EDITS.WS

Tag: News

  • ClassicPress at a Crossroads, Directors Consider Re-Forking WordPress

    ClassicPress is polling its users to determine the next step for the software. The project is a pared back fork of WordPress based on version 4.9 that uses the TinyMCE classic editor as the default option with no block editor. It’s run under a non-profit organization called the ClassicPress Initiative.

    In July 2022, the project appeared to be on the rocks when its directors resigned, saying that the community felt they were now hindering the progress of ClassicPress. The organization was struggling to meet its required financial support but has since rallied and is in a more stable place after moving the donation process to Open Collective.

    In a recent forum post titled “The Future of ClassicPress,” one of the project’s directors, Viktor Nagornyy, presented the community with two paths: re-fork ClassicPress using WordPress 6.0, or continue as-is.

    “Over the past few years, our core team has been working on improving ClassicPress and backporting features from WordPress,” Nagornyy said. “As WordPress continued to evolve, ClassicPress got a bit behind in adding new features as the focus became PHP 8+ compatibility.”

    An exploratory fork of WordPress 6.0 with the block editor removed exists in a GitHub repository called WP-CMS. It is not finished but could potentially become ClassicPress 2.0. This option has the benefit of helping the project catch up to WordPress and improve compatibility with more recent versions of PHP, and open up more plugins and themes for users that require 5.0+ in order to be compatible. The downside is that it will take months to complete with ClassicPress’ limited number of contributors and ClassicPress 1.x would need to be maintained in terms of security for some time.

    The alternative is continuing to maintain the project as it is with no requirement to maintain separate versions. Nagornyy identified the cons of this approach:

    • Our small core team will continue to focus on PHP compatibility
    • Backporting from WP is prioritized, so new ClassicPress features might not happen
    • We won’t be able to catch up with WordPress, functions/features will be missing
    • Plugins/themes compatible with WordPress 5+ would be incompatible with ClassicPress

    The project is now at a crossroads considering the two options, which has forced the community to reexamine the purpose of ClassicPress.

    “So the real question is ClassicPress a Pre-Wordpress 5.0 or just WordPress without Gutenberg?” founding committee member Daniele Scasciafratte said.

    “Considering also that CP is based on a codebase of 5 years ago and the web is moving on, I think that we should move to Re-Fork and find a way to automatize it as much possible and simplify it.”

    ClassicPress core committer Álvaro Franz, who is also the author of the WP-CMS fork based on WP 6.0, said he is unwilling to help with a continuation of the current version.

    “I don’t see the point in working on an outdated version of something that has already been improved by many great developers at WordPress (as stated by @Mte90, there have in fact been A LOT of improvements),” Franz said. “But I can take care of v2, since I already am the author of the mentioned fork, I can help with keeping WP-CMS up with WordPress and then using that as a base for CP v2.”

    WordPress core contributor Joy Reynolds commented on the thread, indicating that ClassicPress has a grim future ahead if it keeps struggling to backport all the improvements made after 4.9. She contends that continuing on the same path leads to a dead end, given the project’s small contributor base:

    The whole point of backporting from WP is because they have thousands of developers, millions of users testing every combination of version and plugin and host to find problems (plus a testing team), a security team, and a performance team. CP has none of that and it’s kind of silly to not take advantage of their efforts. But the more things we ignore or fall behind on, the harder it is to backport anything.

    There are many things that continue to evolve, outside of WP, like PHP, Javascript, CSS, HTML, and various bundled tools (like jQuery and TinyMCE and PHPMailer and Simple Pie and Requests…).

    CP can’t stand still at 4.9. That’s dead. But if you tried to backport all the PHP8 stuff, you’d find it very difficult because of all the formatting changes they made, plus all the bug fixes, plus all the new features. The new fork bypasses the backport problem by taking it all at once and deleting the block stuff that is unwanted.

    I personally think that CP doesn’t have any features of value that WP doesn’t have. It has a bunch of fixes and a few features from WP, but it’s a dead end, especially with the limited roster of people who contribute code.

    In a contrasting comment, ClassicPress founding committee member Tim Kaye distilled why the poll seems to be so divisive.

    “If all that people want is WordPress without Gutenberg, there’s absolutely no need for ClassicPress at all since there’s already a plugin that provides what you’re looking for,” Kaye said. “It’s called Classic Editor.

    “The idea that the question is whether CP should essentially mirror a stripped-down version of WP or not is therefore entirely misconceived. Those who desire that objective should be using that plugin. It’s really that simple.

    “CP (and the work that goes into it) only makes sense if it’s its own CMS with its own decision-making process and its own features.”

    Former ClassicPress contributor @ozfiddler, who likened working on the project to “polishing the brass on a rudderless ship,” suggested ClassicPress identify a destination before choosing between two paths.

    “But then, that’s the problem with CP – it never really knew where it was going, beyond ‘WP-without-Gutenberg,’” @ozfiddler said. “So, it means you get statements like this listed as a con for one of the options: ‘We won’t be able to catch up with WordPress.’

    “When I was contributing to CP I always thought that the ambitions greatly outweighed the available resources. I occasionally suggested a drastic pruning back of the project, but this was always met with widespread disapproval. I still think that if CP is going to survive at all (and I very much doubt it) then you will need to define a narrower subset of users and focus your limited efforts on catering to them.”

    ClassicPress’ poll and the 80 comments in the discussion offer a glimpse into the frustrating reality of maintaining a fork of a fast-moving, large project like WordPress. So far there are 31 votes and Nagornyy plans to close it within the next few days if it doesn’t receive any new votes.

