Version 1.0.0 of the ActivityPub plugin was released this week with major updates that make it possible to have a blog-wide account, instead of just individual author accounts, where followers receive updates from all authors. This new feature allows people to follow blogs on decentralized platforms like Mastodon (and many others) with replies automatically published back to the blog as comments.
In the ActivityPub plugin settings, users can check “Enable blog” to have the blog become an ActivityPub profile. Authors can be enabled at the same time as a blog-wide profile.
Activities originating from a Blog profile can be further customized through the existing post content and image settings. Users can also set the activity object type to default, article, or WordPress post format which maps the post format to the ActivityPub object type. Supported post types include posts, pages, and media. Note that the blog-wide profile only works with sites that have rewrite rules enabled.
An experimental hashtags setting is also available, which adds hashtags in the content as native tags and replaces the #tag with the tag link. Users should be aware that it may still produce HTML or CSS errors.
ActivityPub 1.0.0 introduces two new blocks – one for displaying Fediverse Followers and the other for displaying a “Follow” button to allow people to follow the blog or author on the Fediverse. The Follower system has also gotten a complete rewrite based on Custom Post Types.
Other notable updates in this release include the following:
Collection endpoints for Featured Tags and Featured Posts
Better handling of Hashtags in mobile apps
Update: Improved linter (PHPCS)
Fixed: Load the plugin later in the WordPress code lifecycle to avoid errors in some requests
Fixed: Updating posts
Fixed: Hashtag now support CamelCase and UTF-8
Automattic acquired the plugin in March 2023 from German developer Matthias Pfefferle, who joined the company to continue improving support for federated platforms. Next on the roadmap for the ActivityPub plugin is threaded comments support and replacing shortcodes with blocks for layout.
WordPress core developer John Blackbourn sparked a heated discussion yesterday when he posted an image of his WordPress User Switching plugin ranking higher for the WordPress.com listing than the page on WordPress.org.
Why has @wordpressdotcom replicated the entire https://t.co/oTA9NDVkFk plugin directory on its .com domain name? Searching for some plugin names now results in the .com page ranking higher than .org. Fuck the long term health of the FOSS project, let's make some money, right? pic.twitter.com/UD40BN3Z6g
Blackbourn later apologized for the inflammatory wording of the original post, but maintains that .com plugin listings being displayed higher in search results is not healthy for the open source project.
“This was a frustrated 2AM tweet so I could have worded it better, but the point still stands,” he said. “The plugin pages on dotcom are little more than marketing landing pages for the dotcom service and they’re strongly competing with the canonical dotorg pages. That’s not healthy.”
Several others commented about having similar experiences when searching for plugins, finding that the WordPress.com often ranks higher, although many others still see WordPress.org pages ranked highest.
Blackbourn said his chief concern “is the process that introduced the directory clone on .com either disregarded its potential impact on .org in favor of inbounds or never considered it in the first place – both very concerning given the ranking power of .com.”
The tweet highlighted the frustration some members of the open source community feel due to the perennial branding confusion between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Nothing short of renaming WordPress.com will eliminate the longstanding confusion, but this is unlikely as Automattic benefits from tightly coupling its products to WordPress’ name recognition.
“Duplicate content confuses the human + search engines,” SEO consultant Rebecca Gill said. “Search engines won’t like it, nor will humans trying to find solutions to their problems. There is already enough confusion w/ .org + .com for non-tech folks. This amplifies it. Noindex .com content or canonical it to .org.”
Participants in the discussion maintain that the duplication of the open source project’s plugin directory “creates ambiguity and confusion” but WordPress co-creator and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg contends it also gives plugin authors greater distribution.
“It’s providing distribution to the plugin authors, literally millions and millions of installs,” Mullenweg said. He elaborated on how the cloned plugin directory is integrated with Calypso, WordPress.com’s admin interface:
.com has its own plugin directory which includes the .org one, it provides more installs and distribution to the plugin authors, which helps their usage and for commercial ones gets them more sales. The plugins are not altered. .com takes no cut for the distribution.
When participants in the discussion suggested that other hosts doing the same thing would create a wild west situation for plugin rankings, Mullenweg said he would not mind if the plugins were “duplicated and distributed by every host and site on the planet,” as they are all licensed under the GPL.
If people are providing more distribution to unaltered plugins, I think that's great. Happy for all our plugins to be duplicated and distributed by every host and site on the planet.
