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Happy Friday! It's July 12 and we're covering Ollie Pro, Awesome Motive’s latest acquisition, Kevin Geary’s views, and much more.
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Three big headlines
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1. Ollie Pro launches to rave reviews
Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner launched their much-hyped Ollie Pro plugin on Tuesday, and as Mindsize’s Jeff Chandler posted, "A lot of people have been waiting for this."
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Ollie Pro adds hundreds of beautifully designed patterns, page layouts, and styles to the pair’s free Ollie block theme, which was released to the WordPress.org theme directory last October.
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At the time, the theme made headlines after a contentious review process led McAlister and Posner to remove the innovative onboarding wizard they had hoped to include. The wizard was initially ported to their Ollie Dash plugin and now features in Ollie Pro, making setting up a new WordPress site a quick, easy and enjoyable experience—an incredible achievement in the age of block themes.
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Sarah Gooding best summed up the wizard best in her review of the Ollie Dash plugin for WP Tavern last October: "… it is a night and day difference between having onboarding for a theme with so many patterns and options, versus getting dropped into a new theme with no direction."
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Ollie Pro has been widely praised, with WordPress veteran Remkus de Vries posting, "Ollie Pro looks like a wonderful extension to Ollie. Having played with it for a while now, I'm convinced you have a game changer at hand here, and it's been wonderful to see how you've incorporated feedback already. This is one of the reasons I'm excited for the future of WordPress 🚀
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Even agency owner and entrepreneur Kevin Geary posted, admitting, "Mike and I don't always get along (online) and I've never used Ollie, but there's no doubt that the guy is outrageously talented. And it's always refreshing to see top-quality design being deployed in the WP ecosystem. Best of luck to you, @mikemcalister."
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Following the launch, McAlister posted, "… The response has been... crazy. In a good way! With Ollie and Ollie Pro, we're bringing a level of excitement, design fidelity, user experience, and product marketing that has been missing in WordPress for a long time. ✨"
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2. BuddyBoss joins Awesome Motive
Syed Balkhi’s company Awesome Motive has acquired course and community platform BuddyBoss in a strategic move he says is aimed at safeguarding businesses against the negative impacts of social media, AI, and Google’s changing search algorithms.
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Announcing the deal on X/Twitter, Balkhi said the web was going through a massive transformation when it comes to content discovery, engagement, and monetization, and his goal was to "help usher in a new era of online communities where independent creators and businesses have full control over their data and content distribution."
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"Large social media platforms are increasingly deprioritizing external link shares and throttling the reach of groups and pages which hurts the very creators & businesses that helped power the growth of these platforms," he writes.
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"On the other hand, rapid developments in A.I. models trained on stolen copyrighted content from your websites, and the recent changes in Google search algorithms continue to negatively impact content discovery for creators and business owners.
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"… And now in light of current industry changes, I strongly believe that adding a private community with premium content and a branded mobile app is going to help make your business more resilient in the long-term."
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The 100+ BuddyBoss team will continue operating as an independent unit led by Graham Hoffman, who will stay on as General Manager. Eisenwasser and Cheddadi are leaving the company to focus on their Rapyd web hosting platform.
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Awesome Motive leadership made a show of welcoming BuddyBoss to the fold on X/Twitter, including Angie Meeker, General Manager of OptinMonster, TrustPulse, Beacon.by, who posted, "So excited to welcome @BuddyBossWP to @awesomemotive! Syed's vision for why BuddyBoss is important in the bigger picture of the web right now is💯worth your time to read today."
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MemberPress founder Blair Williams, who’ll be joining BuddyBoss’ advisory board, posted, "I’ve been a big fan of @BuddyBossWP for years and I'm so excited to have the opportunity to work with this amazing team more directly. Thanks @syedbalkhi! There are truly some remarkable things in store for this new partnership!"
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But as Colin Newcomer writes at WP Shout, "As with other Awesome Motive acquisitions, you can probably expect BuddyBoss to start being heavily cross-promoted across WPBeginner and many of the other plugins in the family."
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3. Kevin Geary says WordPress needs "counter leadership"
Outspoken Block Editor critic Kevin Geary calls for "counter leadership" in WordPress on the latest episode of The WP Minute+, citing a lack of leadership and vision for where the software is headed.
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In the 90-minute interview with Matt Medeiros, Geary, founder of Geary.co and creator of the Automattic.css framework, highlights the decline of new projects launching on WordPress, as noted by Human Made's Noel Tock in his keynote address at WordCamp Asia 2024 (and also on LinkedIn yesterday).
