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Happy Friday! It's December 6 and we're covering today's speed build challenge, dueling injunction proposals, podcasts worth listening to, and more.
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1. Jessica Lyschik taking on Matt Mullenweg in live WordPress speed build showdown
Something to kick off the weekend: Greyd developer Jessica Lyschik and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg are facing off during a live-streamed WordPress speed build challenge today at 3pm UTC. Lyschik and Mullenweg will have just 30 minutes to replicate a website design using whatever tools they like, with viewers deciding the winner.
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“’She eats Blocks for breakfast.’” 😂” posted GoDaddy's Adam Warner, linking to Greyd’s tongue-in-cheek promo video for the event. The video highlights Lyschik’s previous speed build battles against Automattic Product Manager Rich Tabor live at WordCamp Europe 2024 and YITH developer Francesco Grasso at Core Days 2024. Today’s challenge will be Mullenweg’s first.
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The showdown comes after Lyschik, who co-led the development of Twenty Twenty-Four, challenged Mullenweg during the Q&A at WordCamp Europe 2024. Her bold ask was met with, "Yeah, let's do one!" from Mullenweg, who then turned to Matías Ventura, the lead architect of Gutenberg, and jokingly said, “You gotta train me!"
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“That moment, at #WCEU in Torino, when @jessicalyschik challenged @photomatt to participate in a speed build against her, I had my jaw on my knees,” posted accessibility advocate Anne Bovelett.
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Jamie Marsland created the speed build format earlier this year before becoming Head of WordPress.org YouTube in August. He’ll take on Big Orange Heart founder Dan Maby during a live speed build challenge at the WordPress London Meetup on December 12. Lyschik is also scheduled to take on Automattic’s Nick Diego at WordCamp Asia 2025.
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2. Automattic and WP Engine submit dueling proposals for preliminary injunction
On Monday, Automattic and WP Engine filed documents with the United States District Court, outlining their proposals for a preliminary injunction. And as expected, they submitted “dueling” orders, which Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín allowed if they were unable to agree on a middle ground.
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As consultant and former Audrey Capital employee Samuel Sidler explains in his latest analysis of the ongoing conflict between the warring hosting companies, we’re seeing differing strategies from both sides. While WP Engine's proposed order is something the judge could sign immediately if she wanted (though it’s unlikely), Automattic’s proposal is... not an order.
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Meanwhile, the filings prompted a few (now deleted) misfires on social media and Slack as some folks mistook WP Engine’s proposal for the real deal (the title “Proposed Order” kinda gives it away).
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Sidler says he expects to see a preliminary injunction this week (read: today), adding, “… it's important to continue thinking through the broader view, and how this case and the war [WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt] Mullenweg created around it affects the WordPress ecosystem. This case will take two or more years to resolve, but the actions taken by Mullenweg continue to demonstrate the fundamental issues within the WordPress ecosystem today.”
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3. WordPress in Uganda and pricing strategies: Two podcasts to queue up this week
From WordPress transforming education in Uganda to creative pricing hacks, it's been a relatively quiet week so here are two podcasts worth listening to:
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High school teacher Stephen Dumba joined WP Tavern Jukebox for a must-listen episode about how he's leading efforts to integrate WordPress into Uganda's ICT curriculum and community development. Through the "1000 WordPress Ninjas" initiative, Dumba and other teachers are training youths—particularly those struggling to stay in school—in WordPress skills to foster self-reliance and employment opportunities. Dumba says teachers are also spearheading the creation of WordPress meetups across the country.
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Katie Keith more than doubled the price of Barn2's Easy Digital Downloads EU VAT plugin, turning one of the company's worst-sellers into a surprising success with higher sales volume and revenue. On the latest episode of Woo Product Chat, focused on Keith and Marcus Burnette's 2024 business highlights, challenges, and strategies, she says she's now prioritizing SEO and YouTube for marketing, noting that social media is more effective for personal connections than direct sales.