Outrage against distributing WordPress.org plugins in this fashion was not universal in the discussion. A few commenters support this strategy and see it as beneficial for the long-term health of the open source project.
“I’m all for it to be honest,” WordPress developer Cristian Raiber said. “Anyone could scrape those pages but not everyone gives back to WordPress and makes sure it’s here to stay for the next decades. Controversial, I know. But I prefer we build together instead of alone.
“I fail to see how this is not an advantage to anyone who hosts their plugins (for FREE) on w[dot]org ?” Raiber continued in a separate response. “Is it about being outranked in Google’s SERPs for brand kws? Why has this generated so much outcry when the intent is clearly beneficial?
“This FINALLY solves a friction point for potential buyers. Streamlined plugin installation and usage vs ‘here’s a list of 55 steps you have to take to install my plugin.’ Users want options, different uses cases and all. I want wp.com to make money so they keep growing this product.”
XWP Director of Engineering Francesco Marano suggested that WordPress.com has benefitted from the branding and reputation of .org, which is built by volunteers. She also proposed that Automattic “has the resources to do a whole rebranding which would ultimately benefit both projects.”
Mullenweg responded to these comments, defending WordPress.com’s efforts in fending off early WordPress competitors and cited Automattic’s preeminence in contributing back to core, despite taking in less revenue than some larger companies making money from the software:
Since its foundation, .org has benefitted from the branding and reputation of having a robust SaaS version available from .com, including a free version, something basically no other host does. Over 200M people have used it, and countless started on .com and then migrated to another host. The shared branding made it very difficult for services like Typepad to compete. You want to see what WP would look like without it? Go to Joomla.
.com has also been the source of countless performance improvements, we deploy pre-release versions of core to millions of sites to find bugs and do testing, making WP releases way more stable for regular users and hosts. No company contributes more, even though many make more from WP than .com’s revenue. It would have been way easier to fork the software, not merge MU. Most hosts (and many community members) bad-mouth .com while not contributing a fraction back to core. Hosts spend tens of millions a year on ads against .com. I get attacked constantly.
In 2010, when the WordPress Foundation was created, Automattic transferred the WordPress trademarks to the Foundation, after having been the temporary custodian of the trademarks until that time. As part of the transfer, the Foundation granted Mullenweg use of the WordPress trademark for WordPress.com.
This trademark was deliberately secured, and the company does not appear to be open to renaming the platform. This doesn’t mean WordPress.com can’t do anything to mitigate the confusion that scraping the WordPress.org plugin directory creates. Participants in the discussion suggested that WordPress.com forego indexing the pages they created for plugins that developers submitted to the open source project.
“You can control SEO by telling search engines to not index those pages of open source software developed for .org on the .com domain,” WordPress plugin developer Marco Almeida said.
“I have 20 free plugins on the repository and I don’t see how my plugins will benefit if we open this pandora box and normalize cloning these pages and diluting the WordPress.org importance on search engines.”
Dotcom can help by using schema markup that points to dotorg as the authority (using the "about" and/or "sameAs" properties). The dotorg pages already have the schema markup in place, you'll just need to point to it from dotcom.
This is helpful for dotcom too. Although Google…
Developers who are just now discovering their WordPress.org plugins cloned to WordPress.com listings are also wanting to know how many of their installs come from WordPress.com so they can better understand their user bases. Mullenweg suggested developers who want a different listing for WordPress.com users can sign up for the .com marketplace.
well, this could be true, but as plugin author I don’t know how many installations are on .com or .org, or how to show the plugin description/features in a different way to a .com user. I think that the main issue here is the directory cloning
Tensions remained high as the heated discussion continued throughout the day and into the evening with criticism flowing across X (Twitter), Post Status Slack, and other social channels, as many developers learned for the first time that their plugin listings have been cloned on WordPress.com. As long as a commercial entity shares the open source project’s branding, these types of clashes and friction will continue popping up.
“Personally, I can’t help but empathize with plugin authors that chose to support OSS and find the directory cloned in a commercial service, albeit free, with no access to stats,” Francesca Marano said. “As I mentioned before, the main issue is the confusion around the two projects.”