  • Block Protocol Announces New WordPress Plugin Coming in 2023

    Block Protocol, a project that launched earlier this year that aims to build a universal block system, has announced a new WordPress plugin coming in early 2023. It will allow users to embed interactive blocks that are compatible with Gutenberg. Given WordPress’ footprint on the web (43% by W3Tech’s estimate), this plugin is a major milestone on the project’s roadmap for supporting a more interoperable and open web with blocks that can be shared through a standardized protocol. 

    The Block Protocol plugin will give users access to the global registry of interoperable blocks. These include interactive blocks for drawing, a GitHub pull request overview, a timer, calculation, and more. Once installed, users will see these blocks available in the inserter. The newest versions of the blocks are always available to users without having to update the plugin. Creators of the Block Protocol are also releasing a few new blocks alongside the plugin, including an OpenAI DALL-E-powered image generation block and a GPT-powered block for generating text.

    This announcement comes just days after Matt Mullenweg’s 2022 State of the Word address, where he was asked about Gutenberg potentially collaborating with the Block Protocol project.

    “Sometimes developers don’t like to work together on the same thing,” Mullenweg said in response to the question. “And so it’s part of why there’s like 200 CMS’s and stuff like that. Sometimes there might be a stylistic or a technical change that when you look at it, you say, ‘I can’t use this thing that exists. I’m going to start something that’s different.’ And I think that’s a little bit what’s happening with Gutenberg and the Block Protocol.”

    Mullenweg confirmed that the projects have been communicating but were not able to get onto the same page.

    “They feel like there’s some things, either choices in Gutenberg or ways we develop things, that just are incompatible with how they see it happening,” he said. “We’ll see where that goes in the future. We’ve tried to make it CMS-agnostic so it can be embedded in anything and re-skinned, like you saw with the Tumblr example, it can be totally different. Everything we’re doing is open, so I would hope that wherever they end up, Gutenberg blocks could maybe be embedded, if there’s a translation layer or something like that.”

    Mullenweg sounded optimistic about the possibility of interoperability between Gutenberg and Block Protocol’s specification where users could copy and paste blocks across applications.

    “Maybe they create something really cool, that’s open source,” he said. “And then we’re like, ‘oh, let’s bring that over to Gutenberg,’ so the innovation can flow both ways, and sometimes that’s only possible if you’re starting something from scratch.”

    Since the Block Protocol project is open source and designed to be an open protocol, Mullenweg said he considers it “like a cousin project,” and hopes that WordPress can integrate more in the future.

    “If not, that’s okay too,” he said. “Maybe this will just be an alternative ecosystem that can experiment with new ideas or maybe things we would say no to, they can try. And then we see how it’s adopted by users.” 

    The initial draft of the Block Protocol spec is being incubated by the team at HASH, an open source data, modeling, and simulation platform. HASH is using the protocol in beta. The current version of the spec will be deprecated as of v0.3, which is anticipated to arrive in February 2023 alongside the WordPress plugin.

    “I obviously can’t speak to what Automattic are officially thinking about the Block Protocol, but we’ve been energized by the community’s continued interest,” HASH CEO David Wilkinson said.

    “Thanks to WordPress’ open architecture we can prove out the Block Protocol first as a plugin, giving users today the ability to access Block Protocol blocks within WordPress, and build blocks themselves that work not only in WordPress, but in HASH and other Block Protocol embedders, as well. In time we think that the value in having a standard way to write blocks which work across apps will become self-evident.”

    Wilkinson said WordPress was the most requested CMS from Block Protocol users, as it is the most widely used, but he also has a personal connection with the software.

    “WordPress is near and dear to my heart,” he said. “I built my first websites with it, have worked with it for more than half my life (!), and have a huge amount of respect for the organization and operation behind it. It’s the obvious platform to start with.”

    The Block Protocol team has received requests for support from users of more than 50 block-based applications, and the project is currently running a poll to help identify the next one on the roadmap.

    Even though the Block Protocol and Gutenberg projects did not find an acceptable way to combine efforts, WordPress users will get the best of both worlds with the new upcoming plugin. At the moment, access to Block Protocol’s Hub of blocks doesn’t offer any functionality that is superior to what is found in core WordPress and other native block plugins. The addition of the OpenAI-powered blocks will help make it more compelling, and the protocol’s ability to work across apps may bring an influx of more interesting blocks in the future.

    The Block Protocol is currently onboarding beta testers for the new WordPress plugin. Those who are interested can sign up for early access.

  • WordCamp Sevilla: Meeting the Spanish WordPress Community

    We are honored to sponsor WordCamp Sevilla as part of our commitment to the WordPress community.

    If you know anything about websites, you probably have heard about WordPress. Many swear by its plugins and themes, but I would argue that the main thing that sets WordPress apart is its supportive and close-knit community.

    And there is no better way to get the most out of this community than attending a WordPress WordCamp.

    On November 5th, we did exactly that. A group of Hostingerians, myself included, took part in WordCamp Sevilla to learn, share, and connect with others passionate about improving WordPress.

    Why WordCamp

    With over two-thirds of our clients using WordPress, we have a very real and up-to-date idea of what users love about the platform – and of its shortcomings.

    Since WordCamp events are informal and community-driven, we connect with new users and experienced developers. We get a good idea of how different types of users approach our services and who they need more support from – either their web host or the WordPress community.

    It’s also a learning experience, as these events help us provide the best possible WordPress experience for our clients. From performance-specific conversations to up-and-coming releases and features, there is something for everyone at WordCamp.

