“We did it.
We did it our way.
And it worked.
More to come.”
Absolutely, they did it their way.
If you know Josh, that’s the only way. I’ve always respected Josh. But over the last couple of years, I’ve understood him and like him more every time we talk.
If you know Sally, she’s a one-of-a-kind leader with a heart as big as ... Josh’s rebel streak but with incredible vision and savvy. Sally has the gift of seeing and connecting with people, and I’ve cherished every sentence of our conversations.
Pagely's Pressnomics conference was where/when Post Status was birthed. And it has been my favorite conference every year. The Strebels led it. And they led BIG. Each Pressnomics event had the Strebels’ own unique one-of-a-kind signature on it. We should all say thanks for their leadership and support.
It really, really, really worked.
You can read about Pagely’s NPS score and other things. But each and every year, I’ve just seen them stay focused and do better because of it.
More (fireworks) to come!
For most of us founders, we all say “more to come” when we exit. We genuinely believe there is, but it doesn’t pan out that way. It didn’t for me. With this deal, I have more confidence there will actually be LOTS more to come. How do I know? Josh doesn’t BS. And when he says “we’re coming in hot” ... well ... I believe him.
To my dear friends, the Strebels (and team), congratulations!
To GoDaddy, I say, “Well done. Keep following the rebels.”
To the WordPress community, I say, “Get some popcorn because this should be fun to watch.”
🌅 Early Access Opportunity! Post Status Business Membership has just launched, and we’ve got additional bonuses and perks coming up — exclusive to you for signing up early.
"Focus on the skills people bring, what projects they've done that have been really great."
In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David talks with special guest Jill Binder about diversity and inclusion — how can people in underrepresented groups leverage resources in the WordPress community to increase their confidence, exposure, and potential hiring value? Learn how organizers can make their events feel more open and how they can encourage those in under-represented groups to participate. If we see a speaker who doesn't look like us at a conference and simply appreciate their contribution as a speaker as a normal feature of our conferences, that is an achievable win.
We'll be joined by Matt Medeiros (Matt Report Media), Jeff Chandler (WP Mainline), Joe Howard (WPMRR), Birgit Pauli-Haack (Gutenberg Times), and Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern). Hosted by David Bisset and Dan Knauss (Post Status).
Sponsored by WP Lookout 🚨 Track the plugins and themes you depend on.
The latest iteration of the Gutenberg plugin is out (version 11.8.0). It includes enhancements to the editing experience, including a way to discover Featured Block Patterns, spacing tools for heading blocks, new animations for some elements (such as Dropzone, and Insertion Point), and more.
A new version of PHP (8.1) is slated to be released on November 25. This release includes a variety of new features. Josip Vojaklists what he thinks are the top ten new features that bring PHP closer to "more modern languages."
Johnny Harris shared on Twitter that after nearly two and half years of work the menu, menu items, and menu locations, the REST API menu management endpoints are finally merged into WordPress core: "Can’t count the hours I have worked on these. So happy these are finally in core!"
If you are a WordPress theme developer and use webfonts, then your feedback is needed in the conversation considering the addition of a webfonts API into core. The window to merge this feature in 5.9 is closing soon closed — but it may move to the Gutenberg plugin instead. Testing instructions are in the Trac ticket.
The latest release of Advanced Custom Fieldsbrings support for the WordPress REST API. ACF field values can now be accessed through existing endpoints for items like posts, pages, custom post types, and users. Iain Poulson notes that these changes will allow developers to build custom themes using React, Vue, or any other JavaScript library.
Marieke van de Raktannounced this week she is stepping away from the role of CEO of Yoast and will be focusing mostly on content marketing as Creative Marketing Manager. Marieke cites reasons that include being "tired" and needing a CEO who is "full of energy" along with the fact the job was not bringing her "the most joy."
The position will be filled by someone "within the family" — Thijs de Valk, formerly Chief Commercial Officer at Yoast, will be the new CEO. He mentions that Yoast was his "first real job" so the fact he is now CEO must be unreal to him in a way.
Thijs stresses there will be no big changes as a result of the change in leadership at Yoast – especially after the Newfold acquisition: "Yoast will continue its mission as it always has."
Anne McCarthy over on the Doo The Woo blog shares how WooCommerce builders can contribute to WordPress. While getting up to speed on news and information is important, Anne also points out that one can help with good "first issues" — i.e., less complex bugs or enhancements to work on that don’t require deep knowledge to fix.
Ultimately the experience itself might be one the biggest benefits, even if you hit some barriers or struggle a little:
"Sometimes the best way to know where you want to get involved is to try to create something and to discover the pain points along the way. If you’re running into blockers, tons of other people likely are too and it’s an excellent way to contribute back to the community."
For those tracking Google indexing timelines, they have recently announced that they will begin using page experience as part of their desktop ranking systems beginning in February 2022. The rollout will be complete by the end of March 2022.
Google also has published their 2021 Accelerate State of DevOps Report which examines the practices that "drive successful software delivery and operational performance so you can compare your organization to elite performers."
Sara Fischer (Axios) claims that according to advertising data and a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), "the internet-supported economy now accounts for 12% of ... gross domestic product, up from 2% in 2008," of the United States. If true, this growth would be seven times faster than the total US economy over the past four years.
POST STATUS ANALYSIS
The idea of a "'no-code' miracle for startups" reminds me how some people describe WordPress as "no-code" platform even though one of (if not the biggest) subgroups in the WordPress community are developers and coders. How much of the businesses growth and other data in IAB's report comes from WordPress or related companies?