It has be nearly one year since WordPress silently turned off active install growth data for plugins hosted in the official plugin repository, a key metric that many developers rely on for accurate tracking and product decision-making. “Insufficient data obfuscation†was cited as the reason for the charts’ removal, but this opaque decision landed without any communication from those who had made the call in a private discussion.
In a ticket originally titled “Bring back the active install growth chart,†RebelCode CEO Mark Zahra made the opening plea for thousands of plugin developers who were asking for the return of this data. From those who simply host hobby plugins and enjoy the thrill of watching people use software they made to business owners who need this data to make critical decisions, the overwhelming consensus was that this data is valuable and should be available to those who are contributing to WordPress through plugins.
In an appearance on the WPwatercooler podcast last year, Audrey Capital-sponsored meta contributor Samuel “Otto” Wood confirmed the decision was made through private channels via Slack DMs in a discussion initiated by Matt Mullenweg. He also revealed that the active install growth chart was removed because it was giving inaccurate data and that the data one could derive from it was inaccurate:
I read through all that discussion and we worked, they worked on it for a long, Scott and several people tried various things before removing it. They adjusted the values, they adjusted numbers. They, they went through a ridiculous amount of iteration and in the end, none of it worked. People were still using it even though it was giving them basically garbage. So finally removing it was the only thing to do. We did have a plan for replacing it. We just didn’t have a plan for replacing it immediately. Nevertheless, giving them active install count numbers that are wrong is more harmful, we felt, to both users and developers interests than simply not giving them at all.Â
Wood offered an explanation on the podcast that should have been delivered weeks earlier by those involved in the discussion on official channels. Despite the earlier data being flawed and “insufficiently obfuscated,” developers still want access to the raw data, not interpretations of that data.
These are the posts that track the history and development of developer’s pleas to reinstate access to the data:
During the height of this discussion, developers made many suggestions for different data points that would be meaningful for tracking their efforts, and Matt Mullenweg responded that he was amenable to showing more stats to plugin authors about their plugins. No progress on this effort has been reported since then.
 StellarWP Product Marketing Director Taylor Waldon has reopened this discussion nearly a year later, calling on Mullenweg to stop restricting access to plugin data from people who are hosting themes and plugins on WordPress.org.
— Taylor Elizabeth Rose | Find me on Bluesky (@tElizaRose) September 5, 2023
“I talked to a bunch of folks at [WCUS] contributor day,” Paid Memberships Pro co-founder and CEO Jason Coleman said in response to Waldon’s tweet. “As far as I know, there isn’t any other current effort to update or replace the install count numbers or old ‘growth’ chart.’”
Coleman put together a draft proposal with some ideas from his conversations. The document describes a common scenario where plugin developers are left in the dark about the growth or decline of their plugins’ active installations:
Imagine a developer with a plugin with 150k active installations. That developer has effectively 0 quantitative feedback on whether users of his plugin are growing or falling. The download count has a trend, but there is no separation between new downloads and updates. The download count tracks developmental pace as much as user growth. A bump in downloads could be due to a security vulnerability being patched or an influx of new users. The current active installations count is severely rounded and offers no feedback until such a plugin either gains or loses 33% of its users, which are drastically different outcomes.
Coleman contends that plugins hosted outside of WordPress.org are able to gather more meaningful metrics. Popular plugins have resorted to including features in non-WordPress.org add-ons or simply removing their extensions altogether from the repository for lack of data.
His proposal includes a few metrics that would help developers better track their plugins, even if that data is only shown to the authors themselves:
Share a more accurate active installations count with the owners of a plugin.
Share more accurate version number counts with the owners of a plugin.
Differentiate the download count by type: website downloads, dashboard installs, dashboard downloads, updates, other (hits to the zip file).
Allow plugin developers to define custom event triggers to be tallied and displayed to the plugin owners on the plugins .org profile page.
Coleman’s draft is still in progress. He was not immediately available for comment when I asked about the next step once the proposal is further developed.
WordPress.org has always been the most popular distribution channel for the most widely used plugins, but the data available has not kept pace with developer and business needs. Releasing the raw data, while respecting any privacy limitations, would allow developers to extract their own interpretations of that data and allow services to present it in creative ways.
At the very least, this data should be available to developers (even if it’s not public) to help them better track the trajectory of their plugins and the efficacy of their marketing efforts. More data can only serve to improve the WordPress ecosystem’s ability to continue powering a multi-billion dollar economy. There are undoubtedly many technical requirements for supporting the release of this data, and they need to be prioritized if WordPress.org is to continue attracting the best products for distribution.