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Geary says it's clear the Block Editor is a problem, pointing to the Classic Editor plugin's 10+ million active installations. He also hits out at the idea that WordPress should be easy enough for anyone to use, including beginners like his mom. "If you build software for her, the people who are going to suffer is everybody… My mom can't [use WordPress] and everybody is frustrated because of what you've done to try to make it so that she can, and that's what I feel the Block Editor has been doing," he says.
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He takes aim at WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, who also runs Automattic, suggesting that self-hosted WordPress should have been built for developers and advanced users, leaving WordPress.com for users wanting a Wix-like approach. "Dot org needs to be protected. Dot org needs to facilitate the work that we do and the way that we do it and that's where the vision went wrong," he says. "That's where [Matt Mullenweg] saw a problem and he aimed and he shot at it and he missed, and that's just the facts."
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He says he doesn’t collaborate with WordPress's top brass because they don’t invite him, and he doesn’t contribute to WordPress because the change he wants is more than just a feature request. "It's about the Block Editor being a fundamental departure from longstanding web design practices and principles, and you can't fix that with a feature request and you can't fix that with a contribution," he says. "The only way you can really get an understanding and a potential fix is through these kinds of conversations and just asking what exactly is going on here, what is the vision for this?"
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In other news
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WordPress project
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> A third release candidate for WordPress 6.6 was released on Tuesday for testing, comprising eight bug fixes for the Editor and 18 tickets for Core since the RC2 release. WordPress 6.6 release is on track for release on July 16 (WordPress.org)
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> Héctor Prieto has kicked off planning for WordPress 6.7, calling on contributors with proven experience to join what will be the smallest release team since 2020. The technical manager for the Gutenberg project says there’s been recurring feedback about the excessive number of release roles, which peaked at 30 people on the 6.3 squad. Ten people led the 5.8 release team, and before that, only nine people led 5.7. WordPress 6.7 is tentatively scheduled for release on November 12, 2024 (Make WordPress Core)
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> Jessica Lyschik, who co-led the development of Twenty Twenty-Four, is seeking feedback on what folks want to see in the next default WordPress theme. Twenty Twenty-Five will be released with WordPress 6.7 on November 12, 2024 (Make WordPress Core)
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> Automattic-sponsored contributor Anne McCarthy convened a meeting of popular WordPress YouTubers this week aimed at learning how the WordPress project can better support their work as video creators and educators. The group, including Jamie Marsland (66k followers), Joel Rivera (46k), Josh Hall (34k), and Vijay Chelakka (23k), shared common challenges, such as the transition to Gutenberg and keeping up with project updates, and committed to collaborating via a new channel on Make WordPress Slack (YouTube)
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> In the latest episode of WP Briefing, Wes Theron, an instructional designer at Automattic, talks about the newly introduced learning pathways at Learn WordPress. He shares how the curated lesson sets are being tailored to various experience levels, roles, and use cases, ensuring a personalized learning experience for every user (WP Briefing)
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WordPress community
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> James Giroux discusses the potential for revitalizing WordPress meetups post-COVID, drawing inspiration from Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering. The Future of Team co-founder says moving beyond "default" meetup structures, new formats like small group discussions and workshops could help foster knowledge sharing, deep connections and, ultimately, a stronger community (James Giroux)
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> Marketer Lawrence Ladomery argues that Matt Mullenweg might consider repositioning WP Tavern as the official publication of the WordPress project. Since trialing seven people for two full-time jobs at the WordPress publication in February, Mullenweg is yet to hire anyone to replace Sarah Gooding, who left her post as Editor in November 2023 (WP BizDev)
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> Web accessibility specialist Rian Rietveld clarifies the key aspects of the European Accessibility Act, which will come into force on June 28, 2025. The legislation mandates that public service websites, products, and services be accessible to all people (WP Tavern Jukebox)
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> Writer Eric Karkovack unpacks how using WordPress often requires numerous subscriptions for various themes, plugins, and services, leading to higher costs and management challenges, and suggests the potential benefit of a centralized marketplace (The WP Minute)
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> Bluehost-sponsored core committer Jonathan Desrosiers marked 11 years since receiving his first "props" for contributing to WordPress (Jonathan Desrosiers)
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> On the latest episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, host Birgit Pauli-Haack and guest Nadia Maya Ardiani, a content specialist at Hostinger, discuss the Create Block Theme plugin, WordPress 6.6, Gutenberg 18.7, GatherPress, and the learning pathways initiative (Gutenberg Times)
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Business, enterprise & acquisitions
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> Hostinger is shutting down its free web hosting brand, 000webhost, citing changing consumer needs that have shifted towards feature-rich hosting solutions. The Lithuanian-based hosting company founded the free service in 2007 (Hostinger)
