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Happy Friday! It's August 23 and we're covering Jamie Marsland's new role, WordCamp US's impressive schedule, the upcoming State of the Word, and much more.
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Thank you to everyone who completed our annual survey. We really appreciate your feedback. And congratulations to Dario Banfi and Rahul Bansal, who each won a $150 Amazon gift voucher!
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Three big headlines
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1. WordPress YouTube channel gets new leadership with Jamie Marsland
In an announcement on WordPress.org, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy said Marsland had taken over the management of the WordPress YouTube channel, describing him as the "ideal person to lead our efforts in expanding and enhancing our YouTube presence."
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In his own announcement on X, Marsland said he was thrilled to join Automattic: "It's a true privilege to help share your WordPress stories and showcase the incredible work you are all doing," he said. "So if you're working on anything new, exciting, empowering, cutting-edge, inspiring, helpful, revolutionary, fun, or game-changing, I want to hear from you. 😉"
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Marsland is seemingly an overnight success, 10 years in the making. Known for his fun, upbeat and polished videos, he published his first tutorial on YouTube a decade ago. In recent years has become something of a Gutenberg evangelist, publishing entertaining videos to help users learn how to use blocks and full site editing, including his recent speed build challenges.
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WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has made no secret of the fact he's a big fan of Marsland's work, calling out his YouTube channel and speed build challenges twice during his mid year update at WordCamp Europe 2024. Acknowledging Marsland's new role this week, Mullenweg posted, "Our videos are going to be so much better now. :)"
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Other WordPress folks have also heaped praise on Marsland this week, with Emilia Capital co-founder Joost de Valk posting, "This is an amazing move for WordPress. Congrats to everyone involved 😀"
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2. WordCamp US 2024 unveils full lineup
This year's conference kicks off on a Tuesday with Contributor Day, followed by the inaugural Showcase Day on Wednesday, highlighting innovative uses of WordPress.
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This new addition emphasizes WordPress's growing influence in enterprise applications, featuring behind-the-scenes insights from agencies and developers scaling WordPress for high-profile clients like The New York Post, CNN, Vox Media, Amnesty International, and Disney Experiences.
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The conference program boasts an impressive lineup, with keynotes from TIME CTO Burhan Hamid and OSS Capital founder Joseph Jacks.
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As AshWebStudio owner Derek Ashauer noted on X, "Thursday has more sessions I'm interested in than the entirety of [WordCamp US] 2023." WordPress VIP's James Giroux added , "Some of the most impactful experiences of my life happened at #WCUS. If you haven't yet, get your tickets now. It's an incredible opportunity to grow your network, strengthen relationships and build partnerships."
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3. State of the Word 2024: Ticket requests open for Tokyo event
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will deliver his 18th annual address to a live audience at Tokyo Node Hall in the Toranomon Hills Station Tower. The event will be live streamed via the WordPress YouTube channel.
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As with previous years, the address will be followed by a Q&A, giving attendees the chance to ask Mullenweg questions directly. It's the second time the State of the Word will be hosted outside of North America. Last year's event was held in Madrid, Spain.