“This is not about vanity metrics or inflating numbers for marketing purposes,” Coleman said. “This is about getting valuable feedback on the relative use of a plugin hosted in the .org repository so developers can make informed decisions and investments in those plugins.”
10up, a leading development agency and contributor to the WordPress project, has merged with Fueled, a technology consultancy that specializes in mobile and web application development. Together, the companies now employ more than 400 full time team members, forming a digital powerhouse with expanded market reach across mobile and publishing sectors.
“Fueled has built stand out iOS and Android apps – several of which I’ve personally used – for clients like Warby Parker, Verizon, the United Nations, and even Apple themselves,” 10up President Jake Goldman said. “Just as 10up has built some great mobile applications, Fueled has executed notable works in the web application space for clients like Wall Street Journal and The New York Times – but content management systems and editorial experience has never been a core focus and strength. Until now.”
The merger transaction was made possible by investment from Insignia Capital, a firm that previously invested in Fueled. Insignia has made Fueled’s merger with 10up its first major growth investment, paying to restructure the companies’ ownership model. All parties invested in the merger hold meaningful shares, with none of them holding a majority share.
Goldman said 10up owners rolled over meaningful equity into the joint business, “but there was also a very healthy purchase of 10up equity to make this possible.”
10up’s announcement hinted at more acquisitions in the newly combined companies’ future.
“Insignia brings a whole new class of financial and investment capabilities to 10up and Fueled, with an appetite for responsibly paced growth through acquisition,” Goldman said. “They don’t just bring capital – they also bring expertise and impressive connections.”
He further elaborated on their acquisition strategy as seeking to expand their combined capabilities “to compete with the biggest digital transformation agencies:”
In the broadest of terms, I think that we’re pretty open minded to what we find in the market, but opportunities that meaningfully expand what we can offer – shoring up weaker spots in our capabilities – are going to be the most attractive. As examples, while we’ve each done CRM and CDP integration work and strategy, I’d imagine a first rate CRM and/or CDP consultancy with some great case studies and clients would be the kind of opportunity that would be particularly interesting.
Open Source Contribution Will Continue To Be a Priority at 10up
Nearly 12 years after Goldman started 10up with what he said was “a small personal savings account and the sweat equity of more than a decade making websites and other media,” he is no longer the sole leader of the organization and will take on the role of Partner in the merged companies. Integral to the success of 10up, which Goldman has scaled to $40M+ in annual revenue, is its consistent commitment to supporting the open source ecosystem from which it has derived millions of dollars in value. Fueled acknowledged this in its announcement about the merger:
10up has long held a commitment to the open web, and open source contributions as a core value. This will remain a priority, especially towards the WordPress community, and will be further strengthened by the additional market reach gained from the merger.
Fueled shares this same ethos, which they intend to continue cultivating following the merger.
“Fueled has always been supportive of open source, even if their part of the market (mobile apps) hasn’t embraced that model in the way web CMS has,” Goldman said. “They have open sourced projects (in fact, we incidentally found that we were using one!), and, like 10up, have fully embraced and focused on open technology solutions like NodeJS and React for web applications.”
10up has consistently been among the top contributors to the software, which has been essential to the world-class publishing experiences the company has built for its clients.
“That commitment to giving back to the web, making sure there’s a ladder for the next generation of developers to climb, and helping open technologies thrive remains with us,” Goldman said. “Our new business partners understand that this is deeply intertwined with 10up’s identity, and perhaps more importantly, our success. It’s not just a generosity thing – it’s also good business.
“Merging with and investing in 10up would be pretty foolish if you aren’t comfortable with the tools and platforms we use and prefer, most especially the web’s most popular open source CMS, and you can bet that being comfortable with that, and researching that question, was essential to their comfort with merging. In many ways, that’s a validation for WordPress.”
10up and Fueled Will Gradually Merge Services and Administration, Pursuing Large Scale Digital Transformation Clients
10up and Fueled will largely operate as two companies and close partners for the time being, sharing leads and pursuing customer growth together. Goldman said the vision is not to simply have web publishing/WordPress customers and separate mobile app customers but rather to go after large scale digital transformation projects.
