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Issue #466
Cory sends his best from CaboPress.
Howdy!
With Cory away at CaboPress and WCUS taking up a lot of our attention, this newsletter is coming to you a little bit late. And if you're surprised to see it at all, you may be one of the people who subscribed through a form that apparently was not talking to Mailchimp for some time in the past. Sorry about that! (If you don't want to be subscribed anymore, click the unsubscribe link in the footer below.)
As we're still iterating and working out the kinks in our home page makeover (along with many other new things here and there) at poststatus.com, a quieter news week has been welcome. We always appreciate your feedback but could especially use it now. (You can always just reply to this email.)
For our first Member Spotlight, we have David Smith of GravityWiz. Check out David's profile, and learn how he got from Rocket Genius to Wizard with the most magical shop for Gravity Forms add-ons in the world. 🧙🏻♂️
Michelle Frechette — who is interviewing Josepha Haden Chomphosy just now at WCUS — has some tips for you about Networking at an Online Conference. Yes, it can be done... even done well, not awkwardly! If this is something you've struggled with, why not give it a shot?
Have a great weekend!
— The Post Status Team
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Courtney Robertson will be providing weekly updates on the Post Status site each Wednesday about the latest planning and changes made at wp.org. Consider it your weekly Make WordPress briefing.
A lot of changes are coming, especially at Learn WordPress — and your input is very much needed and wanted. 📣
Here’s what happened this week. 🆕
Juliette Reinders Folmer notes upcoming changes to the WordPress Core PHP test suite — which uses the industry standard PHPUnit tool to run the PHP unit tests.
Juliette explains why these changes were needed. The proposed solution means the test suite would “run on all PHPUnit versions between PHPUnit 5.7.21 up to the latest release… which allows for running the test suite against all supported PHP versions using the most appropriate PHPUnit version for that PHP version.” 🧪
Ari Stathopoulos discusses a possible Webfonts API (including variable fonts) that might be coming in WordPress 5.9. There’s a significant need for this, thanks to Gutenberg. As Ari explains:
“With the recent advancements in Gutenberg, global-styles, and an effort to consolidate options and UIs in the site-editor, a Webfonts API is becoming a necessity as it will allow theme developers to define fonts in their theme.json files.”
Happy 10th anniversary to WooCommerce, which launched its first version on September 27, 2011. 🎂
WooCommerce CEO Paul Maiorana shared some highlights from WooCommerce history: 16 months after launch, the plugin had 500,000 downloads. 137 days after that, the total was 1 million. By year 5 it was acquired by Automattic. Today WooCommerce has reached 150 million+ downloads, has more than 730 official extensions and themes, 300+ team members, and it’s been translated for 66 different locales.
WooCommerce was not started from scratch — it was a fork of Jigoshop. I was about to write up a post going down memory lane, but Sarah Gooding saved me some time there — although maybe next time WordPress’s anniversary is celebrated, perhaps b2 should be mentioned in the title too. Some called the Jigoshop fork an ugly one, while others noticed it was controversial only briefly. A few thought it was even humorous.
In the end, this does prove, just like WordPress itself, that forks of GPL codebases can be successful.
— David
Version 4.2 of the Akismet plugin is available. It improves compatibility with the most popular contact form plugins, which should lead to improved spam-filtering accuracy. It also links API usage notifications to additional information and reduces the number of network requests Akismet requires on a comment page. 💬
I’m pointing to a good discussion in Post Status Slack this week about the issue brought up by Pippin Williamson in his interview with Cory Miller: are the different WordPress experiences across different managed hosts a threat to WordPress — the project, platform, and community?
If you’re a Post Status member, you should join our Slack and check this out — and say hello! 👋
—David
If you’d like to get a glimpse of the inner workings of Awesome Motive, Alex Denning has written what he thinks is lengthy “playbook” that examines how the company has built and maintains its “marketing machine.”
Alex released this playbook in the wake of the news that Awesome Motive had acquired Sandhills Development, with the caveat: “I have not verified any of this and have no privileged information; this is all based on public data and is in good faith.”
