In Case You Missed It – Issue 10

photo credit: Night Moves – (license)

There’s a lot of great WordPress content published in the community but not all of it is featured on the Tavern. This post is an assortment of items related to WordPress that caught my eye but didn’t make it into a full post.

Bob Dunn Launches Theme and Plugin Roundups

Bob Dunn, founder of BobWP, published an open letter to WordPress plugin and theme developers. The letter starts off by thanking plugin and theme developer’s whose products he makes a living on. He explains why he’s launching a new section on his site called Theme and Plugin Roundups. If you’re a WordPress plugin or theme developer looking for more exposure, consider signing up to be included in the roundups.

Josh Pollock Reorganizes Caldera and Ingot into Caldera Labs

Josh Pollock, co-founder of Caldera Forms, announced that CalderaWP, Ingot, his freelance practice, and education site will be rolled into one company called Caldera Labs.

As Ingot and CalderaWP grew, it became more and more clear how silly it was that the more mature company was being mismanaged by me, while the less mature company I had was being run incredibly well by Christie Chirinos.

Having two teams and two companies was a good way to start as we tested out what worked and didn’t work. But, moving forward as we have seen everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, we will move forward as one company.

WordPress is Most Affected by Hacks

Sucuri recently published a report that shows WordPress is the most hacked CMS platform. This isn’t surprising considering the number of sites using it. If anything, the news confirms WordPress’ dominance on the web.

CMS platforms most affected by hacks: WordPress, Joomla! and Magento. Get the full report: https://t.co/BMo8FyFQAd pic.twitter.com/2I1Klyi3Yd

— Sucuri Security (@sucurisecurity) June 2, 2016

It’s somewhat reassuring that according to Sucuri, the hacks had little to do with the core software itself and more to do with deployment, configuration, and maintenance.

The WordPress Community Voluntarily Creates the Mercier Willard Memorial Site

In yet another example of the WordPress community pulling together for one of its own, members of the community voluntarily created a memorial site for Bridget Willard’s husband, Mercier Willard. Willard, who is the Marketing Manager for WordImpress, lost the love of her life on May 31st.

The site is powered by WordPress and uses the Give plugin by WordImpress for donations. This eliminates having to pay for fees associated with crowdfunding sites. If you can afford it, please consider donating to help Willard out in this time of need.

WordPress Turns 13

I’m not sure how you could miss this news but if you did, WordPress turned 13 years old last week. According to Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of the WordPress project, “We now have 5-7 years of awkwardness and incredible growth to look forward to.”

SiteGround and Bluehost Removed then Relisted to The Recommended Hosting Page

The WordPress recommended hosting page is watched like a hawk by the community and is a lightning rod of controversy. On May 27th, Bluehost and SiteGround were removed from the page without any explanation. Both companies were relisted a few days later.

Kevin Ohashi, founder of Review Signal, looked into it and received a statement from Matt Mullenweg that explains issues that crop up from time to time may cause a host to be removed. However, once the issue is corrected, the host will likely be relisted.

Visitors can expect to see changes to the page on a semi regular basis as experiments are conducted with how hosts are displayed.

Layers Pro Moves Away from CodeCanyon

David Perel, founder of Layers WP, explains why the company is moving Layers Pro away from CodeCanyon. The move is in large part due to the limited models and marketing efforts available in the marketplace.

ThemeForest and CodeCanyon continue to be incredible vehicles for the growth and development of the Layers ecosystem. It helps us maintain a thriving third-party library of extensions and most importantly to us, it enables us to help thousands of awesome people build amazing websites.

As we look to the future of the Layers ecosystem we want to try some different models and marketing ideas that are outside Envato’s near-term roadmap.

If you’re an existing Layers Pro customer, be sure to read the post as it includes important information on what to do to migrate your purchase.

Birthday Wapuu!

In what is a traditional part of this series, I end each issue by featuring a Wapuu design. For those who don’t know, Wapuu is the unofficial mascot of the WordPress project. Considering it was WordPress’ birthday last week, it’s appropriate to celebrate with Birthday Wapuu!

Happy Birthday Wapuu

That’s it for issue ten. If you recently discovered a cool resource or post related to WordPress, please share it with us in the comments.