    Making Connections at WordCamp Sevilla

    At WordCamp Sevilla, our main message was customer obsession. Since it’s one of our company principles, sharing our experiences of customer interviews with the audience was a no-brainer. During our time on stage, we discussed that simple and honest yet effective communication with clients is key to achieving results in business.

    This led to many great conversations with the attendees at our booth later. We discussed topics like the pros and cons of cPanel and our custom-built control panel and the hosting needs of web agencies.

    Attendees could also get some of our memorabilia and participate in our sweepstake. Four lucky winners walked away with hosting plans, backpacks, and jumpers.

    We also gifted WordPress hosting plans for educational organizations that teach how to get the most out of WordPress. This way, we hope to do our part to bring WordPress closer to everyone and help them succeed online.

    Why WordPress

    We firmly believe that there’s a reason WordPress is so popular and successful. Behind nearly half of all the world’s websites, WordPress makes it easy for anyone to realize their dreams online.

    From thousands of plugins and themes to choose from, the open-source nature of this CMS brings the community together in an unprecedented way. Web agencies, communities of sustainable farmers, and even fetish eCommerce stores use WordPress – it’s great for any business niche.

    We are also part of the Five for the Future initiative, meaning that we are contributing 5% of our company resources to developing and improving WordPress.

    What does that mean in reality, though? Every week, 27 of our experts collaborate with the WordPress development teams, working on various projects ranging from back-end development to support, documentation, marketing, and more.

    Where Are We Headed Next?

    We’ve been to WordCamp US, and now we have interacted at WordCamp Sevilla. It’s only natural to wonder where you can catch us next.

    Our eyes are on WordCamp Zaragoza to meet the rest of the Spanish WordPress community in January 2023.

    The post WordCamp Sevilla: Meeting the Spanish WordPress Community appeared first on Hostinger Blog.

  • WordPress.com Launches Newsletter Product

    WordPress.com has launched a newsletter product just in time to capture those escaping Gumroad’s price increase and editors displaced by Revue shutting down. Newsletters, which were already booming as a communication tool in recent years, have become more critical than ever, as the uncertainty around Twitter has people scrambling to find reliable ways to stay connected.

    WordPress.com (and Jetpack users) have had the ability to send published posts to email subscribers for years. This isn’t usually marketed as a newsletter (as you can see below) but functions in the same way.

    WordPress.com Newsletter is a new streamlined product for scheduling and publishing newsletters using WordPress. It uses the same underlying infrastructure as subscribing to sites via email, offering users unlimited email subscribers. During setup, newsletter creators can import up to 100 subscribers from other newsletter services by uploading a CSV file.

    A theme designed for newsletters is put in place with additional newsletter-focused block patterns for the Subscribe box. Users can take advantage of the Site Editor to further customize the site’s background, site icon, and accent colors. This type of website showcases the versatility of the block editor, as newsletter creators can quickly design their own unique websites, without editing any code.

    With all the activity in the newsletter product space lately, I had to give myself a tour of WordPress.com’s new product to see how it stacks up to creating campaigns with other dedicated email services. In the first part of the setup process, users will upload a logo, specify a site name and description, and select a color.

    The next section displays pricing options with a plain link at the top for the free plan. Paid plans are ad-free and allow users to send unlimited emails. In the future, the premium plan will allow users to monetize their newsletters in various ways, such as selling subscriptions or collecting donations.

    After selecting a plan and free or paid domain name, users have the opportunity to upload up to 100 emails from other newsletter services. I selected the free plan, so that number may be unlimited with the paid plans. The site setup is fairly quick, as it puts the default theme in place, and users are encouraged to start writing. It’s a simple flow entirely geared towards publishing newsletters. Depending on the readiness of the post, newsletter authors can have their first issue landing in subscribers’ inboxes in minutes.

    The default newsletter site theme doesn’t come with additional style variations but users can easily edit the templates to expand, reduce, or further customize what is shown on the frontend.

    The default theme is very minimalist but looks nice out of the box on both desktop and mobile. The subscribe form is front and center and recent posts, or newsletter “issues,” show up underneath with a featured image.

    If you are familiar with WordPress, using the block editor is likely far easier than any newsletter campaign editor out there, as these tend to be clunky and limited in options. Publishing directly from WordPress.com also eliminates the need to copy the content over into a newsletter service and reformat it for email, a problem that services like Newsletter Glue have set out to solve for self-hosted WordPress sites.

    if you are a subscriber of IndieWeb principles, one of the most important considerations in launching a newsletter is that you own your own data and have the opportunity to practice POSSE (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). WordPress.com’s new offering makes it effortless to follow this workflow for newsletter publishing.

    One bonus feature, which is lacking with major newsletter service providers, is that subscribers can reply to the email to leave a comment on the published post, furthering the public conversation around each issue of the newsletter.

    Although WordPress.com has experience sending millions of emails at scale, the newsletter product’s pricing and sales copy doesn’t mention anything about deliverability rates. This is a major selling point for people coming from other services which haven’t performed as well on deliverability. There is also no comparison chart showing the limitations of the free account, which may be an important consideration for those who are just testing the waters.

    For those who are not hosting their sites at WordPress.com, there are a myriad of diverse plugins for self-hosted WordPress that can make newsletter publishing a seamless process. It requires knowing which ones to install, setup, and configure. For non-technical publishers, WordPress.com’s newsletter product is the most approachable entry point to WordPress-based newsletter publishing that exists on the market right now. If the company can add the monetization features fast enough, this product has the potential to become a major contender among newsletter services jostling to capture the creator economy.