—David
Check out what happened This Week at WordPress.org! (November 9, 2021)
Spin up your own extremely fast WordPress server in minutes with SpinupWP. Use any cloud hosting provider you want, and manage your servers remotely with a simple but powerful control panel. Get the security and performance of managed hosting without losing the independence of hosting your projects and your clients yourself.
Dan Moore argues that "forums rather than Slack/Discord" should be used "for community building around a developer platform." Great answers and great conversations tend to be lost on Slack, especially since Slack limits free plans to 10,000 messages. There's also the fact that Google can't see those conversations to index them.
POST STATUS ANALYSIS
After taking Moore’s points in, I agree. On the other hand, Dan observes that Slack can begin to feel like a real community where questioners post other messages or share a bit about themselves: “This type of interaction can happen in a forum, but seems more common in a Slack.”
Why not use both tools in different contexts? But for the good of a community culture, especially an open-source one, I lean toward forums and other public knowledge-sharing solutions.
— David
Konstantin Kovshenin on Post Status Slack recently updated the community with a new release of Sail CLI — a free tool to deploy, manage and scale WordPress applications with DigitalOcean. The updates allow multiple WordPress apps in a single environment, pre-deploy hooks, and a new installer. Konstantin is welcoming feedback.
As someone who always wants a good way to not only think of ideas to write but document them so they have a chance of turning into drafts, I appreciate Dave Rupert sharing his writing system, which involves setting up a Notion-based blogging kanban. Just #ClickPublish!
POST STATUS ANALYSIS
I’m not a big Notion user, but the system he describes can be adapted to other apps and maybe even a WordPress custom blog. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s a reliable system that can support writing as a habit and discipline:
“Does it work and has it turned me into a prolific daily blogger? No, not at all. But when I have the time and ambition to blog; I’m already prepared, I have a process in place, and more than a hundred well-organized ideas waiting for me.”
— David
Lemon Squeezyhas announced its official WordPress plugin. Their platform-agnostic service allows you to sell digital products, digital licenses, and subscriptions very easily on almost any kind of website. While they host the service, the WordPress plugin allows you to quickly create a Gutenberg block with a buy button along with auto-updates for your products.
POST STATUS ANALYSIS
We're not alone in keeping an eye on the Lemon Squeezy all-star team since they decided to make lemonade in 2020 — Orman Clark, Jason Schuller, Gilbert Pellegrom, and JR Farr. Lemon Squeezy is setting itself up to compete with Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce. It's clearly focused on the WordPress market, and as the product of seasoned veterans in the WordPress product space, we're excited to see how they expand their WordPress integration in the near future.
"The answer to overcoming imposter syndrome is not to fix individuals, but to create an environment that fosters a number of different leadership styles and where diversity of racial, ethnic, and gender identities is viewed as just as professional as the current model."
"Colleagues, friends, family, the memories of holidays, important events in life, having dinner or just hanging out at some WordCamp and talking about WordPress or make-up. People are indispensable, even though they are fragile."
Jason Adams introduces some useful questions and concepts to help make better technical decisions. He recommends starting by asking oneself if they really know the problem: "You cannot possibly know if your idea is the right solution if you don’t intimately know the problem it’s intending to solve."
POST STATUS ANALYSIS
There are some other good reminders here for how problem-solvers — especially developers — can reexamine how they tackle problems. Developers are especially motivated to tear things down when they run into problems, but we have to be careful trading one set of known problems for new unknown problems, as Jason points out.
If you've never spoken at a WordCamp before — or even if you have — it can feel daunting to apply to speak for any number of reasons. Overcoming obstacles to speaking at WordCamp isn't easy. What if nobody comes to listen to you? What if everyone does! Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you?
You're not sure what topic to propose.
You are new to WordPress and don't feel qualified.
You feel like an "imposter."
Inexperience or fear of public speaking.
Your audience size is uncertain or intimidating.
Your budget for travel is small.
Time/date conflicts.
Childcare needs.
Slide deck worries.
Let's break these barriers down and transform them into reasons why you should apply to speak at WordCamps!
WP Career Summit — the first of its kind – will be held online April 8, 2022. While still in the early stages of planning, we can promise it will be an amazing event! 📆
Join the people who report and comment on WordPress news — together for the first time in a live conversation.
Post Status is proud to present a first-of-its-kind gathering of some of the people who are responsible for delivering timely news and information vital to the WordPress community.
The First Annual State of WordPress News is taking placeNovember 19, 2021. 🗞️
WordCamp São Paulo 2021 🇧🇷: O WordCamp São Paulo completa 10 anos no dia 27 de novembro. Online e grátis! 🇧🇷 WordCamp São Paulo turns 10 on the 27th of November, 2021 when it takes place again as an online event.
WordCamp Taiwan 🇹🇼: WordCamp Taiwan will take place online this year from December 11-12, 2021 and welcomes all WordPress lovers. 🇹🇼 2021年12月11日到12日，台灣即將迎來一場全新的里程碑 WordCamp，一場更新、更好、更多花火的的國際級綜合研討會. The Call for Speakers is still open.
WP Y'All, It's WordCamp Birmingham on February 4-5, 2022. You can find more information and sign up here. Here's the Call for Sponsors and the Call for Speakers. The speaker call deadline is November 30.
Big Orange Heart and the WordFest Live volunteers will kick off another global tour of the WordPress community on March 4, 2022. You can register now! Check out the Call for Speakers and the Call for Sponsors. Sponsorships and donations will help provide resources to aid the mental health and well-being of remote workers worldwide. All proceeds go to the Big Orange Heart charity! Everyone organizing this event is a volunteer. 🧡
Gutenberg Changelog: This episode covers the recent Gutenberg 11.8 release, WordPress 5.9, the Navigation Block, Full-Site Editing, and the Plugin Machine!