“That means having a fully integrated way to deliver everything from the mobile apps, to the website and CMS, to advanced e-commerce and CRM integrations (even if we may only provide one of those services to some clients),” he said. “That means we’re not just operating as separate companies in the future, but truly merging and unifying our companies from leadership and sales on down through project and product management, user research and design, and engineering delivery.”
Given that both brands hold considerable weight and influence in their respective markets, Goldman said they agreed “it would be incredibly foolish to discount that and rush to a single brand.” Instead, they plan to explore how the companies can work together.
“We honestly don’t know where we’ll land on the external brand question, and didn’t think it was fundamental to the question of merging,” Goldman said. “We’ll be exploring and researching that question together, and any change would, again, be gradual and planned.
“We all similarly agree that when we think out into the future, whether that’s 12 or 24 months from now (probably something in between), that we probably don’t want two separate, external, top line company brands competing for attention and oxygen in the space, to say nothing of competing for internal focus and resources.”
He said that could play out in a number of ways, and may be a data driven decision. For example, 10up could evolve to be the brand name for the WordPress engineering services team or the company’s open source and productized solutions. Nothing has been predetermined about the branding.
In the meantime, it appears to that the combination of companies will be a more gradual merging of services and administration.
“In the mid term, maybe the next year, we want to focus on building a highly collaborative world class sales and growth operation, unifying back office (benefits management, financial operations, recruiting ops, etc), and looking at where some of our smaller capabilities and disciplines that aren’t very specific to 10up or Fueled delivery might benefit from joining forces and achieving some economy of scale,” Goldman said.
WP Includes is a new initiative that launched this week with the goal of improving equal representation of women at global WordPress companies. It was founded by Human Made COO Siobhan McKeown and XWP Director of Engineering Francesco Marano.
“I’ve been in WordPress a long time and I’ve met a lot of talented women but not enough in leadership roles. It’s time to change that,” McKeown said.
The website states the founders’ mission in launching the initiative:
Disappointed by the lack of representation of women in leadership roles at companies in the WordPress ecosystem we’ve decided to do something about it.
We want to drastically increase representation of women in leadership roles at WordPress companies. We will do this by mentoring and supporting women to take the next step in their careers.
WP Includes is recruiting women leaders who are C-Level or Directors at a WordPress company to volunteer as mentors and build a supportive network of mentees.
The mentorship program lasts five months and calls for mentees/mentors goes out twice a year in September and March. Mentors commit to meet with mentees for a 1:1 on a regular basis and support them in achieving their goals. Mentee applicants are required to be working at a business in the WordPress ecosystem and actively developing their careers.
WP Includes is accepting sponsorships from companies with some rigorous requirements:
Acknowledge gender disparity and a lack of representation in your organization, wherever it exists.
Proactively address gender disparity in your leadership and executive roles.
When senior roles become available, actively seek to place women within those roles.
Support women within their career in your organization, working to ensure that any gender-related barriers are removed.
Create opportunities to showcase women leaders in your organisation so that they can act as role models for future leaders.
Supporting organizations can also contribute by sharing open roles within the network and by providing mentorship to future leaders who may potentially be considered for leadership roles in the sponsoring organizations. This is effectively changing representation from the inside out with cooperating organizations contributing to the cultivation of the leaders they need in order to purse more diverse leadership teams.
Prospective mentees, mentors, and sponsors can apply on the WP Includes website.
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), one of the plugins WP Engine acquired from Delicious Brains in 2022, has published the results if its first annual survey. Although ACF reports more than 4.5 million active users, including PRO site installs, the survey only gathered feedback from 2,031 respondents.
These results are more representative of the plugin’s developer community, as 81% of respondents are developers who maintain between 11-50 websites. 63% use version control for their codebase, and 27% manage dependencies with Composer.
The survey showed that ACF is still an important tool for its early adopters, as 50% said they have been using it since its early days and 70% of all respondents use the plugin on all the websites they build.
When asked what type of sites they are building, respondents had the option to choose multiple answers. Sites using Classic WordPress themes are the most popular followed by Hybrid themes, Block themes, and page builders. Surveying those who use the block editor, 56% report that they build blocks using ACF blocks.
“It was cool to see the strong representation of hybrid and block themes,” WP Engine Product Marketing Manager Rob Stinson said. “It shows us that there is growing adoption of the modern WP editor experience amongst the PHP friendly crowd that is the ACF user base.