  • Drupal Gutenberg 2.6 Released with Drupal 10 Compatibility

    Drupal Gutenberg, the Gutenberg module for Drupal that was created by Frontkom, has released version 2.6 with compatibility for Drupal 10. The module offers Drupal users a better authoring experience using blocks, allowing them to quickly build landing pages and save reusable blocks inside the editor without any code required.

    There are more than 3,300 active Drupal installations using Gutenberg, and the module has been receiving regular updates for more than four years. It ships with 60+ blocks as well as access to the Gutenberg Cloud, a cross-platform community library for custom Gutenberg blocks. Since the blocks are JavaScript-only, they work across both Drupal and WordPress sites alike.

    “Installing Gutenberg slashed our content creation time by 80%,” a content creator at Fortum, a Finnish state-owned energy company, reported to the Drupal Gutenberg maintainers. “We are able to create more content in a shorter time, allowing us to be much more agile than we used to.”

    Version 2.6 includes the following fixes and enhancements:

    Drupal Gutenberg has removed support for Drupal 8 in this release. Version 2.6 is fully compatible with Drupal 10, released yesterday. Drupal 10 was previously scheduled for June 2022 but pushed back to December. This release shipped with all the new features of CKEditor 5, which boasts a more modular architecture, but it is a complete rewrite of the previous version with no backwards compatibility.

    CKEditor is the most popular editor among Drupal users and is now the default editor. Drupal users can easily swap out their editor on per content-type basis, and the Gutenberg module can be enabled as an alternative to CKEditor. The module is superior to CKEditor when it comes to design controls and building layouts.

    The maintainers of Drupal Gutenberg hold periodic contributor meetings on a bi-weekly basis, every second Friday at 15-16 CET on Google Meet. They have fully embraced the vision of Gutenberg as a platform where blocks can be used to edit content and design across a variety of applications. If you are a user of the Drupal Gutenberg module, the maintainers are requesting feedback through a 30-second survey.

  • State of the Word 2022: Matt Mullenweg Highlights Gutenberg’s Progress, Announces New Community Tools

    State of the Word (SOTW) watch parties kicked off around the world this afternoon as Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual address to the WordPress community. A small group of people gathered live in New York City to participate while the majority of enthusiasts watched via the livestream. Mullenweg spent an hour reviewing and celebrating the work done across the project in 2022 before taking questions from the audience.

    At last year’s SOTW, Mullenweg spoke about how Gutenberg adoption is growing beyond WordPress and how he believed it could become “bigger than WordPress itself.” In addition to Gutenberg getting rolled out on the bbPress support forums this week to modernize the WordPress support experience, the block editor has found its way into more apps in 2022.

    Mullenweg cited a few examples including Engine Awesome (a Laravel-based SaaS application), the Pew Research Center’s Political Typology Quiz, the web version of Automattic’s Day One app, and the Tumblr post form. He noted that in Tumblr, 99% of the editor is hidden – there’s no sidebar, everything happens inline. Mullenweg said he is hoping Gutenberg can create an “open block standard that can be used anywhere,” where users learn it on one system and it can be applied in other apps.

    For those who had been missing WordCamps, one of the major highlights of 2022 was the return to in-person events. From 2021 to 2022, the number of meetup groups doubled. Only one WordCamp was held in 2021 but that jumped to 22 WordCamps in 2022. Mullenweg highlighted how WordCamps have historically been “the magical ingredient” for onboarding people to contribute and teaching them about WordPress culture.

    For being just one year back into in-person events, WordPress has done well in 2022 with 1,399 release contributors and 652 contributing for the first time. There were 204 people who contributed to all releases in 2022 and 424 who contributed in 2021 and returned in 2022. Some 322 contributors took a break in 2021 and returned in 2022.

    People are also contributing to Openverse, which has indexed more than 22 million images, 1.1 million audio files, and has handled more than 59 million requests in the last 30 days.

    Tools Coming to the Community: New Taxonomies for the Plugin and Theme Directories and Staging “Playground” that Runs WordPress in the Browser

    It wouldn’t be the State of the Word without a few exciting announcements. Mullenweg unveiled a plan to add new taxonomies for the theme and plugin directories that will help users more quickly ascertain the purpose of the extensions they are considering.

    For example, there would be a tag for the type of plugins that a developer might create to solve a problem but may not be intended for wide public use and may not come with dedicated support. Another tag would be designated for “Community” plugins, which Mullenweg said is for software that “belongs to all of us” with the lead developers stewarding it for the next generation. This tag is for plugins that do not have any upsells and invite contributions. Some of these plugins will be canonical plugins, those that are officially supported by core developers and receive attention from the security team. Gutenberg and the importer plugins are a few examples.

    Another tag would be designated for commercial plugins that have some sort of upsell and often include commercial support. Anything with a pro version will fall within this category. Mullenweg said he wants WordPress.org to create an environment where commercial and non-commercial plugins can exist together harmoniously.

    The new taxonomies will be launching in the directories this month and will also eventually make their way into the plugin and theme screens inside the WordPress admin. This will be a major improvement that will give users of all experience levels a better understanding of the extensions they are examining, making it easier to select the right type for their needs.

    Mullenweg also announced WordPress’ official support for the WordPress Sandbox project, which we featured earlier this month. He outlined a plan for what will officially be called “WordPress Playground.” The experimental project uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser without a PHP server, making it possible to spin up new playgrounds in just a couple of seconds. This will enable things like a guided, interactive WordPress landing experience where developers can edit code live and see the results right away. It will also make it possible for users to try plugins directly from the directory and may someday be used to allow people to contribute to WordPress core.

