Issue #219
Happy Friday! It's July 5 and we're covering Wix vs WordPress, CMS market share, supply-chain attacks, WordPress 6.6 RC2, and more.

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Four big headlines

1. Jamie Marsland uncovers Wix's strategic plan to grow market share


Whether you like the clickbait title or not, YouTuber Jamie Marsland got folks talking with his latest video, Wix's Masterplan to conquer WordPress: The Inside Story!

In the 11-minute video, Marsland shares how Wix's Head of Marketing Partnerships and Influencer Marketing contacted him about creating sponsored videos. The email sent him down a rabbit hole on LinkedIn, where he discovered Wix has 100+ people on its marketing team, recently signed its 140th influencer, and is doubling down on the agency website market with its new easy-to-use platform, Wix Studio.

In response, agency owner and creator Kevin Geary shared his two cents on X/Twitter, highlighting that WordPress' competitors are simply engaging in basic marketing tactics. "WordPress is a glorious, but severely wounded elephant, surrounded by hungry wolves who have shown a strong ability to HUNT and KILL. It's not fatally wounded, and it can retain market dominance and turn things around, but it needs better leadership, better vision, and a much stronger and more serious commitment to marketing and education," Geary writes.

At The WP Minute, Matt Medeiros says Wix's money would be better spent on portability (aka data liberation): "Look, I don't think it's an easy task, but if anyone from Wix is listening — spending a few $100k in engineering time to create a plugin that sync's data to/from a WordPress install is probably money well spent — much more than sponsoring a YouTuber."

Meanwhile, Wix's CMS market share—according to Joost de Valk's new and improved CMS market share report, reported below—is at 2.51%, down from 2.66% in June 2023 but up from 0.87% in June 2020.

2. Joost de Valk unveils new and improved market share report


Joost de Valk is redefining how folks interpret WordPress' market share. This week, the Emilia Capital investor published an overhaul of his popular CMS market share report, replacing W3Techs' dataset with that of the HTTP Archive.

The data shows WordPress is by far the most popular CMS with 35.47% market share, followed by Shopify (3.81%), Wix (2.51%), Squarespace (1.8%), Joomla (1.35%) and Drupal (1.34%). A total of 80.47% of websites have an "unrecognized" CMS.

Year-on-year growth among the top 10 CMSes shows WordPress grew just 0.20% in the year to June 2024, compared to Shopify's 15.45% increase. Squarespace experienced the biggest jump, up a staggering 31.39%.

GoDaddy's Courtney Robertson posted, "👀 The most definitive and well-researched data on the current #CMS and #eCommerce market share is available now in real-time. Thanks, @jdevalk and @jonoalderson, for curating the data and elevating it to the #WordPress community,"

The WordPress community has traditionally cited W3Techs' publicly available data when analyzing trends in WordPress' growth. In his mid-year update at WordCamp Europe 2024, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg shared W3Techs' June data when he celebrated WordPress achieving 43.3% market share after several flat years.

W3Techs and the HTTP Archive use different research methodologies and definitions of what counts as a CMS. According to W3Techs' usage statistics of content management systems for July 2024, WordPress now has 43.4% market share, followed by Shopify (4.4%), Wix (2.8%), Squarespace (2.1%), Joomla (1.7%), and Drupal (1.0%).

The report comes after Human Made's Noel Tock challenged how folks interpret WordPress market share during his keynote address at WordCamp Asia. His talk featured what he described as "the most important chart in WordPress today," showing a downward trend in search interest and new WordPress websites since 2014.

3. Supply chain attacks prompts pause on new plugin releases


The WordPress Plugin Review Team took the unprecedented move of briefly pausing all new plugin releases in the WordPress.org directory last weekend after four more plugins were compromised as part of a supply-chain attack.

Threat Analyst Chloe Chamberland has been covering the attack for WordFence: 3 More Plugins Infected in WordPress.org Supply Chain Attack Due to Compromised Developer Passwords (Editor: a fourth compromised plugin was discovered after Chamberland published her article.)

WP Server Health Stats, Ad Invalid Click Protector (AICP), PowerPress Podcasting plugin by Blubrry, and Seo Optimized Images were the latest plugins to become infected with malicious code after an attacker gained access to committer accounts, bringing the total number of hacked plugins in the past two weeks to nine.