“We had this scoped for upcoming releases anyway, but it reinforces our focus on improving the block building experience in ACF.”
Among those ACF users building sites with page builders, the most popular selections include Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, and WPBakery Page Builder. Naturally, ACF Extended is the most popular extension used with ACF, followed by Gravity Forms, Yoast SEO, and ACF Better Search.
Respondents demonstrated high confidence in those maintaining the plugin, as 98% of them are comfortable updating ACF to the latest version. They are also confident in continuing to build on top of WordPress, as 91% of survey participants said they are likely to continue with the platform. For a more detailed look at the questions and responses, check out the 2023 annual survey results on the ACF website.
Gutenberg 16.6 is available with progress on a feature that was formerly called auto-inserting blocks but has now been renamed to block hooks.
In a previous release (16.4), Gutenberg introduced auto-inserting blocks as an experimental feature that allows plugin developers to specify a location in which the block will be automatically inserted, such as before or after a template. Users can then reposition the blocks after insertion using the editor tools.
Gutenberg lead architect Matias Ventura proposedrenaming the feature to block hooks to help developers understand how they work.
“I’ve seen anecdotal feedback that autoInsert is not the clearest of descriptions,” Ventura said. “I’d like to propose renaming to the more familiar hooks terminology—and ‘block hooks’ in more general terms—to help folks understand the mechanics and purpose more rapidly.”
This release also adds an inspector panel for block hooks, tentatively named “Plugins,” that displays blocks available for auto-insertion. It includes toggles to insert or remove them. The updated version of the feature also includes block icons (not shown below) to help differentiate the toggles.
Gutenberg 16.6 brings improvements to toolbars on nested blocks, where the toolbar now stays attached to the parent block. This change is part of a broader effort to improve nested block experiences. Previously, the toolbar would move around when clicking inside the nested blocks, but this change makes it stay in place for a less chaotic editing experience. The updated toolbar behavior has been rolled out to Navigation, List, and Quote blocks so far.
video credit: Gutenberg GitHub repository PR #53699
This release includes a new keyboard shortcut for duplicating blocks within the List View: (CMD+Shift+d). It enables users to do more from the keyboard while navigating around the List View, instead of having to jump back into the block settings menu or editor canvas. Users can now click twice on the selected (or focused) block or multiple blocks to quickly duplicate them all in one go.
video credit: Gutenberg GitHub repository PR #53559
These highlighted features and more will be landing in the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release. Check out the Gutenberg 16.6 release post for the full list of new features, enhancements, bug fixes, and improvements to performance and code quality.
Media Temple (MT) is closing its doors after 24 years in the hosting industry, with the brand now retired and customers fully migrated to GoDaddy. In 2013, GoDaddy acquired MT “to win the hearts and minds of developers,” as then-CEO Blake Irving told VentureBeat at the time. When it was purchased, the highly regarded brand was focusing on advanced technical services that GoDaddy had not yet adapted, and the plan was to have MT operate independently with no changes for employees or customers.
Thanks for allowing us to serve you for 24 years. The time has come to say goodbye. We will miss you. Keep building amazing things!
The year following the acquisition, Media Temple launched its managed WordPress hosting product, joining the ranks of Flywheel, Page.ly, WordPress.com, WP Engine, and a handful of other companies that were working to elevate the hosting experience for WordPress users.
In December 2022, MT announced it would be retiring the Media Temple brand and transitioning accounts to GoDaddy, while subtly acknowledging the sentimental place MT holds in many of its customers’ hearts:
Since joining GoDaddy, we worked hand-in-hand with them to incorporate the best of Media Temple into offerings, including improving GoDaddy’s customer experience and leveraging Media Temple’s unique expertise on what it truly means to run a world-class hosting organization. If you closely examine GoDaddy’s hosting offerings, you will find Media Temple’s fingerprints all around. From specialized teams who deal with complex hosting issues to programs like GoDaddy Pro specifically targeting creatives, Media Temple made its mark on GoDaddy.
Fans bid the brand farewell on Twitter, as its retirement marks the end of a chapter in web hosting history.
Basically the entire design community was sponsored by Media Temple back in the day.
In February 2023, Media Temple began migrating accounts to GoDaddy, with no action required from customers. Many of the products and services were already fulfilled through GoDaddy, decreasing the number needing to be migrated.