    A new website for WordPress Playground is located at https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/ where anyone interested can check out the experimental project for running a WordPress instance entirely in your browser. There’s also a new #meta-playground Slack channel for those who want to join the conversation.

    WordPress turns 20 next year. Mullenweg noted that not many software projects make it that long but WordPress is also growing faster than ever, currently powering 43% of websites according to W3Techs and 32% according to Builtwith. A new website at wp20.wordpress.net will be headquarters for the festivities, including swag, merchandise, and a new Milestones book for the most recent 10 years of WordPress’ history.

    If you didn’t have the chance to catch the State of the Word this afternoon, check out the recording below to hear Mullenweg’s vision for the next phases of WordPress and see demos of all the progress made on block themes and full-site editing in 2022.

  • Open for All: State of the Word 2022

    On a rainy, cloudy day in New York City, WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg presented his annual State of the Word keynote speech. In front of a small but engaged in-person audience, and a vast streaming audience, Mullenweg went over the WordPress wins for 2022 and what we can look forward to in 2023. 

    Matt Mullenweg delivering the State of the Word Keynote in New York City.
    Matt Mullenweg delivering the State of the Word Keynote in New York City.

    Some themes were familiar such as the power of the community, and the importance of keeping open source open. But others like collaborative editing within the dashboard and new plugin taxonomies spoke to an exciting and vibrant future of the project that couldn’t have been imagined when it was created 20 years ago. 

    Let’s dive into it all. 

    Missed the keynote? Watch the entire thing here: 

    WordPress for All

    This year’s keynote kicked off with a beautiful sentiment from WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Hayden Chomphosy, who displayed the four freedoms of open source, reminding us all why we’re here. These act as a sort of sort of Bill of Rights for all open source projects.

    The four freedoms of open source. 1st, Run the program 2nd, Study and Change 3rd, Redistribute 4th, Distribute Your Copies
    The four freedoms of open source.

    WordPress has and will always be open source. That means that anyone with a device and Wifi connection can create beautiful websites. 

    “We secure opportunities and freedoms long into the future for people who may not even know those freedoms should matter to them yet,” Chomphosy said. “Open source is an idea that can change our generation.” 

    On that profound note, Mullenweg was introduced and began a look back at what was accomplished in 2022. 

    2022 By the Numbers

    2022 was a huge year for WordPress. After the tough previous two years, the community was able to come together in person and get back to what makes WordPress great, the people. 

    WordPress Turns 20

    It is hard to believe but WordPress is turning 20 next year! Mullenweg announced there will be celebrations throughout the year. Watch this space for ways to welcome WordPress into adulthood! This is a huge accomplishment software projects.

    In-Person Events are Back

    After COVID halted all in-person meetups in 2020 and most of 2021, 2022 brought people back together in person in a big way. Both the number of meetups and WordCamps grew significantly.  

    A graphic showing there was 1 WordCamp in 2021 and 22 in 2022.
    The number of WordCamps in 2022.
    • 500 meetups doubled their size in 2022
    • 22 WordCamps happened in 2022 (Up from 1 in 2021)
    • 34 WordCamps are currently being planned for 2023

    Contributions Grew

    Just as in-person events suffered in 2020 and 2021, so did contributions. Put simply, WordPress cannot be without the contributions from the community, and the last two years were a big of a hit. This year, however, even more people came together to make WordPress better.

    A graphic showing the number of release contributors in 2022, 1,399
    • Overall there were 1,399 release contributors.
    • 652 of those were first-timers.
    • 204 contributed to all the releases in 2022.
    • 424 contributed in 2021 and 2022.
    • 322 took a break in 2021 but returned in 2022.

    As Mullenweg said in the speech, “From the bottom of my heart, to the top of my lungs, thank you to the WordPress community.” 

    Democratizing Design

    There were three big releases this year, and all aimed to wrap up Phase 2 of Gutenberg. By introducing theme blocks, styles, and patterns, WordPress took one step closer to Site Editing. With the release of 6.1, users can now actually design their entire website using blocks. 

    One of the coolest things that shipped with 6.1 is the Twenty Twenty-Three theme which featured style variations designed by community members. These variations allow you to reskin your site with just the click of a button. 

    These features will have a huge impact on how people design in WordPress. Mullenweg mentioned this theme might be “one of the last for WordPress.” 

    Onward and Upward

    Speaking of exciting, let’s dive into what we can expect from 2023 and beyond. It’s clear no one is hitting the brakes in 2023, and things are only going to get bigger and better. 

    Editing Together with Gutenberg 

    As stated above, Phase 2 of Gutenberg will most likely end in March of 2023 with the release of 6.2, so what is next?

    In 2023, Phase 3 will begin. With this phase comes Collaborative Editing, giving users Google Docs-like real-time editing tools. This means you can share a draft of a page or post and someone can add edits and comments. 

    Another big update in Phase 3 will be to Post Revisions. These allow you to see every edit that has been made to a post, which can be handy but potentially slow down your site. Mullenweg announced an update to the interface in 2023. 

    Categorizing the Plugin Repository 

    A big announcement for any plugin authors out there, the plugin repository will now include a few new default taxonomies. These are meant to further categorize and explain the use of each plugin. They are as follows: 

    • Single-player plugin: Created by an individual, might have paid aspects, not accepting contributions.
    • Community plugin: Completely free, built by the community, for the community. There are no upsells. Contributions are not only encouraged, they are regularly requested.
    • Canonical plugin: A community plugin that has been “blessed” by wordpress.org. The plugin will be featured there, and WordPress core team members will perform frequent security checks. Think Gutenberg. 
    • Commercial plugin: A plugin owned by a company, may or may not accept contributions.