Announcing a forced reset of all passwords for plugin authors, SiteGround-sponsored contributor Francisco Torres reiterated that the compromised committer accounts were not the result of an exploit on WordPress.org. Rather, attackers used recycled passwords that were exposed in data breaches elsewhere to gain access to the accounts.

In Post Status Slack (members only), Marius Jensen, Head of Engineering at Dekode, said the last time WordPress.org passwords were reset en masse was in 2017 for similar reasons—reused passwords exposed in third-party data breaches. He said the Review Team's recent demonstrated "the proactiveness of dotorg when such scenarios are discovered."

4. WordPress 6.6 nears release with RC2 bug fixes


A second release candidate for WordPress 6.6 was released this week for testing. It includes over 19 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 20 tickets for Core since the RC2 release.

A third release candidate is scheduled to ship on July 9 ahead of the official release, which is on track to drop on July 16.

For more on what's coming in WordPress 6.6:
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In other news

WordPress project

> Gutenberg 18.7 introduces an experimental manual mode allowing users to drag and drop grid items and a content panel for template parts. Release lead Kai Hao, an Automattic-sponsored contributor, says 115 PRs were merged for this release despite many contributors also spending time working on bug fixes for WordPress 6.6 (Make WordPress Core)

> A new Make team focused on contributor culture, sustainability, and onboarding is on the cards following a meeting of key team reps and project leadership at WordCamp Europe 2024. According to DEIB working group lead Birgit Olzem, who attended the meeting, the team would be tasked with helping to improve collaboration across teams and providing clear resources for new and existing contributors (Team Updates)

> A recent Hallway Hangout explored challenges around creating grid layouts in Gutenberg. Automattic-sponsored contributor Birgit Pauli-Haack says attendees discussed ongoing experimentation with the grid system, including the recent addition of a manual mode for positioning grid items (Make WordPress Core) | Section styles and other block style variation updates will be the focus of an upcoming Hallway Hangout on July 8 (Make WordPress Core)

WordPress community

> On the latest episode of WP Tavern Jukebox, long-time core contributor Aaron Jorbin talks about the dynamics in the WordPress core committer community, what it takes to become a key player in the WordPress ecosystem, and the responsibility that comes with making changes that impact millions of non-technical users (WP Tavern) | For the past six months or so, Jorbin has been contributing full-time to leading minor versions of WordPress – without the backing of a company. In a new post on his blog, he reveals he's making little money and questions the value of his work. "Either I'm doing a bad job of explaining the value or there isn't value in bug fixes and patching security holes. Or both," he writes (Aaron Jorbin)

> Future of Teams co-founder James Giroux says the next challenge for WordPress is to "learn Enterprise, deeply." He proposes fast-tracking case studies for the WordPress.org Showcase, supporting enterprise teachers and experts, and adding a dedicated enterprise track to flagship WordCamps (James Giroux)

> Tammie Lister is making good progress in reducing the number of open tickets associated with WordPress' 14 default themes, closing 179 in the past three months. Automattic hired the fractional product creator in February to work on the default theme task force. According to Bluehost-sponsored contributor Jonathan Desrosiers, default themes account for over 10% of all WordPress installs (Binate Thoughts | Make WordPress Core)

> Themes contributor Carolina Nymark has updated several lessons at fullsiteediting.com to include the most recent changes in WordPress to global styles and theme.json. In the latest issue of Within WordPress, veteran WordPresser Remkus de Vries says Nymark's site is essential reading: "Seriously, if you're building WordPress sites with the Site Editor, you need to bookmark this site, and praise Carolina. She's making a very significant impact with that site!" (fullsiteediting.com)

Business, enterprise & acquisitions

> WPBeginner founder Syed Balkhi marked the website's 15th birthday today—and revealed that his company, Awesome Motive, has taken an investment stake in Automattic. He doesn't offer any more details about the deal, such as when it occurred or how much was invested. In the past 12 months, Awesome Motive has also invested in GrooveHQ and Seahawk Media and acquired Envira Gallery, Soliloquy, Low Fruits and Beacon.by. Balkhi launched WPBeginner when he was a 19-year-old college student and now employs over 330 globally distributed team members. Balkhi says, "I am grateful beyond words for everything the WordPress community have made possible for me, my family, and our amazing team. THANK YOU 🙏." (WPBeginner)

