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The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
Matt Mullenweg is returning from his
three month sabbatical, dubbed sabbatical,
which kicked off February 1st, 2024.
He handed the CEO reins back to
Tony Schneider and placed Daniel
Bakuber in charge of WordPress.
com in his absence.
I thought we'd see the whole
organization coast while the open
source benevolent dictator dug his
toes into the sand, but Automatic
and WordPress stayed as busy as ever.
I don't know how much Mullenweg was
involved with all of these milestones.
Something tells me he didn't stay
as disconnected as he had hoped.
Let's take a look at some of the big moves
that happened with WordPress, Automatic,
and the community while Matt was away.
Number one, the WP Tavern Hunger Games.
One of the first major activities
to kick off was the search for
two new full time writers to
breathe life back into WP Tavern.
It was a Hunger Games esque approach where
seven or eight writers duked it out to be
crowned winner number one and number two.
Author Brian Cordes was the
last contestant to publish
a post on March 14th, 2024.
There hasn't been any clear announcement
on who earned the position or what happens
next, and most authors I've spoken to
are still wondering what's next for
their writing careers at the Tavern.
Number two, Woo.
com is back to WooCommerce.
com.
Something I hadn't had on my bingo
cards was the short lived Woo.
com domain defaulting back
to the original WooCommerce.
com domain.
Quote from WooCommerce, moving to Woo.
com created challenges for our
users to find WooCommerce in Google
searches, which were made worse
following the Google's March update.
To address those challenges, we assembled
a group of SEO experts and consultants
to evaluate the best way to build on
the strength of WooCommerce brand,
said Kevin Bates wrote in that update.
Number three, the old WP admin
dashboard is new for wordpress.
com.
In another what's old is new again.
WordPress.
com is giving users the ability to roll
back to a traditional WP admin interface.
It seems there's no future for the
once innovative Calypso project, citing
that developers were looking for.
A more familiar interface
when working on WordPress.
com sites.
This might be a sign that more WordPress
consultants are starting to recommend.
com more to their customers.
Now that the platform has been
supporting user installed plugins
on the 30 a month and up plan.
Number four, automatic spends an
additional 125 million on messaging
with the beeper acquisition.
Automatic is pouring money into
messaging with its latest acquisition
of Beeper, which I'm assuming Mullenweg
was quite active on during sabbatical.
I like the idea of Automatic building
up a strong solution for messaging.
In a world where SEO is getting
squeezed and social media feeds
being curated by ad driven algos, we
need more direct channels with our
readers, subscribers, and customers,
and I think that's direct messaging.
It could be an exciting new
frontier with automatic leading
the charge, and I'm here for it.
Number five, WordPress.
com launches studio app.
The new studio app allows
users to run WordPress installs
locally on their computer.
This is a great way to learn WordPress
and develop WordPress sites for free.
It's powered by the same technology that
runs the official WordPress playground and
gives users the ability to publish their
local websites to temporary WordPress.
com accounts to share with the world.
Other hosting platforms like WP Engine
and Kinsta offer local development
environments, making this a natural
fit for Automattic to offer.
Number six, Big Sky, WordPress.
com starts a waiting list
for AI designed websites.
WordPress.
com decided to throw their hat into the
AI web design ring by opening up a beta
sign up for their latest project, Big Sky.
I've signed up to trial products, to
the trial product, but I also signed
up for access to studio before it was
released and didn't hear anything.
So fingers crossed with this one.
If anyone at Automatic is reading
this, I have found 100 percent AI
website builders underwhelming.
It's basically machine learning
with blocks and patterns that are
tagged with keywords that just get
mashed together based on the prompt.
I prefer starting with a collection
of professionally designed themes
and patterns, but I'm happy to
see if they can change my mind.
And that's not all.
The above mark, the above marks six
of the biggest moves I think happened
around the WordPress space while
Mullenweg enjoyed some time off.
But again, that's not all.
Here's a quick list of other
notable events that happened
over the last three months.
WordPress 6.
5 launched.
The community led Make Marketing
team was shut down in favor
of a new MediaCore experiment.
WordPress.
com now supports GitHub integration.
WordPress.
WordPress.
com launched a new public pattern
directory and WooCommerce launched
a new update manager plugin.
Was there anything else on your
list that didn't make it here?
Let me know on Twitter by sending
me a message at the WP minute
or at Matt Medeiros, if you
want to reach me personally.