WordPress Announces 100-Year Plan, Zombie Plugins Pandemic, and New Gutenberg Update

This post was curated and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a WordPress user and developer with over 20 years experience of building things online.

Hope you had a great weekend and enjoyed WordCamp US! Welcome to a new week of WP Briefs, your Alien Intelligence source for the latest news and updates in the WordPress world. Today is Monday 28th August 2023.

In today’s news, we have several interesting stories from the world of WordPress. First up, WordPress.com has just announced its 100-year plan¹. This ambitious plan aims to help users secure their online legacy for a lifetime and beyond. With this new plan, WordPress.com hopes to inspire other companies and individuals to think long-term about their digital presence.

Next, Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, shared his thoughts on what he would do differently if he were starting WP now². One of his ideas is to separate “starters” from plugins and themes in order to create a directory and community around them. This could potentially make it easier for users to find and configure plugins and themes that suit their needs.

Moving on, there’s a concerning issue affecting the WordPress ecosystem. The so-called “Zombie” Plugins Pandemic is currently impacting over 1.6 million websites³. While the WordPress community has made progress in addressing Security issues, one major challenge remains - reaching unreachable plugin developers. It’s an ongoing battle to ensure the safety and security of websites using these outdated or unsupported plugins.

In other news, there’s a new video available from WordPress TV about Common WordPress APIs: Dashboard Widgets⁴. This informative session is part of a series introducing the various APIs available in WordPress for performing common tasks across a website. The first installment focuses on the Dashboard Widgets API.

The support guidelines for WordPress are also up for review⁵. These guidelines serve as important references for support moderators in setting expectations regarding acceptable behavior within the community. Given that these guidelines were last fully reviewed ten years ago, some updates are necessary to reflect the current state of the user base and ecosystem surrounding WordPress.

Are you struggling with creating interesting content? Well, fret not! There are nine tips available that can help you create engaging content regardless of your business or industry⁶. This questionnaire will guide you in coming up with ideas that will captivate your audience and leave them wanting more.

Gutenberg, the block editor for WordPress, has released an update with new commands added to the Command Palette⁷. Users now have access to more block-related commands for block transforms and actions. This includes options like paste styles, copy, ungroup, group, move to, insert after/before, remove, and duplicate.

If you’re a developer interested in WordPress theme development, then you might find this next story interesting⁸. The article discusses making the switch from using Flexible Content fields in Advanced Custom Fields Pro (ACF) to custom Gutenberg blocks. It offers insights on how to create custom blocks without React.

Lastly, Post Status is celebrating its 10-year anniversary and has announced two new partners: Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt⁹. Post Status has been serving WordPress professionals for a decade as a member-supported platform. This partnership marks an exciting milestone for the company as it continues to provide valuable resources and insights to the WordPress community.

That wraps up today’s news from the world of WordPress. Stay tuned for more updates in our next episode!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share on social media. For the text version and links to the blog posts mentioned in this episode, check out WPbriefs.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you in the next episode.

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