Plugins, products & themes

> Kestrel has acquired CheckoutWC, a checkout plugin for WooCommerce. Announcing the deal, CheckoutWC founder Clifton Griffin says customers can expect "business as usual" since he'll be joining the Kestrel team and will continue leading development on the plugin. He says Kestrel founders Max and Beka Rice, who previously founded and sold WooCommerce company SkyVerge to GoDaddy, were an obvious choice as acquisition partners due to their "incredible track record in the industry and relentless focus on excellence." (CheckoutWC)

> The ACF Annual Survey is now open. Senior Project Manager Iain Poulson says the results will guide future development of the popular plugin and help his team build a more accurate picture of ACF users (Advanced Custom Fields)

Conferences & events

> Human Made and WPCampus are teaming up to present .edu: WordPress in Higher Education 2024 on July 18. The free virtual event will explore some of the top WordPress projects in the sector along with best practices and strategies for emulating their success. Speakers include Molly Miles from the Harvard Gazette, Carolyn Shelby from Yoast, Steve Ryan from Arizona State University, and Josh Koenig from Pantheon. According to Human Made, valuable lessons can be learned from higher education and enterprise organizations are taking note, particularly on topics such as content workflows, multisite management, accessibility, and publishing capabilities (Human Made)

> Canada's first national WordCamp kicks off on July 13 in Ottawa, Ontario. The three-day conference features an impressive speaker lineup including developer Aurooba Ahmed, marketer Marc Benzakein, Syde CIO Robert Windisch, Post Status' Cory Miller, and Seriously, Bud? podcaster Bud Kraus. Tickets are still available (WordCamp Canada)

> The full schedule is out for Stellar Spark. The day-day live virtual event on July 19 will feature Alex Moss and Carolyn Shelby from Yoast, Lana Rafaela Cindric (Patchstack and Cherry Red Content), Ivailo Hristov (NitroPack), Lindsey Miller (My Marketing Assistant), and keynote speaker Josepha Haden Chomphosy (WordPress Executive Director) (StellarWP)

> Tickets are still available for WPCampus. The annual conference from July 31 to August 2 in Washington D.C. will focus on the growth of higher education, accessibility, WordPress, and its people (WPCampus)

> WordCamp Asia 2025 organizers have put out a call for speakers. Applications close on August 20. Next year's event will be held in Manila, Philippines, from February 22-25 (WordCamp Asia)

WordPress Community: Maestro Stevens

Photo of Maestro Stevens.
This week, what's inspiring Maestro Stevens, owner and Brand Webmaster of The Iconic Expressions™.
A podcast worth listening to: One of my favorite podcasts is The Futur with Chris Do because it's motivational and offers practical guidance for creative businesses. Industry experts bring their A-game to each episode and Chris doesn't share ideas that are too complex or fluffy. I've learned some of my biggest business strategies from this podcast.

A social media account worth following: I would suggest following Chris Do to anyone looking for a business-minded distant mentor. Chris is an award-winning industry influencer and educator. He is very active on social media and there are lots of other great influencers who follow him.

An article worth reading: This article by Google has information about mobile speed factors that are very popular among SEOs. Although the article is from 2018, the same principles still apply even if the numbers have slightly changed.

A concept worth understanding: "You're either spending money to save time or spending time to save money. You can't do both." This simply means that it is highly unlikely that most people will achieve success without having to either spend time or money, and the reality is most people need to spend both.

A habit worth forming: Drinking water more than any other liquid and stretching every day is one of the best habits I instilled in my life. It has made me physically and mentally healthier and more physically flexible, which helps lower my stress levels.

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Meanwhile...

Read


🇪🇺 Remkus de Vries reflects on the latest iteration of WordCamp Europe, 12 years after co-founding the flagship event (Remkus de Vries)

🤖 Lawrence Ladomery on what folks can learn from AI from the release of Fullworks Anti Spam v2.0 (WPBizDev)

Listen


🎙️ Thabo Tswana on his work at Automattic, organizing meetups, and English accents (HeroPress)

🦾 Regine Gessner from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) on the role of certifications in accessibility (Do the Woo)

🤗 Brian Gardner and Sam Brockway on the pivotal role the WordPress community plays in shaping the software (WP Engine)

Watch


🏗️ Brian Coords explores how WordPress 6.6 is changing the game for custom fields (Brian Coords)
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