and lean as possible while prioritizing themes and plugins with modular CSS inclusion.
If you are interested in Core Web Vitals, WP Rocket has an informative page about that as well.
If you have ever needed a complete guide for Apple displays — including all phones and watches — check out screensizes.app. It covers everything from resolution sizes to “safe area” measurements to display types. 📱
Glassmorphism is a new design trend being used by big brands. If you find yourself needing to whip up a “card design” based on it, then this free CSS generator might help you quickly design and customize something enough to get started. 🎨
If you run an online store and are thinking about offering pre-orders, read Kathryn Marr explaining the benefits and the risks. 🛒
Some good tips: create a landing page just for your pre-orders, build awareness ahead of time, and reach out to the people who ordered your products to request reviews.
Justin Tadlockhas put together a helper class for working with Laravel Mix in WordPress themes and plugins.
Video Picks
📺 Here are my video picks:
Getting started translating WordPress, themes, and plugins into different languages: Tor-Bjorn Fjellne and Theodoros Gkitsos show how you can get started translating WordPress, themes, and plugins into different languages.
The Anatomy of a WooCommerce Template: Zac Stepekwalks us through a simple WooCommerce theme, breaks down the anatomy of a template, and shows some simple ways t0 modify how data is displayed using action and filter hooks. ↪️
Podcast Picks
🎙️ Here are my podcast picks:
WPMRR Podcast: Joe Howard talks with Artur Grabowski about the technical and business sides of Extendify, his opinions on Gutenberg, and how his product beta is aimed at introducing customers to block-based editing.
Delicious Brainwaves: Brad Touesnard and Iain Poulson chat about Delicious Brains' recent acquisition of Advanced Custom Fields taking a deep dive into the details of this deal.