I think Alex’s observations are accurate in the main — some business decisions he mentions here in context are very smart (or scary depending on where you stand) — and that isn’t going to stop in a competitive marketplace. I have a feeling that the Sandhills acquisition is a turning point for Awesome Motive — and to a lesser degree, the whole WordPress ecosystem. But more importantly than anything that’s been lost, are the new opportunities emerging — according to Alex.
I tend to agree, but it’s not going to be easy to seize those opportunities. As Alex says:
“The barriers to entry in WordPress remain low enough that a new product can disrupt a category within a year. That’s going to keep competition healthy. But – if AM have entire search terms completely sewn up, those barriers to entry become harder to climb.”
— David
After a Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Post Status, Justin Ferriman was inspired to write a post that when into a bit more detail about his decision to sell LearnDash. (We hope to have a summary of it in a few days.) Justin writes:
“I came to realize a few things which ultimately led me to sell: I was not passionate about WordPress or e-learning anymore; managing the business burnt me out, and I was feeling guilty about my lack of passion.”
I appreciate how Justin explains why simply promoting someone internally or finding a replacement and staying independent wasn’t an option in his mind:
“LearnDash wasn’t living up to its full potential. It needed fresh ideas. It needed a new energy, and I couldn’t bring it. A sale would infuse the company with exactly what it needed while taking care of both employees and customers.”
I’m glad Post Status can create spaces — and not just on Twitter — to allow founders to open up like this. And I’m glad some of them are able to be so open and generous with the experiences they share. I know it will help other aspiring entrepreneurs.
—David
Bertha.ai claims to be “the world’s first fully-integrated AI writing assistant for WordPress” and a way to create content for your site. There’s a video here showing off a demo with co-founder Vito Peleg.
Ashley Rich dives into encryption with PHP — including types such as hashing, secret key, and Envelope Encryption. Ashley also explains what kind of encryption to use in WordPress plugins, with this warning:
“The reality is that, whatever you do, if your code can read the secret, so can any motivated attacker. As we’ve discussed, even envelope encryption is not completely secure, and as a plugin developer, you have less control over the encryption methods available to site owners.”
Almost any plugin today that communicates with any server or stores user information has data that probably needs to be secure, so this is a good read here for developers. 🔒
Scott Kingsley Clark recently updated an extensive Google Sheet that compares “content type / custom fields” plugins on price, support, popularity, and features. 🔌
Apparently, this spreadsheet has existed for a while, but this is the first time I have seen it — impressive work.
—David
Konstantin Kovshenin has a walkthrough showing you how to deploy WordPress to DigitalOcean with Sail CLI, a free and open source, command line tool that Konstantin is building. He is also looking for feedback or suggestions that will make Sail more useful for developers. It’s on my “check out” list.
If you have an interest in improving the Core Web Vitals of a WordPress site, Eric Karkovack has a few tips for you: consider caching, defer loading of render-blocking scripts and styles, optimize and lazy load your images. This is a good “first steps” post even for those who just want to gain better performance.
Caching plugins perform poorly in Nginx so Ashley Rich identifies the best ones how and explains how you can “turbocharge” them for Nginx over on the Delicious Brains blog. Ashley’s picks are WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, and W3 Total Cache.
“A caching plugin with the Nginx try_files directive performs much better, and very close to the same performance as Nginx’s native FastCGI Caching.”
Shawn Wang offers some good thoughts about where the development industry is going:
“Improvements in DX in both programming languages and cloud infrastructure will eventually converge in a single paradigm, where you truly “just write business logic” and the platform mostly figures out the rest.
Also:
“Advancements in two fields — programming languages and cloud infrastructure — will converge in a single paradigm: where all resources required by a program will be automatically provisioned, and optimized, by the environment that runs it.”
Deep-level thinking and big ideas.
Thanks to Matt Mullenweg, I discovered two newly redesigned sites using WordPress this week: Print Magazine, with issues going back to the 1940s and 50s, and Grist, a nonprofit newsroom focused on climate journalism in recent years.
Get paid in advance with your next digital product, online course, or membership site!