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> Vertigo Studio SA founder Ionut Neagu joined the WP-Tonic podcast this week to talk about his business journey after co-founding ThemeIsle 12 years ago. The conversation comes after he recently acquired the free Redirection for Contact Form 7 plugin (YouTube)
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> WordPress.com has shared a behind-the-scenes look at how its special projects team built the new my.blog website. Automattic launched the .blog domain extension in 2016 after securing the rights to oversee and operate the sale and registration of .blog domains (WordPress.com)
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> Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg joined WP Product Talk this week to share insights on building successful WordPress products. Discussing the importance of listening to customers, he highlights the decision to split Jetpack into smaller plugins based on the "reality" of user needs. He also emphasizes the value of in-person meetups and WordCamps for marketing, and the critical balance between free and premium themes (WP Product Talk)
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> In the latest episode of the Osom to Know podcast, Emilia Capital co-founder Marieke van de Rakt talks about the "very special" nature of the WordPress community, the challenges faced by women in tech, and her investment focus on open-source projects, sustainability, and female-led startups (Osom to Know)
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Security
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> Liquid Web is partnering with Malwarebytes to enhance security for hosting customers via its ThreatDown Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solution. The integration leverages AI, machine learning, and heuristics to proactively detect and neutralize threats, providing continuous monitoring and automated responses. Brian Thomas, SVP of Global Channels at Malwarebytes, says the partnership underscores a shared commitment to reducing complexity in cybersecurity (Malwarebytes)
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> A recent supply chain attack targeting Polyfill.js, a widely used JavaScript library, poses security risks to WordPress sites, including cross-site scripting attacks and redirects, according to security firm Sansec. Patchstack recommends removing any code that tries to embed scripts from the compromised domains and using a trusted CDN, like Cloudflare, which hosts the library on their cdnjs (Patchstack)
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> A security researcher recently identified a critical file upload vulnerability in the Modern Events Calendar plugin. According to Wordfence vulnerability researcher István Márton, the issue was patched and the researcher was awarded a $3,094 bounty. Users are advised to update to the latest version of the plugin, which has more than 150,000 estimated active installations (Wordfence)
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Conferences & events
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> WordSesh is back for 2024. Scheduled for July 30, the free virtual event will feature eight sessions across three live broadcasts in three time zones. Speakers announced so far include Alex Thomas (Defiant), Daniel Bachhuber (Automattic), Kimberly Lipari (Valet), and Piccia Neri (UX and accessible design lead) (WordSesh)
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> Human Made and WPCampus will 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 (Human Made)
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> WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy will deliver the keynote at StellarWP's Stellar Spark on July 19. The one-day live virtual event will feature 15 other speakers on topics designed to "spark" growth, creativity, collaboration, and more (StellarWP)
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> 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)
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> 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 20-22 (WordCamp Asia)
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WordPress Community: Alex Standiford
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A podcast worth listening to: I've been working on PartnerShip, which is a jam-packed 15-20 minute long weekly podcast about various bootstrapped business strategies. Most of the discussion points talk about strategies focused on collaborating with other people to grow your business without relying solely on ads, or other paid promotional methods.
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A social media account worth following: The Siren Affiliates Twitter account (@sirenaffiliates), of course. Along with the PartnerShip content, I'm also sharing a lot of bite-sized videos with practical bootstrapped business strategies to help people grow their network, and their business.
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An article worth reading: I did a pretty in-depth guide on the steps a web agency businesses needs to take to create an effective referral program for their business. It goes into what you can change in your business to make it an attractive program for affiliates.
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A concept worth understanding: I think our community needs to understand what post-covid social media looks like. I think a lot of us are caught in our own Twitter bubble, and are unaware of the larger conversations happening on other growing platforms like TikTok. If we want to see WordPress grow, we need to understand the broader conversation, and be a part of it.
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A habit worth forming: I started applying a "YNAB"-based budgeting approach to my time, where time is shared in buckets instead of a rigid schedule, and the habit of using this has been life-changing for me.
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Meanwhile...
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Read
👩🏼🦯 Elena Brescacin on how she uses WordPress to fight HIV myths (HeroPress)
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😔 Satyam Vishwakarma is reducing his contributions to WordPress due to financial constraints (Satyam Vishwakarma)
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🇺🇦 Lano Miro on the emotional and inspiring aspects of WordCamp Europe 2024 (Crocoblock)
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Listen
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The Repository is a weekly email for the WordPress community by Rae Morey. Mike Johnston is our proofreader. Thanks to Kinsta, our hosting sponsor, and MailPoet, our email sponsor.
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