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Happy Tuesday! It's October 1 and we're back after a three-week break, plus a few extra days to catch up on the past week's shenanigans. This week, we're covering Automattic's fight with WP Engine and a quick rundown of what happened in September.
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Now that we're back, we'll be providing daily coverage of the Automattic vs WP Engine controversy and other news across the WordPress ecosystem. Add The Repository to your favorite RSS reader to get our latest posts.
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One big headline
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1. Mullenweg threatens corporate takeover of WP Engine
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has rescinded an 8% licensing deal offered to WP Engine in September, suggesting that escalating tensions between the two companies could lead to a corporate acquisition by Automattic.
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In an interview with The Repository, Mullenweg said Automattic now wants more than 8% of WP Engine's annual revenue, or an equivalent of resources invested into the WordPress project—or a combination of both—in exchange for the use of its "WordPress" and "WooCommerce" trademarks.
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"That deal's not on the table anymore. We're seeking more, not 8%," Mullenweg said. "I don't want to speculate on what the deal might be… In July it was less than 8%, it was smaller. In September it was 8%. The deal they have to do next could be taking over the company, they have no leverage."
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Mullenweg's latest comments come as Automattic and WP Engine remain locked in a tense stand-off more than a week after he called the rival hosting company a "cancer to WordPress," accusing it of profiting off the WordPress project and violating trademarks.
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Mullenweg's comments come after he posted in Making WordPress Slack on Saturday about potentially bringing ACF Pro, the premium version of WP Engine's Advanced Custom Fields plugin, into WordPress core.
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Quick hits since our last issue
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1.WordCamp US 2024 welcomed over 1,500 attendees to Portland from September 17-20. The inaugural Showcase Day highlighted how enterprises like Disney Experiences, The New York Post, CNN, Vox Media, and Amnesty International are leveraging WordPress various industries. The conference also featured keynote speaker Joseph "JJ" Jacks, founder of OSS Capital, who spoke about how open source will dominate the next wave of software (WordPress.org)
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2. WordPress Includes is calling for change to support women working with WordPress following the release of its Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses whitepaper. The eye-opening report exposes the systemic barriers facing women, including both a "broken rung" and "glass ceiling" preventing women from attaining senior roles, and reveals nearly a quarter of women experience harassment, bullying, or discrimination at work, compared to just 4% of men (WP Includes)
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3. Patchstack has raised $5 million in Series A funding and Yoast founder Joost de Valk has joined the company's board. According to CEO Oliver Sild, the funding will be used to accelerate the company's product development and build a top-level sales and marketing team. This investment follows the release of Patchstack's managed VDP platform, built in collaboration with the European Union, to help open-source software companies become compliant with the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act (WP Tavern)
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4. Festinger Vault announced a halt to its services after Automattic issued a cease and desist letter regarding trademark usage and GPL compliance. According to Martin, the anonymous CEO behind the dodgy marketplace, the case will be heard in court tomorrow (October 2). As LayerWP's Ben Townsend posted on X this week, "The site that sells your GPL plugins for a fraction of the price is, well, kinda feucked." (Festinger Vault)
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5. WordPress.org has introduced SVN passwords and is now enforcing mandatory two-factor authentication for plugin and theme authors. The change comes after several WordPress.org plugins were compromised in a supply chain attack in June when an attacker gained access to committer accounts (WP-Content)
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6. Automattic-sponsored contributor Anne McCarthy has published a roadmap for WordPress 6.7, the next major release of WordPress, scheduled for release on November 12, 2024. It will feature the new default Twenty Twenty-Five theme and other changes, including refined data views and improvements to the query loop, Template Registration API, Block Bindings API, and design tools (Make WordPress Core)
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7. WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy recapped the project's mid-term goals during a media briefing, highlighting a reduced focus on Phase 3's real-time collaboration to prioritize improvements to the admin experience. According to Haden Chomphosy, "The hope is that we can improve the user experience by having a more consistent look and feel across our admin, and then also having the dashboard and admin areas just be more modern and more in line with what the software actually is capable of doing now." (WordPress Media Corps)
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8. Kevin Geary launched his much-hyped, yet-to-be-developed product Etch, a page builder he says will provide the interface, workflows, standards compliance, and tooling that Gutenberg is missing. Well-known WordPress personalities have joined Etch's advisory board, including Mark Westguard (founder of WS Form), Brian Coords (educator and Technology Director at HDC), Patrick Gallagher (co-founder and CEO of GridPane), and Adam Preiser (founder of WPCrafter) (WebTNG)
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In other news
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WordPress project
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> WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 was released this week. It comprises more than 500 enhancements and over 500 bug fixes for the editor, including 200+ tickets for WordPress core. The final release of WordPress 6.7 is scheduled for November 12, 2024 (Make WordPress Core)
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> Gutenberg 19.2 and 19.3 were released last month, removing the experimental flag from the Block Bindings UI, adding extensibility to preview options via the Plugin API, enhancing the content-only mode, and introducing experimental client-side media processing, a new zoom out mode, UI changes, and the ability to drag and drop multiple images (WP Tavern | Make WordPress Core)
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> Hari Shanker and Courtney Robertson launched experimental health dashboards for the Make WordPress Core, Community, and Training Teams, along with an overview of WordPress 6.6 release statistics. The pair is seeking community feedback by October 7, 2024 (WP Tavern)
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> The Five for the Future site has relaunched with a block-based design. The revamp follows updates to the WordPress.org homepage, theme and plugin directory, pattern directory, and support forms in recent months (WP Tavern)