Now that the process is complete, the brand will discontinue operations and move current resources into supporting customers inside GoDaddy. The company assured former MT customers that they will retain their current products and pricing for equivalent products with access to more tools.
WooCommerce is experimenting with improving the store experience through the addition of the Interactivity API to the WooCommerce Blocks plugin. The new API, which was announced earlier this year, will allow developers to build interactive blocks that support frontend experiences where visitors can interact with content without having to refresh the page. The WordPress contributors working on the API are encouraging developers to test it with their own blocks.
WooCommerce Blocks 10.9.0, released in mid-August, integrated the Product Button with the Interactivity API to support real-time counter updates for the mini-cart, smoother animations, and better transitions from ‘Add to Cart’ to ‘Loading’ status to show the quantity in the cart when a product is added.
The difference is subtle but creates a much smoother shopping experience with nearly instantaneous feedback for the user. Contributors are also exploring how the Interactivity API can be used to improve frontend filters, including the rating, price, stock, and attributes filters. The API will eventually land in Gutenberg and WordPress in the future, but in the meantime WooCommerce is experimenting to see how the plugin’s blocks can benefit from it.
Version 11.0.0 was released last week introducing the new Product Collection block in beta:
Like the Products block, you can choose what criteria affect the list of blocks displayed to shoppers and control the product layout in the list/grid by the various element blocks.
Unlike the Products block, which is a Query loop block variation, this block is a standalone block, enabling us to tailor the block further to better meet the merchant’s needs.
The Product Collection block is very similar to the Products block from which it was forked, except it is not built as a variation of the Query Loop. It comes with improvements around Inspector controls as compared to the current Products block, as well as a basic set of patterns. The block already has the Interactivity API integrated for the same improved frontend performance.
Version 11.0.0 also enables manual migration of Products to Product Collection. An upgrade notice will appear in the Inspector Controls, informing users that they will get more features with the Product Collection block:
As the Product Collection block is still in beta, WooCommerce Blocks has not yet changed existing templates that have Product blocks. The development team is looking for more feedback on this block before moving it out of beta. Check out the release post for more enhancements and bug fixes.
Human Made, a leading enterprise WordPress agency, is organizing a followup event to the community’s first ever AI for WordPress virtual conference that it hosted in May 2023. The second edition is called “AI: The Next Chapter” and will take place online on September 14, 2023, at 10AM EST.
The first event had 13 speakers and drew more than 600 attendees. It focused on WordPress and AI tools that people are building with the emerging technology. (Videos of all the sessions are available on YouTube.) This next edition will explore some of the wider societal, ethical, and tech issues related to the subject.
The keynote and intro will feature Matt Mullenweg on “AI and the future of WordPress,” along with Human Made CEO Tom Willmot. Dr. Eleanor Drage, a senior research fellow at the University of Cambridge and co-host of The Good Robot podcast, will be speaking about AI and gender. Open source LLM researchers from Georgian will also join for a panel discussion on why they believe open source AI is the best way for companies to leverage this technology.
Registration is free and participants can sign up on the event’s website. A confirmation email is sent out to registrants and more information will follow via email.
Human Made has developed a keen interest in fostering exploratory dialogue through these events, as the company is working on AI products and custom implementations for clients. At the first event, the agency showcased some early work in the Altis Accelerate plugin and have been working with clients to determine how AI can augment existing marketing and editorial workflows.
“The progress and innovation we’re seeing in AI is so rapid at the moment that it kind of demands you stay close to it, keep following what’s happening, and keep learning,” Human Made Marketing Director Alex Aspinall said. “AI is one of our core areas of focus, across all parts of the business, so we’ll definitely be building, sharing, and hosting more in the space in the months to come. Doing all this in the open is really important to us, so the events are a great platform.”
During the first event, Aspinall reports that Human Made saw registrations and participation across a wide range of business verticals and role disciplines, with conversations continuing months after the first event.
“While there are a few businesses and individuals building things, experimenting, and commercializing their work in the area, the vast majority are still finding their way through, figuring out how best to implement AI to deliver tangible benefit to their companies, their clients, their teams, and their day-to-day lives,” Aspinall said.
“Despite the level of advancement we’ve already seen, we’re still right at the start of this thing, which is really exciting. There’s a lot to learn, and considerable edge available for those experimenting and putting things in place. Imagine what we’ll be talking about this time next year!”
(@TheJeffMatson) 
