This week: “WP” in plugin names, Gutenberg’s performance, cost of a WordPress site and many more…
Guest Editor:
Iain Poulson is a developer, business owner, podcaster, and writer. He works as a Product Manager for Delicious Brains the company behind WP Migrate DB Pro, WP Offload Media, SpinupWP and Advanced Custom Fields.
He helps people buy and sell WordPress businesses at FlipWP, runs the WP Trends newsletter, and develops WordPress plugins.
It feels like the WordPress ecosystem has exploded this year with acquisitions happening left, right and centre. From high profile ones like Yoast and ACF, through to a continual stream of medium-sized companies being acquired nearly every week. It’s part of the reason why we’ve launched FlipWP to help people sell their WordPress product business to the right people, and give serious buyers a one-stop place to find their next acquisition.
Although many view every new acquisition with trepidation, I think it’s a real sign the ecosystem is maturing and growing in a way that will benefit all over the next 10 years.
As announced last week, Yoast was acquired by Newfold Digital but it was this post from Joost de Valk, explaining the reasons behind selling, that I found honest and fascinating. I can’t imagine the stress that COVID has put on business owners, being responsible for a large number of staff. Most people hear about an acquisition and instantly think money is the only driver. But not everyone wants the long term pressure and responsibility of running a business, and it was refreshing to hear Joost lay it out like that.
Earlier this year Automattic raised another round of funding to the tune of $288m, which involved buying back shares at a $7.5bn valuation. The funding round consisted of multiple investors – some new and some existing. With an ever growing marketshare of sites running WordPress, and Automattic growing at a good pace, the future of WordPress looks bright.
The WP Tavern new-ish Jukebox podcast recently had Cory Miller from Post Status to talk about WordPress Mergers and Acquisitions. It’s a great conversation that comes from both sides. Cory is one of the best place people to address this topic. Well worth a listen.
Matias Ventura described how will theme.json influence many aspects of themes.
This week, a rather serious discussion broke out over rumors that Automattic has banned the use of “WP” in plug-in names because of trademark reasons . It turned out that the explanation is slightly different.
In reference to last week’s WP prefix discussions, Ben Meredith wonders why the community has responded so vigorously on this topic.
LearnDash is taking cutting-edge e-learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. Trusted to power the learning programs for major universities, small to mid-size companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and bloggers worldwide.
Riad Benguella measured the effect of various plugins on Gutenberg’s performance. Some cases give really unexpected results – for example Jetpack, partially speeds up the editor.
A very useful guide on how to migrate databases using WP Migrate DB Pro has appeared on the Buddy website.
David Bushell has expressed some doubts about the syntax with which Gutenberg saves data.
Mike Neumegen described the various jamstack CMSes. He looked at their history, the current situation, and also tried to guess how their future will look like.
An interview with Lesley Sim, co-creator of the Newsletter Glue plugin, appeared on MainWP.
There is a tutorial on the WPGraphQL website showing how you can use WPGraphQL together with Atlas Content Modeler to create a simple bookstore website.
Eric Karkovack brings up an important topic about some plugin styles. Very often they do not match the rest of our website, so we have to manage them somehow to make the whole thing look uniform.
Matt Medeiros questioned Joost de Valk about their acquisition by Newfold.
Marcus Burk of Inpsyde explains how much the website should cost.
Ross Morsali described how to use namespaces and how to create an autoloader in a WordPress plugin.
On the Velocitize website, Eileen Smith explains why business should take a second look at WordPress.
Cloudflare described how they dealt with the biggest DDoS attack in history.
Jeremy Keith is another person to resign from AMP’s advisory board. Reason? “AMP is a product of Google, and only parts of it can be considered Open Source.”
Upcoming Events:
On 31st August Buddy is doing a webinar about Creating the perfect flow for your WP apps together with Kinsta and Osom Studio.
WPMRR Virtual Summit, a conference devoted to earning through WordPress, is scheduled to take place on September 21-23.
After a short break WordCamp US online is back. It will take place on 1st October.