1. PressNomics legacy lives on with the launch of PressConf

2. Analysis of WP Engine data sparks debate as Automattic disputes leak claims

3. Mullenweg's 'forking' events claim dismissed as baseless

• Mary Hubbard, the WordPress Project’s new Executive Director, will host office hours with co-founder Matt Mullenweg today at 6.45 PM UTC. Since stepping into the role on October 20, Hubbard has met with folks across the WordPress community to hear ideas and concerns and says she recognizes the challenges ahead and the "large shoes" she's stepping into (WordPress.org Project)

• WordPress 6.7.1 shipped yesterday as a fast-follow maintenance release fixing 16 bugs introduced in WordPress 6.7 (WordPress News)

• Héctor Prieto, the Gutenberg project’s technical manager, has shared a proposed roadmap for major releases in 2025, with WordPress 6.8 scheduled for release on April 15, WordPress 6.9 on August 5, and WordPress 7.0 on November 11 (Make WordPress Core) | Prieto is seeking volunteers for the WordPress 6.8 release squad (Make WordPress Core)

• Gutenberg 19.7, released this week, adds Global Styles to the main site editor sidebar, speeds up template toggling, and introduces a dropdown for setting featured images (Make WordPress Core)

• Anne McCarthy shared an update on Phase 3 of the Gutenberg roadmap, covering progress on real-time collaboration experiments, the development of block-level inline comments, and work on DataViews as the foundation for the admin redesign (Make WordPress Core)

• Anne McCarthy's latest call for WordPress YouTubers, joined by Gutenberg architect Matías Ventura, covered updates on collaboration tools, navigation improvements, learning resources, and the role of pattern libraries in shaping user experiences. The call also explored the idea of a single WordPress theme (nomad.blog)

• Samuel Sidler examines potential conflicts of interest in the WordPress ecosystem involving Matt Mullenweg, Salesforce, and Bluehost, focusing on transparency and governance concerns. Sidler, who previously worked for Mullenweg, highlights Salesforce’s in-kind donation of Slack to the WordPress community, the history of Bluehost’s placement on WordPress.org’s recommended hosting list, and ties between Automattic and both companies. Sidler says in choosing not to disclose conflicts of interest, “Mullenweg only adds to the confusion within the ecosystem and community, and to the perception that nefarious things could be happening.” (delta.blog)
• Winstina Huges is the latest Yoast Care Fund recipient, recognising her contributions as a community organizer and her work running Support Inclusion in Tech (Yoast)
• On the latest episode of WP Tavern’s Jukebox podcast, Human Made’s Fränk Klein praises blocks for resolving conflicts between themes and plugins, calling them key to WordPress compatibility and customization (WP Tavern)

• Automattic has acquired Harper, an open-source Grammarly alternative for developers. Named after novelist Harper Lee, the service runs as a language server via WebAssembly, prioritizing privacy by processing checks locally on users' devices rather than in the cloud. According to Automattic, Harper delivers grammar and language suggestions in under 20 milliseconds, or less than 1% of the time it takes Grammarly. Harper's founder, Elijah Potter, will join Automattic to help integrate its capabilities across the company's products (TechCrunch)

• G+D Ventures says Patchstack is a "game-changer for the future of open-source security" in a blog post about its recent investment in the Estonian cybersecurity company. The VC firm, known for backing "TrustTech" innovations, also highlights Patchstack's "significant market potential" and readiness to expand into broader open-source security automation (Medium)

• James Kemp has taken on the Core Product Manager role at WooCommerce where he'll shape the platform's vision, lead the "more in core" initiative, streamline tools for store builders, and improve the mobile app. Kemp previously founded and sold Iconic, a WooCommerce plugin business, before joining WooCommerce in 2023 (X) | Woo is hosting office hours with Kemp on November 27 at 4 PM UTC (Woo Developer Blog)

• Rocket.net has partnered with WP Rocket to bundle the popular performance plugin in its hosting offer (rocket.net)

• WordPress Security Team rep John Blackbourn has released RAVE, an automated tool that verifies published WordPress packages against their canonical source to detect tampering (Github)

• PeepSo has left the WordPress plugin repository, citing dissatisfaction with WordPress.org's guidelines, trust issues over recent suspensions and takeovers, and the WP Engine dispute (WP Tavern)

• WooCommerce 9.4.2 resolves a fatal PHP error in the payments' menu, improves file handling in product imports with the WordPress Filesystem API, and restores the default batch size for the Product CSV Importer (Woo Developer Blog)

• In an interview with Brian Coords, Ollie founder Mike McAlister shares an optimistic take on WordPress's evolution, pointing to the potential of block editor patterns. "What kills me is people look at WordPress like it is now and they're complaining as if in five years from now, this shit isn't going to be awesome and do all the stuff that we can't even imagine," he says (YouTube)

• WooCommerce is inviting feedback on plans to modernize its email system (Woo Developer Blog)

• LiteSpeed Cache creator Hai Zheng reflects on the plugin's rise to over 6 million installs and recent security vulnerabilities in an interview with Maciek Palmowski (Patchstack)

• Patchstack is warning Jobify theme users to update to the latest version following the disclosure of an unauthenticated arbitrary file read vulnerability (Patchstack)

• A third batch of tickets for WordCamp Asia 2025 will be released next week. The first two rounds of speakers includes Automattic's Riad Benguella, Google's Adam Silverstein, and Microsoft's Maya Shavin (WordCamp Asia) | Applications are open for the WordCamp Asia 2024 Diversity Scholarship and the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship (WordCamp Asia)

• WordCamp Granada 2024, held October 26-27, broke new ground as the first industry-specific WordCamp, focusing on the intersection of WordPress and tourism (YITH)

• WP Builds is again sharing BFCM deals (WP Builds)

• FDMEDIA is running a Black Friday giveaway with 18 WordPress businesses (wpbfdeals.com)

• The WP Weekly's Black Friday Deals page is live (The WP Weekly)

• LayerWP's Project Giving Back is inviting businesses to donate to charities (LayerWP)