    These are set to launch this month. 

    Introducing Playground

    One of the biggest announcements of the day was for Playground. Playground, which is being marketed as a “WordPress experience that runs totally in your browser,” allows you to test out any part of your site without using a host, database, or web server of any kind. 

    You can test out plugins, design choices, updates, and anything else you can think of in real time. If you are already logged into the WP Admin, you can start using the tool today without any sign up or set up. 

    This can be a great option for someone new to WordPress who wants to get in and play  around, or a seasoned user who wants to test out a new plugin without breaking anything. 

    Though the project is live, it is still very much being tested. If you want to jump in and give feedback, you can do so here. 

    Is AI the Future? 

    Mullenweg was very excited about the uses AI could have for the future. He shared a prompt his team had given ChatGPT, a language creator. 

    Chat GPT prompt saying" "Write a very short scene in which Matt, the founder of WordPress, describes Full Site Editing in a single word." The answer reads, "Matt, the founder of WordPress, stood on a stage in front of a large crowd and eager developers. He smiled confidently and said, "Full Site Editing, in a single word? Transformative." The crowd erupted in applause as Matt walked off the stage.

    The answer was pretty spot on. So what does this mean for WordPress? While Matt didn’t make any direct connections from AI to WordPress, the parallels were pretty clear. 

    DALL-E is an open source project, so could AI be the next big thing in open source? Are bloggers going to start using AI to write articles or create images? Probably not, but the opportunity is there and it is growing. Mullenweg shared his favorite Picasso quote, “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

    Mulenweg countered with, “Computers still give you answers. The creativity is in the inputs.” So no, AI isn’t going to take over all website and content creation. It can serve a purpose in helping inspire or make us think differently, but ultimately, creativity is very human. 

    Questions Were Answered

    As with every State of the Word, there was a robust Q and A section at the end that allowed for people to bring up things that weren’t mentioned in the speech. 

    The Future of Themes

    Understandably, Mullenweg’s mention of “The last theme,” put some people on edge. Bud Kraus asked for clarification on what the future of themes looks like to Mullenweg. Could there be a future with one universal theme and nothing more? 

    The short answer, no. 

    “I see themes being split into two categories: standardized block themes and community themes doing niche or interesting stuff,” Mullenweg said. 

    There is room for both of these communities to exist within WordPress. Some users will opt for a block theme where they can get something spun up within a day, but others will need an expert to create something from scratch. 

    PHP 8

    It wouldn’t be a WordPress event without talking about PHP 8. Ryan Marks asked, “Since core can’t speak for themes and plugins, can we really say we support PHP 8?” 

    Mullenweg at first let an audience member take a stab at this answer, “8.1 and 8.2 are not supported officially in WordPress core or canonical plugins…we need to do a better job with complete support [and] make this a priority in 2023.”

    He then responded with his own thoughts, “It’s scary when you hear ‘end of life’ but in practice, every major web host continues to backport security and support. Including Automattic.”

    The fact of the matter is, uneasiness around losing support for something is natural, and has happened in the past. We have to do our best to make sure clients and other users feel supported when this happens. 

    WordPress Certification

    A conversation that has been floating around WordPress for years is whether or not there should be some kind of certification program for WordPress. Though he has been opposed in the past due to the work it would take to create and administer these tests, it seems Mullenweg’s tune might be changing. 

    “As there’s more demand for WordPress experts than ever, having some sort of standardized education that they go to. It’s an ongoing training,” he said. “I guess mostly I want to figure out how to do it in a WordPressy way. We want to make this content, training, as radically open as possible.”

    Leave it Better Than You Found It

    At the end of the day, everyone here wants to make WordPress better. Whether it be by making plugins and themes, building sites for clients, or contributing to Core, we all want this thing to be around a long time. 

    Mullenweg mentioned part of that is realizing that WordPress is bigger than us, saying, “I hope that 100 years from now, someone will be giving the State of the Word. WordPress belongs to all of us but really we’re just taking care of it for the next generation.”

    That’s what I’m going to take with me into the New Year. Let’s all take some much needed rest, and then hit the ground running in 2023 to help WordPress take over the rest of the web. 

    The post Open for All: State of the Word 2022 appeared first on Torque.

  • Performance Lab Plugin to Add New Experimental SQLite Integration Module in Upcoming 1.8.0 Release

    WordPress’ Performance Team contributors have merged a new experimental SQLite integration module that is on track to be included in the upcoming version 1.8.0 of the Performance Lab plugin. (This is the plugin that contains a collection of feature plugins with performance-related modules the team hopes to land in WordPress core.) The new module allows the adventurous to test the new SQLite implementation, with the understanding that the overall user experience will still be rough.

    In a proposal titled Let’s make WordPress officially support SQLite, Yoast-sponsored core contributor Ari Stathopoulos contends that less complex sites (small to medium sites and blogs) don’t necessarily benefit from the requirement of using WordPress’ standard MySQL database:

    On the lower end of the spectrum, there are small and simple sites. These are numerous and consist of all the blogs, company pages, and sites that don’t have thousands of users or thousands of posts, etc. These websites don’t always need the complexities of a MySQL/MariaDB database. The requirement of a dedicated MySQL server increases their hosting cost and the complexity of installation. On lower-end servers, it also decreases performance since the same “box” needs to cater to both a PHP and a MySQL/MariaDB server.