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In other news
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WordPress project
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> Héctor Prieto, technical manager for the Gutenberg project, hosted a hallway hangout last week, offering a snapshot of the latest developments in the Gutenberg plugin. Prieto shared recordings from the session, showcasing demos of new features like the tabs and accordion blocks, a custom fields UI, free-form cropping tools, and an image gallery lightbox. He also provided updates on the progress of data views, zoomed-out mode, grid layout, and background image block support (Make WordPress Core)
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> Applications are open for the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program. The third iteration of the program will kick off on October 7, 2024, for six weeks (WordPress.org Project)
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> WordPress 6.6.2 has been flagged for release on September 10. The minor maintenance release will patch several CSS specificity, styling and user experience issues related to the Block Editor (Make WordPress Core)
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> The WordPress Photo Directory Team is looking for new reps (Make Photos)
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WordPress community
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> Is Gutenberg finally winning people over? Yes and no, according to WPShout's Karol Krol. He analyzed more than 340 opinions and found there's an almost 50/50 split in sentiment (WPShout)
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> The Repository's Rae Morey has teamed up with Nathan Wrigley from WP Builds for a new quarterly podcast, "What just happened?," covering recent WordPress news (WP Builds)
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> Lawrence Ladomery at WP BizDev explores how local news startups are finding ways to grow sustainably, with many using WordPress as their platform of choice (WP BizDev)
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> Jason Tucker has shared more on why he ended the WPwatercooler podcast after 12 years: "WordPress has become increasingly political, and the direction it has taken is one that I find myself less inclined to analyze or discuss." (WPwatercooler)
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Business, enterprise & acquisitions
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> LearnDash founder and business coach Justin Ferriman says the culture of significant underpricing in WordPress has led to "value fatigue," where business owners feel compelled to offer excessive value at low prices to stay competitive. "I coach WordPress folks who have started to brainstorm ways to branch outside of WordPress. Not for lack of love, but the grind is considerably more challenging, especially the pressure to continually pack more and more value wherever possible, leading to frustration and ultimately burnout," he says (Justin Ferriman)
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> Digital Gravy CEO Kevin Geary has teased a new project he's launching in September called Etch. The Gutenberg critic kicked off his marketing campaign this week with a video title "Dear WordPress," in which he outlines his concerns about WordPress losing market dominance, declining new projects, and reduced interest in the platform, ultimately calling on viewers to join a series of private livestreams he's hosting next month to share more about Etch, its vision, features, and other details (YouTube)
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Plugins, products & themes
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> WooCommerce developer James Kemp, together with 10up and other contributors, has resolved dozens of accessibillity issues in the ecommece plugin that have improved visibility and readability, keyboard navigation, screen reader support, contrast adjustments, form fields, and custom select boxes, as well as other general enchancements. The updates come after Equalize Digital's Amber Hinds reported several accessibility issues in WooCommerce's GitHub accounts in February (WooCommerce)
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Security
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> WordPress core committer John Blackbourn has pocketed $14,400 after reporting a zero-day vulnerability in the popular LiteSpeed Cache plugin to Patchstack's bug bounty program. Patchstack CEO Oliver Sild said it was the highest bounty ever paid for a WordPress plugin bug report, and was awarded due to the severe nature of the vulnerability, which impacts over 5 million websites. Wordfence Threat Intelligence Lead Chloe Chamberland said if the vulnerability had been reported to Wordfence's bug bounty program, it would've been awarded an even larger bounty of around $23,400–$31,200 since the security company is currently running a "Superhero Challenge." Chamberland urged users to update to the latest patched version of LiteSpeed Cache, 6.4, adding, "We have no doubt that this vulnerability will be actively exploited very soon." (WP Tavern | Wordfence)
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Conferences & events
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> WordCamp Asia 2025 organizers are inviting submissions for their invited speakers program and have also extended the deadline for speaker applications to September 8, 2024. WordCamp Asia 2025 will be held in Manila, Philippines, from February 20-22 (WordCamp Asia)
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> The first-ever WordCamp Youth Hackathon for 14 to 17-year-olds will be held on October 19, 2024, as part of WordCamp Skopje in North Macedonia (WordCamp Central)
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> The Online Payments & Delivery Summit – Kampala 2024 will be held on October 18, 2024, in Uganda. Organizer Joan Logose says the next-gen event will focus on technology, web development, digital payments, and the broader fintech industry, as well as delivery services in Africa (WordCamp Central)
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Meanwhile...
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Read
🧭 How WordPress helped Mumtahina Faguni find love and freedom (HeroPress)
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💍 WPMU DEV is finally ready to commit, asking its hosting customers to go yearly together (WPMU DEV)
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Listen
🪀 Pro yo-yoer Doc Pop on creating quirky content about the Fediverse (Post Status)
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👐🏼 Core contributors Mary Baum and Meher Bala on contributing to WordPress 6.6 (Do the Woo)
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🧪 Blake Bertuccelli-Booth on automated accessibility testing in WordPress (WP Tavern Jukebox)
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🤖James LePage on AI transparency and trust (Do the Woo)
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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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Send your feedback to [email protected] and help us provide high-quality news written entirely by humans that matters to the WordPress community.
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