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- Gutenberg 19.8 brings user experience improvements for selecting section styles, image manipulation and font handling, as well as more Data View improvements (Make WordPress Core)
- Jamie Marsland has launched daily polls on the WordPress.org YouTube account. The Head of WordPress.org YouTube is asking everything from what kinds of content viewers would prefer to what page builders folks use to build sites (X)
- WordPress has achieved 43.7% CMS market share, according to W3Techs. “We were at 42.81% this time last year. 2024 has been a great growth year, especially internationally. Anyone else excited for 2025? 45% market share perhaps?” posted Nicholas Garofalo, Automattic’s Director of Marketing (W3Techs | X)
- Contributors working on the WordPress.org redesign project are launching a fresh design for the ‘Make WordPress’ landing page and associated blogs and converting the Photos Directory to a block theme (Make WordPress Slack)
- The WordPress Sustainability Team is seeking contributors to help with projects to help with projects focused on social, economic, and environmental sustainability (Make WordPress Sustainable)
- In October and November, the WordPress Performance Team focused on fixing bugs, including one related to auto-sizing reduced image sizes. The team is continuing to push monthly updates to the Performance Lab plugin (Make WordPress)
- The latest Uniting WordPress YouTubers call focused on WordPress Playground, including its extensive functionality and use cases (nomad.blog)
- Contributors are revisiting the WP Consent API plugin for potential inclusion in WordPress core, aiming to provide a built-in framework for managing user consent and privacy compliance. With over 100,000 active installations, the plugin has gained traction due to increasing privacy regulations, like the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) (Make WordPress Core)
- A new proposal suggests breaking down Learn WordPress Learning Pathways into shorter courses to improve engagement and completion rates. Data shows significant drop-offs in long courses, with up to two-thirds of learners quitting by the tenth lesson (Make WordPress Training)
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- KrautPress has launched an advent calendar-style project, sharing a small plugin daily until December 24. So far, the lineup includes tools like FakerPress, which generates sample content on demand, and Felix Arntz’s Snow Fall (KrautPress)
- Karol Krol analyzed what bloggers—not developers—really think about the Block Editor. He says opinions continue to remain polarised, with users either really loving it or hating it with a passion and very little in between (WP Shout)
- Juliette Reinders Folmer recently marked her first year as maintainer of the PHP_CodeSniffer project. Over the past 12 months, she has released 11 new versions, and PHP_CodeSniffer was recently recognized by the PHP project as one of only seven third-party libraries officially approved for use within PHP tooling (Open Collective)
- Core committer Jonathan Desrosiers has published a “State of the Badge” analysis of WordCamp badges together with a proposal for semi-permanent reusable badges (Jonathan Desrosiers) | Desrosiers recently marked six years since his first commit to the WordPress project (Jonathan Desrosiers)
- Devin Walker released a free and GPL-licensed "Powered by WordPress" badge system for Figma with support from the WordPress Foundation after initially hitting a trademark roadblock (devin.org)
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- BlackRock has cut the worth of its stake in Automattic by 10%, according to the asset manager’s latest quarterly disclosure report. The company, which invested in Automattic during its Series E round in 2021, valued its investment in the WordPress-hosting company at $37.5 per share, down from $41.7 per share earlier this year. In September, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg posted on X that BlackRock owns only 0.6% of the hosting copmnay and has no voting rights (TechCrunch)
- Mediavine and BigScoots have announced a partnership, making the hosting company the ad firm's preferred provider and vice versa. As part of the deal, BigScoots is offering hosting plans built exclusively for Mediavine publishers (BigScoots)
- ClikIT has acquired Infinite Uploads and Big File Uploads from UglyRobot owner Aaron Edwards, the developer behind DocsBot AI. ClikIT owner Blake Whittle says the deal marks a new era for his agency, which is evolving to sell plugins and products. Edwards built Infinite Uploads with his best friend Joshua Dailey during the pandemic, and the sale marks a shift away from WordPress to focusing wholly on AI (ClikIT)