    In an ideal world, users could select their database type during installation. Stathopoulos said this would require WordPress to have a database abstraction layer, which other platforms like Drupal have had more 10+ years.

    “Building a database abstraction layer for WordPress would be a colossal task – though it might be one that, at some point in the future, we may have to undertake to ensure the project’s continued evolution and longevity,” he said.

    As an alternative, Stathopoulos sees SQLite as a “perfect fit” and cited the benefits of using it for smaller websites:

    • It is the most widely used database worldwide
    • It is cross-platform and can run on any device
    • It is included by default on all PHP installations (unless explicitly disabled)
    • WordPress’s minimum requirements would be a simple PHP server, without the need for a separate database server. 
    • SQLite support enables lower hosting costs, decreases energy consumption, and lowers performance costs on lower-end servers.

    This new SQLite integration module is based on the wp-db-sqlite plugin, a SQLite database driver drop-in that is also used by the WordPress Sandbox project, as WASM doesn’t support MySQL. The wp-db-sqlite plugin was based on the original work of Kojima Toshiyasu in his eight-year-old SQLite Integration plugin, which is no longer available for download on WordPress.org. Stathopoulos said these solutions have evolved over the years, have been thoroughly tested, and proven to work seamlessly, although they are not well known among users.

    Matt Mullenweg commented in support of the proposal so the implementation moving into the Performance Lab plugin may have a decent shot at landing in core someday in the future. Most participants in the discussion on the proposal were supportive of the idea but also discussed a few of the potential drawbacks. These include poorer support for things like multi-author editing and search.

    “MySQL is and should continue to be the default because if you have aspirations to be the next big thing, then MySQL can scale better,” Stathopoulos said.” If on the other hand you just want a blog, a company site with your about page and a contact form to have an online presence, or any type of small site (which is arguably the majority of sites on WordPress) then SQLite is all you’ll ever need and it will perform a lot better.”

    A few participants in the discussion also bristled at the controversial, religious code of ethics SQLite holds for its contributors. Stathopoulos sees it as a non-issue because the project is open source and the technology is widely used.

    “Its popularity speaks volumes regarding what it can do and where it can be used,” he said in response to criticism of the idea of tying WordPress to a project with an objectionable code of ethics.

    If you have used WordPress from the early days, you have witnessed it become more complicated over the years. Discussions around the idea of a “WordPress Lite” have popped up every few years, but the platform’s specific selection of features seems to have been a major factor in WordPress powering 43% of the web (according to W3Techs). NerdPress founder Andrew Wilder suggested that a SQLite implementation might benefit from being branded as “WordPress Lite.”

    “Reading the comments and potential issues above, if this does move forward, perhaps the way to implement this in a way that makes sense to users would be to brand it simultaneously as ‘WordPress Lite,’” Wilder said. “So if a site is using SQLite, there could be features that are simply no longer available (such as multiple authors, or perhaps plugins that have certain database requirements can’t be installed).”

    Those who are interested in testing the new SQLite integration module should be able to test drive it next week. Google-sponsored Performance Team contributor Felix Arntz gave a few notes on testing in yesterday’s team meeting:

    For the SQLite implementation, other than the SQLite DB working correctly by itself, another crucial aspect to test is the user experience on module activation. You’ll get an entirely new database, but we’ve added some logic to make the transition as seamless as possible: On a typical WordPress setup, you should not need to reinstall WordPress yourself when you enable the module, and you shouldn’t even be needed to log in again.

    Basically the PR has logic to install WordPress automatically in the new database, using the same basic setup data that is present in the regular database.

    Just keep in mind that it is by no means a migration. It’s only the install you’ll get; no content will be migrated.

    The 1.8.0 release of the Performance Lab plugin is expected on Monday, December 19, and is set to include the new module.

  • Introducing SendLayer – Reliable WordPress Email Deliverability Made Easy

    Are you tired of your website emails being marked as spam?

    Have you ever wished there was an easy and reliable way to get your website emails delivered to your customer’s inbox WITHOUT the high costs?

    If you’re like me and most other smart website owners, then you have at least wished for this solution a couple times in your WordPress journey.

    Today, I’m excited to announce my new product, SendLayer, which will level up your website’s email infrastructure.

    We built this tool to help you get your website emails into your user’s inbox with maximum deliverability, reliability, and scalability.

    Introducing SendLayer - SMTP Email Service for WordPress

    What is SendLayer?

    SendLayer is a SMTP email service API that helps your website emails get into customer’s inbox without being marked as spam.

    It offers blazing fast email delivery while protecting your domain reputation from spam filters and giving you detailed email logs along with open & click analytics.

    SendLayer Effect

    SendLayer seamlessly connects with WordPress, so you can use it to reliably send website emails like store receipts, confirmation emails, shipping notifications, password reset emails, and other WordPress emails with maximum reliability.

    Why Do You Need SendLayer?

    If you’re like most users, then you have likely run into the problem of WordPress not sending email issue. This is one of the most commonly asked questions on WPBeginner.

    Many of our beginner level users ask us why their contact form plugin is not sending emails, or why they are not seeing any WordPress notifications.

    That’s because most WordPress hosting servers are not configured to send emails using the default PHP mail() function.

    And even if your hosting server is configured properly, many email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, and others use sophisticated tools to reduce email spam. These tools try to detect if an email is really coming from the location that it claims to be.

    Emails sent by WordPress websites often fail the test.

    This means that majority of the emails sent by your website will either land in user’s spam inbox or not get delivered at all. This include your website’s contact form plugin emails, your online store receipts, password reset emails, admin notifications, and more.