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I frequent the blog of Josh Comeau, and this post on learning stuff quickly is excellent. Learning how to learn effectively (as Josh states) can be a superpower and enable you to be more productive than the average developer.
Josh’s advice for making intentional mistakes is worth thinking about and also his key to remembering things: spaced repetition. He recommends Nicky Case‘s article, “How to Remember Anything Forever-ish.” 🐘
Cal Evans shares his feelings about the importance of writing in your career as a software developer, how to improve your writing, and why writing will level up your career. What he means by “writing” goes beyond documentation to creative and intellectual growth:
“When you write a lot, you understand that a lot of it is crap, but you’ve got to get that crap out of your head to make room for the good stuff.”
Konstantin Kovshenin has a walkthrough showing you how to deploy WordPress to DigitalOcean with Sail CLI, a free and open source, command line tool that Konstantin is building. He is also looking for feedback or suggestions that will make Sail more useful for developers. It’s on my “check out” list.
Rodolfo Melogli shows how to display your product images on the WooCommerce checkout page with just a few lines of code.
In the Los Angeles Times, Brian Contreras writes about the rise of captions in videos because so many people are watching them in silent mode.
According to Dan Greenberg, president of the ad exchange Sharethrough, company data shows that 75% of people overall, and 86% of millennials, keep their phones muted throughout the day.
This is good news for people whose hearing is impaired, but sadly I don’t think accessibility for that particular segment of the population was the driving factor here. All in all, a net win though, and it shows how short attention spans are now for even video.
— David
Konstantin Kovshenin explains why wp_mail is “not broken” but why it might not be working for some people, and why hosts sometimes spend energy directing customs to install an SMTP plugin for their mail woes. It’s a technical post so you’ll learn a thing or two about SMTP and MTAs. 📭
Congrats to Mary Job and the WordPress community in Africa for launching wpafrica.org — a focal point for business owners, developers, designers, bloggers, startups, marketers, and publishers on the continent. The site also adds that “we see a WordCamp Africa in our near future, perhaps in 3- 5 years.” We would love to see that happen. 🌍
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Video Picks
📺 Here is my video pick this week:
- Exploring the Query Loop block: Anne McCarthy has made a video on the Query Loop block in case you haven't had a chance to explore it yet. She is also welcoming feedback on this video (and requests for more) so she can make additional video tours in the future.
Podcast Picks
🎙️ Here are my podcast picks:
- The SDM Show: Rob Cairns sits down to talk about Gutenberg with Birgit Pauli-Haack. They cover Birgit's move to Automattic, how Gutenberg Times came to be, and why you should move your WordPress site to Gutenberg! Catch up on Full Site Editing and the latest trends in Gutenberg. 🎧
- Gutenberg Changelog: Birgit Pauli-Haack and Grzegorz (Greg) Ziolkowski discuss the planning, scope, and team for WordPress 5.9, the roadmap for WooCommerce Blocks, Gutenberg 11.5, and more.
- Kinsta Podcast: I listened to this episode on a recommendation. Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder, who manages more than 1,300 WordPress websites on his own, shares his perspective on marketing and sales.
- syntax.fm: Scott Tolinski and Wes Bos talk about webhooks and why they aren't as scary as they might seem for developers. ↩️
- Do the Woo: Here's an interview with Allen Smith who has taken on the role of Developer Advocate at WooCommerce.
- Delicious Brainwaves: Thomas McGee, video producer for Delicious Brains, joins Jonathan Bossenger to discuss the ins and outs of their morning productivity routines, and how they plan and execute their workdays.
- The WP Minute: Last week Kathy Zant covered much of the acquisition news and the "fantasy league of WordPress."
- Matt Report: Matt Medeiros talked with both Syed Balkhi and Pippin Williamson last week in separate episodes on the acquisition of Sandhiills Development plugins by Awesome Motive.
Send us your WordPress questions — we’ll consider writing about it. If we’re stumped, we’ll take it to the community for answers. You can always share your news with us too. And please, tell us how we’re doing, anytime. We appreciate your feedback. 🙏
Carefully crafted for you by humans.
— #466 —
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