- Weglot is again donating 50% of its Black Friday / Cyber Monday revenue to charities, this year raising €70,000 (Weglot)
- Barn2 is set to expand into selling Shopify apps in 2025 while continuing its focus on WordPress and WooCommerce plugins. "Shopify is an excellent fit for Barn2 and feels like the right move to secure our future. Watch this space 👀," says founder and CEO Katie Keith (X)
- Bluehost's Marcus Burnette polled his followers to discover their most important consideration when choosing a hosting company, with 45% selecting "support" and only 4% choosing "price" (Do the Woo)
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→ Plugins, Products & Themes
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- WooCommerce is developing a new starter block theme to replace its decade-old Storefront theme, with a release expected in the first half of 2025. The new theme will focus on real-world use cases, including patterns for industries like fashion and food, according to Ellen Bauer, WooCommerce's Product Lead for themes, blocks, and patterns (WooCommerce)
- Git Updater developer Andy Fragen has created Git Updater Lite, a simple standalone library that enables automatic updates for Git-hosted plugins or themes. "I believe this to be the simplest method of integrating an updater into your plugin or theme and update outside of the wp.org repositories," says Fragen (Surgical Diversions)
- WooCommerce 9.4.3 was released this week, bringing crucial security improvements affecting URL handling, event data validation, and guest checkout controls (WooCommerce)
- GoDaddy has re-architected its managed WordPress platform to offer VPS with the ease and efficiency of managed WordPress. The new platform is rolling out to new Managed WordPress customers in the US this month (GoDaddy)
- BuddyPress 14.3.3 fixes a mistake made in the build process for 14.3.1 (BuddyPress)
- A new "Cost of Goods Sold" feature is coming to WooCommerce core, removing the need for extensions or custom code (WooCommerce)
- Core committer John Blackbourn has created a GitHub action for plugin developers that generates an attestation for the ZIP files that WordPress.org serves with every plugin release. It comes after the WordPress Security Team lead recently released RAVE, another security-oriented tool (GitHub)
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- Patchstack has expanded its vulnerability database to include Drupal and Joomla vulnerabilities, with PHP and JavaScript to come next. "Our scope remains open source software and web applications (for now.)," says CEO Oliver Sild (X)
- Bug bounty hunter Mat Rollings has uncovered over 500 plugin vulnerabilities this year, including a shockingly "silly" flaw where appending ?id=1 to any URL granted admin access (Osom to Know)
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- WordCamp Asia is seeking host city applications for 2026 (WP Tavern) | The winner of this year’s WordCamp Asia Wapuu competition is Andrew dela Serna, a Filipino graphic designer, who created “Tahopuu” (WordCamp Asia)
- PressConf will encourage serendipitous connections, highlight up-and-coming talent, and pay speakers. Organizer Raquel Manriquez also hopes the business-focused event will inspire other independent WordPress-related conferences (Do the Woo)
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Put your brand in front of the WordPress community and support independent journalism.
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➿ Building a community is really about creating a feedback loop with customers (Freemius)
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🎙️ GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani on the company's "house" model and focus on supporting microbusinesses (The Verge)
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🎗 How Automattic supported an Iraqi engineer's sick mother (Automattic)
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🗣 GravityKit saved over $36,000 translating its plugins using ChatGPT (GravityKit)
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🤖 Matt Medeiros and Mark Szymanski have ditched their AI skepticism (The WP Minute)
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🤔 What Americans believe about AI vs what's true (Hostinger)
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🪄 Riad Benguella asked his followers for their quick win, feature, enhancement, or bug fix requests for Gutenberg (Bluesky)
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🚀 Greyd has launched a vodcast and the first episode is about Core Web Vitals, real user data, and why block themes are a game-changer (YouTube)
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🌱 The carbon cost of Black Friday emails (EcoSend)
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