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This week in WordPress
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And the acquisitions keep coming…
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Automattic acquires Day One
Matt Mullenweg says he began seriously using the journaling app in 2016 when his father was in the ICU and later passed. "Having a private, safe place to write what I was going through kept me sane and helped me process everything," the Automattic CEO writes in Day One at Automattic.
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He's not the only one. "I might be an outlier, but Automattic buying Day One makes me a lot more comfortable using it and without worrying it will go away someday along with my data," tweets software developer Collin Donnell.
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"!!! I *love* Day One. What an excellent match," tweets Codeable Partner Community Development Lead Christie Chirinos. "I am ridiculously excited about @dayoneapp being tucked into the @automattic lineup. I'm a LOVER of the app since @jasonpatricksc recommended years ago and now it's in the WP family!" adds Post Status owner Cory Miller.
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Extendify adopts EditorsKit
And in other news that probably didn't involve quite as much money, the Extendify team has taken over the development of the EditorsKit plugin and add-ons, ShareABlock, and other tools from creator Jeffrey Carandang.
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Lastly, in case you were wondering, "0️⃣ days since the last acquisition #WordPress," tweets Bisset.
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FlipWP launches to flip WordPress businesses
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Speaking of acquisitions, Alex Denning, who runs WordPress marketing agency Ellipsis, and Iain Poulson, who recently sold his SaaS app Plugin Rank to Awesome Motive, have launched FlipWP, a private acquisition marketplace for WordPress.
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"The best description I've heard of product/market fit is you know when you have it ‘because you get hit in the face'. We were getting hit in the face with ‘hey can you help me buy/sell this?' requests, so at the start of June we pulled the trigger on the project," writes Denning.
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Denning tells The Repository that while FlipWP won't be providing legal or due diligence services for buyers and sellers, "we know buying or selling can be a stressful period, so we're going to provide as much help as we can with resources, preparing people for the process, and connections to professionals."
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Are WordPress acquisitions a good or bad thing?
"Open question, no answer unwelcome… is the WordPress acquisition market too much? Does it bother you that company X is buying up all-the-things, or is this just a maturation of the WordPress ecosystem? Like I say, it's an open question… GO!" Nathan Wrigley, who podcasts for WP Builds and WPTavern, tweeted this week, getting a mixed bag of answers.
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In the "good" camp, Birgit Pauli-Haack, who runs Gutenberg Times, adds, "It's a good thing that plugins receive greater financial security and backing for innovation. It makes them sustainable. Good for all users, especially the businesses that are using the plugins to make revenue online. The hit-by-a-bus risk goes way down. Peace of mind." GoDaddy Pro Web Design Dev Advocate Courtney Robertson tweets, "I'd love to hear what this has done for quality of life for employees in the acquisition. I loved my time at one place that was acquired after I left. All contact staff I believe were bumped up from contractors to employees. In USA, healthcare coverage is huge."
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In the "it is what it is" camp, Mike Wooldridge, Onyx Product Lead at Krystal Hosting, tweets, "Whilst I like the idea of all the brands within the WordPress ecosystem each being small independent companies, it's a fact of life in any industry that successful brands will have interest - and investment opportunities - from larger companies as the ecosystem matures."
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Meanwhile, front-end developer Gregory Hammond, who shares his thoughts in a blog post, believes "We need to figure out a way to keep supporting the independent creators or else acquisitions will continue to happen."
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Hi hello yes we do WP maintenance
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For businesses that rely on WordPress.
Have you ever wasted an afternoon debugging a WordPress website that crashed? Our members don’t. Let's chat.
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WordCamp Europe 2021 recap: Get ready for Full Site Editing
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If you missed WordCamp Europe 2021, blogger Nick Schäferhoff covered the virtual conference for Torque and says WCEU was all about FSE.
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During the event, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Gutenberg Project Lead Matías Ventura discussed the project's latest developments and shared a video with some of Gutenberg's current and upcoming highlights. "These kinds of marketing videos are so valuable because users don't always know what is possible, even if the tools are approachable for anyone to use," notes Sarah Gooding at WPTavern.
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The WordCamp Europe team has shared the event in numbers, including total views on YouTube (6,190 – and you can watch all the WCEU presentations on their YouTube channel) and unique views on Hubilo (1,857). The team also shares why it chose Hubilo as the event platform for the conference.
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Wordfence becomes CNA, expecting its security research to accelerate
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Threat analyst Chloe Chamberland says the authorization means Wordfence will be able to accelerate its security research. "This furthers our goal of helping to protect the community of WordPress site owners and developers, and the millions of website users that access WordPress every day," she writes in Wordfence is now a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA).
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Dollie Transforms the way your Agency sells WordPress services
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dollie is the first Cloud Automation Platform to build, launch, and sell WordPress Subscription Services under your own brand and domain. Sell hosting, pre-made websites, development services and more, directly through your WordPress install by simply installing the free dollie plugin.
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Adapt: Future-proof your business and impress your clients by offering them a one-stop turnkey solution for all their website needs. Stop losing revenue to hosting companies and SaaS platforms, and become one yourself.
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Grow: We provide you with everything you need to offer recurring revenue WordPress services without having to invest in building out scalable cloud infrastructure. Focus on growing your business with dollie as your truly invisible partner behind the scenes.
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Here's what WPTavern said about us:
“Dollie is a cloud-based eCommerce solution for WordPress businesses looking to provide white-label services to their customers. The platform allows developers and agencies to sell custom, pre-configured WordPress solutions to their customers. […] Built on top of WordPress and WooCommerce it allows anyone to set up and sell their services with minimal up-front knowledge of cloud hosting technology." Read the coverage at WPTavern.
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In other WordPress news...
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- WordPress 5.8 Beta 2 is now available for resting. Release coordinator Jonathan Desrosiers, who's a Bluehost-sponsored core contributor, shares a rundown of the latest changes, including 26 bugs that have been fixed since the beta 1 release. The final WordPress 5.8 release is due out on July 20 – five weeks away.
- Yoast founder and Chief Product Officer Joost de Valk has published his latest CMS market share analysis and says there are two clear winners: WordPress (and WooCommerce) and Shopify. WordPress has grown its market share by 4.6% in the past six months — that's more than the total market share of Shopify, the second most popular CMS, at 3.6%. Shopify overtook Joomla, which now sits in the number three spot at 2.1% market share. de Valk says due to the increase in online shopping due to the pandemic, ecommerce sites are taking up a bigger portion of the top 10 million sites. This has helped drive WooCommerce's "phenomenal" 8.2% growth in the past six months, and as de Valk points out, WooCommerce is now growing faster than Shopify.
- WP Engine Summit/2021 is next week. The free annual conference for developers and marketers, now in its sixth year, will be held virtually on June 24. The event will feature a mix of live-streamed and on-demand content, including networking opportunities and breakout sessions for attendees. WP Engine editor Riley Cullen says this year's keynote address will be delivered by Reshma Saujani who has spent over a decade using her activism to fight for women and girls' economic empowerment, closing the tech industry's gender gap, and she recently began advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic.
- "Kicked off while we were in a full pandemic, it was our genuine response to a need we had and saw in the people around us—to read stories that bring us hope, joy, and faith in a time when opening the TV or scrolling on social media would make you think the world was about to end," writes Oana Filip, kicking of theme store Pixelgrade's first Upstairs Community Report. The report covers a lot – how the Pixelgrade team has engaged with its global community, what it has learned by taking the time to have conversations with people, and insights gleaned along the way.
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