    This is why most smart website owners use SMTP for sending emails in WordPress.

    And this is why I created the free WP Mail SMTP plugin which is used by over 3 million websites.

    How SMTP Works

    But the problem was that a lot of beginner users still didn’t know how to set up SMTP properly because simply installing the plugin isn’t enough.

    You still needed to use a SMTP email service that’s built for maximum deliverability, reliability, and scalability. We integrated with numerous service providers like Amazon, Google, etc, but they were all quite difficult to use for beginners.

    So after listening to a lot of our user feedback, I decided to work with my team to finally create a beginner-friendly SMTP service, SendLayer, that works for all types of websites including WordPress.

    Whether you’re using WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, Drupal, Joomla, or any other platform, you can use SendLayer to improve your email deliverability.

    SendLayer gives you access to:

    • Awesome email deliverability
    • Spam Filter protection
    • Detailed email logs
    • Open and click analytics
    • Event-based webhooks to setup custom notifications
    • SMTP relay API for those that want to use SendLayer inside custom apps
    • Simple suppression list to protect your delivery reputation

    … and a whole lot more.

    Basically, if you’re serious about your website and want to grow your online business, then you know that email deliverability is important.

    And SendLayer offers you one of the best email infrastructure in the market.

    SendLayer Types of Emails

    Once connected with your WordPress site, it automatically ensures that all your website emails get delivered in your user’s inbox.

    How to use SendLayer with WordPress?

    First thing you need to do is create a free SendLayer account.

    SendLayer best SMTP service provider

    Next, you need to install and activate the free WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Upon activation, go to WP Mail SMTP settings page in your WordPress admin menu. Once this page, you need to select the SendLayer mailer.

    SendLayer connection for WordPress

    Next, you will need to enter your SendLayer API key in the field below.

    You can get this API key by following the link on the plugin page which will take you to SendLayer account.

    Once the key is added, you should send a test email using WP Mail SMTP to ensure everything is working.

    For more details, see the full documentation here.

    What’s Coming Next in SendLayer?

    While I’m sharing the SendLayer news with you today, SendLayer has actually been out since April of 2022. After extensively testing it through out 2021, we did a soft-launch earlier in the year and have since onboarded thousands of website owners already using the platform.

    We have a really exciting roadmap ahead of us, and I’m really proud of our team.

    We are working on building ,pre cutting-edge email delivery tools to help small business owners and online store owners get their emails delivered into their user’s inbox, so you can continue to maximize your revenue growth.

    If you have ideas on how we can make the SendLayer platform more helpful for you, then please send us your suggestions.

    As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continue serving you for years to come.

    Yours Truly,

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    The post Introducing SendLayer – Reliable WordPress Email Deliverability Made Easy first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • Mailchimp for WordPress Plugin for Sale in the Ballpark of €1.6M

    Danny van Kooten, creator of the Mailchimp for WordPress plugin, has indicated that he is interested in selling his plugin for somewhere in the ballpark of €1.6M. It is the most popular Mailchimp solution for WordPress, although it is “unofficial” in that it is not developed by or affiliated with Mailchimp in any way. It has more than 2 million active installs and has been downloaded more than 42 million times.

    In a comment on a popular Hacker News post that asks, “What is the best income stream you have created till date?” van Kooten dropped the hint that he is willing to sell the nearly ten-year-old plugin:

    It’s definitely not my passion but in 2013 I built a WordPress plugin around the API of a popular newsletter service and it’s been paying my bills ever since.

    Still going strong at €36K per month excluding VAT.

    There was (and still is) a huge market where non-technical people are looking for a GUI around something a programmer would find very simple (and usually too boring to work on). More so if the tech surrounding it is not particularly sexy, as is the case for WordPress and PHP.

    Ps. In case anyone is reading this, I am open to selling. I spent about 4 hours a week on it and the rest is handled by 2 freelance people costing about €1K / month each. Contact me for details if interested and willing to pay in the ballpark of €1.6M.

    van Kooten developed Mailchimp for WordPress when he was hospitalized in Vietnam due to acute appendicitis with extra time on his hands during his recovery. He identifies himself as an “accidental entrepreneur” in his Hacker News bio. In 2021, he was featured in Wired for his efforts in reducing his carbon output as a plugin developer. He refactored the plugin to send 20kb less data, and, due to its large user base, he estimates these changes reduced the world’s monthly CO2 output by 59,000 kilograms, which Wired estimated is “roughly the equivalent to flying from New York to Amsterdam and back 85 times.”

    Mailchimp for WordPress has commercial upgrades ranging from $59 – $149 per year, and 1% of the plugin’s revenue goes towards environmental projects.

    Although Mailchimp recommends WordPress.com’s “Mailchimp block” as the official WordPress integration (also available in Jetpack 7.1+), van Kooten’s plugin is far more flexible. Mailchimp for WordPress integrates with other popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms 3, BuddyPress, MemberPress, and Events Manager, allowing visitors to subscribe via the checkout or comments form.

    Several commenters on van Kooten’s Hacker News response indicated interest in his offer for sale. His comment offers a a rare, transparent look into a popular plugin’s revenue and potential sale price, as most companies that acquire WordPress plugins are almost never willing to reveal how much they paid for them. As Substack moves to add compatibility for Ghost themes and other third-parties, and newsletters become even more critical with people leaving Twitter, it will be interesting to see more movement in the newsletter support space. van Kooten may be setting out at just the right time to find a buyer for Mailchimp for WordPress.