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> WordPress Sustainability Team rep Nora Ferreirós has kicked off an initative to develop guidelines for making WordPress sites more sustainable (Make WordPress Sustainable)
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> Miriam Schwab, Elementor's Head of WordPress Relations, led an open discussion at WordCamp US 2024 focused on how to market WordPress. Next steps involve the creation of focus groups, defining a central marketing objective, and creating a space on Slack or GitHub for ongoing collaboration (Team Updates)
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> The GatherPress team is seeking feedback from Meetup organizers on how their plugin could potentially replace Meetup.com for the WordPress community (Make WordPress Community)
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> The WordPress Training Team has launched four new learning pathways for beginner and intermediate WordPress users, beginner WordPress developers, and intermediate theme developers. They're also seeking help with a designer learning pathway (Make WordPress Training)
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> Automattic is sponsoring Kevin Jahns, the creator of Yjs, a framework for building collaborative applications, to help bring collaborative editing to Gutenberg (GitHub)
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WordPress community
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> Dave Grey (Our WP Plugins) and Andrew Palmer (SomebodysHero, Bertha.ai) have launched FundWP, a project with the goal of establishing a diversified and independent funding mechanism for WordPress (FundWP)
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> Jamie Marsland, WordPress.org's new Head of YouTube, wants to target distinct groups in his new role, including beginners, DIYers, developers and designers, agencies and freelancers, product suppliers, and the community (WP Tavern Jukebox)
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> The WP World now has a WordCamp Toolkit designed to help attendees make the most of events, wherever they are (The WP World)
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> WP BizDev's Lawrence Ladomery says WordPress marketing should focus solely on developers and 15% of Five for the Future resources should be focused on marketing WordPress (WP BizDev)
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> WP Shout has launched a brand survey focused on uncovering what folks think about WordPress' tone and voice, and specific phrases used in the software (WPShout)
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> Independent core committer Aaron Jorbin is celebrating his 10th commitiversary (aaron.jorbin)
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Business, enterprise & acquisitions
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> Pedraum Pardehpoosh has joined Automattic as VP of Product. He brings extensive experience, having worked at Walmart, Apple, and Airbnb (WP Tavern)
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> Demand for headless architecture is increasing, with 73% of companies now using this website technology, according to research commissioned by WP Engine. The finding represents a 14% increase from similiar research in 2021 and a nearly 40% increase from 2019 (WP Engine)
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> The Independent Plugin Alliance's product directory is now live (IPAWP.com)
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> Paid Memberships Pro's Jason Coleman explains why he's always said "no" to folks who've asked for a lifetime deal and why, after 13 years, he's changed his mind (Stranger Studios)
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> E2M Solution, a white label partner for digital agencies, now owns news and tutorial site WPLift through its recent acquisition of UnlimitedWP (WPLift)
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> NerdPress has acquired Smart Custom 404 Page. Peter Raschendorfer "retired" the plugin in October 2023 (NerdPress)
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Plugins, products & themes
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> Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt are launching their new product, Progress Planner, on October 3 during a free webinar exploring AI and automation (Progress Planner)
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> Automattic is working on an experimental Create Content Model plugin for managing custom post types. The project offers a glimpse at how CPTs might one day work in core WordPress (GitHub)
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> WooCommerce is extending its release cycle to five weeks to allow for more thorough testing, increased stability and quality of releases. WooCommerce 9.4 is due out on October 21, 2024 (WooCommerce)
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> Matt Mullenweg recently teased Automattic's refreshed Cloudup file-sharing service, which is due to launch in Fall 2024 (X)
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Conferences & events
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> The Italian WordPress community is hosting Core Days, a next gen event aimed at core developers, which will be held on November 8-9, 2024, in Rome (Core Days)
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> WordCamp Asia 2025 organizers have shared their vision for an inclusive event, including a goal of at least 50% representation of women (WordCamp Asia) | A second batch of tickets to WordCamp Asia will be released on October 3 (WordCamp Asia)
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> Organizers Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey discuss what to expect from WP Accessibility Day 2024 on October 9-10 with Nathan Wrigley (WP Tavern Jukebox)
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> WooSesh 2024 is scheduled for October 29-30 and will feature 33 speakers, 22 sessions, and the annual Seshies Awards (WP Tavern)
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> InstaWP will host AnyoneCanWP, an online hackathon, from October 11-26, 2024. Topics will be revealed on October 5, with a total cash prize pool of $10,000 (WP Tavern)
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> WordCamp Delhi is scheduled for November 30 to December 1, 2024 (WordCamp Delhi)
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> India's Ajmer WordPress community is hosting WP Campus Connect. The month-long initiative in October will introduce college students to WordPress through workshops (WP Campus Connect)
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> PressConf organizers have started teasing the upcoming event, designed for folks driving the WordPress economy. It's scheduled for April 23-26, 2025, in Tempe, Arizona (pressconf.events)
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A successful website needs work. The new Progress Planner plugin will help you to get the work done. It provides the tools and motivation you need to keep your site in top shape!
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Got a something to promote? Our classifieds are seen by the most influential people in WordPress each week.
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Meanwhile...
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🐶 PupPress is a (parody) WordPress fork governed and maintained by pups (puppress.org)
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The Repository is a weekly email for the WordPress community by Rae Morey. Mike Johnston is our proofreader. A big thank you 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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