#WCEU Online, GitHub Branch Renaming, Automattic Investment 🗞️ July 2020 WordPress News w/ CodeinWP

📆  This is the July 2020 edition of “This Month in WordPress with CodeinWP.” 

Hello WordPress aficionados, welcome to this month’s roundup of news about the world’s most popular CMS. I’m writing this post from the base of the mountains, where part of our team is hanging out for a few days to work and spend some time together.

But we can’t leave June 2020 without discussing the most interesting happenings in our community. So today we’re gonna talk about the online WordCamp Europe, the GitHub renaming debate, PHP, the latest acquisitions or partnerships, WordPress future releases, and many more exciting stories.

Let’s get right to it!

Report from WordCamp Europe 2020: The Future of WordPress

The famous WordCamp Europe took place online this summer, beating a record that its offline counterpart won’t likely reach very soon. The turnout was of 8,756 attendees, of which 2,500 joined the Contributor Day. That’s a big deal, indeed!

The guys at Torque made a summary of the most anticipated presentations and a review of the event from start to finish, including the Matt Mullenweg – Matias Ventura conversation, the highlight of the first day. They showed a live demo of the upcoming image editing tools in Gutenberg and talked about WordPress 5.5, full-site editing, the indispensable Javascript, WordPress’ competition, and other topics people from the audience have brought up in the Q&A chat.

The emblem of the online WordCamp Europe 2020 is the family photo, to which a lot of people contributed with their own portraits, making a nice collage that all the participants will remember.

2020 WordPress Release Squads

If you were wondering who’s gonna take care of the WordPress 5.5 release, the names are available on WordPress.org. Matt Mullenweg will lead the team, together with the coordinator Jake Spurlock and David Baumwald, who’s responsible for the Triage. Check out the post that Josepha Haden (WordPress’s executive director) published if you want to find out the assignments for each team.

But what’s coming next is even more interesting as Haden announced an all-woman squad for the 5.6 version, a thing she set as one of her goals at the end of 2019 and for which she started recruiting this March. If this will happen, it would be a first in our community.

Proposal: Update all git repositories to use trunk instead of master

I think the Black Lives Matter movement has reached your ears by now. After everything went viral all around the world, it had an effect on many companies and industries, including technology. One of the popular cases is GitHub, whose owners had to give up the word “master” used for branches, in order to avoid any references to slavery.

Core contributor Aaron Jorbin also proposed renaming the branch for all WordPress-owned Git repositories into “trunk’ instead of “master”, with the aim of going along with the anti-discriminatory current that snowballed in the past month.

Announcement: Duplicate Post joins Yoast

Yoast enlarges its portfolio with a new addition after purchasing the popular Duplicate Post plugin, which is active on over three million WordPress sites, according to WordPress.org.

The guys at Yoast are planning to improve the plugin’s accessibility first, then they will add a few simple integrations (for instance, connecting the user roles of each tool so that people can have global access to their features).

“I’m excited to join them because I’m confident that Yoast will be a great new home for Duplicate Post, and its users will benefit from all the advantages of an inventive company that can provide quality, support, and vision for the future”, said Enrico Battocchi, the developer of Duplicate Post.

Automattic backs Matrix by investing $4.6M in New Vector!

On a similar note but at a larger scale, Automattic invested $4.6 million in New Vector, a company specialized in providing decentralized, secure communication infrastructure for businesses and individuals. The service is sustained via the global Matrix network.

Matrix lets you link messaging-based platforms like Facebook, Slack, Discord, or Telegram through a global network. Through its recent financial support, Automattic became one of the six investors in the company with voting rights. Matt Mullenweg believed in the Matrix project before it got popular because it was solving a real user problem “in a technically rigorous and an intellectually and morally pure way”.

WordPress 5.4.2 Security and Maintenance Release

Since our last roundup, WordPress went through a few new phases, the last one consisting of a security and maintenance release of its 5.4.2 version. This kind of release fixes bugs and other errors that show up in the final version of the platform.

Welcome Smash Balloon to the WPBeginner Family of Products

WPBeginner has also grown its portfolio with a new product after buying Smash Balloon, a combination of four plugins for custom social media feeds. To celebrate the occasion, WPBeginner is running a 60% off sale on all plans, which give you access to all the Smash Balloon products, present, and future.

WordPress Bumps Minimum PHP Recommendation to 7.2

Another change in the minimum PHP recommendation in WordPress. From now on, anyone using PHP 7.1 or lower will be prompted to upgrade PHP versions in their WordPress dashboard. Through this change, the core team wants to encourage people to move towards the latest coding systems. By the way, this month PHP marks 25 years of existence.

Learn about full site editing & block-based themes with my new course

Full-site editing in WordPress is on its way and it seems that getting familiar with it is the right step to take, especially if you’re a theme author. Carolina Nymark from the Themes Team engaged in training everyone who wants to learn by creating a new course that you can join for free until January 2021.

Creating a customer review system for your site

Are you looking to hear your users’ opinions on your product but don’t know how to ask for it? There are many ways to find out how happy people are with your services and many forms their opinions can take. Learn how to get a client review, testimonial, and feedback.

Is AppSumo Worth the Hassle for WordPress Plugin Developers?

AppSumo is a platform that helps plugin and theme developers promote their products and make sales fast. Or simply helps you launch a new tool with a kick-start. Freemius digs into whether or not AppSumo is worth it for WordPress developers and what you need to do to be featured on their site.

The Ultimate Developer’s Guide to the WordPress Database

Have you ever wondered what the WordPress database looks like? Here’s a complete guide to every little detail and element you’ll find if you have a peek at what’s under the hood of this CMS.

AsBlocks Project Uses Gutenberg to Create a Collaborative Writing Environment

Fancy writing in a block editor that is outside the WordPress dashboard? AsBlocks is a collaborative writing prototype built with Gutenberg, that you can open in a minimalist page without having to use WordPress whatsoever. You can share the page link with anyone for viewing or editing purposes.

Build Versatile Layouts with the GenerateBlocks WordPress Plugin

Also in the Gutenberg world, if you want to make the block editor as flexible as possible and create custom beautiful pages with it, GenerateBlocks is a free plugin that allows you to choose your layout and gives you more control on the customization. It comes from Tom Usborne, the same developer as the popular GeneratePress theme.

Fake Ransomware Bitcoin Scam Claims “Your Site Has Been Hacked”

Now, we’re bringing up a security problem that seems to have fooled several WordPress site owners. A scam has been circulating lately, which targets the website contact forms and sends emails to people telling them that their site has been hacked. Funny but, to stay safe, you just need to ignore the messages that include various threats regarding your private data.

An Introduction to Assistant (And Why Developers Should Be Excited About It)

Beaver Builder launched a new plugin – Assistant – that will let you manage tasks from your WordPress site front-end, such as minor content edits, comment moderation, or plugin/theme updates. Assistant is a standalone free product and is not part of the Beaver Builder page builder – you can download it from WordPress.org.

The Ultimate WordPress Theme Buying Guide By A Consumer. No Fluff. No Bull. No Affiliate Links.

This is a comprehensive guide that you need to read before investing in a premium theme. It tackles all the important aspects, like pricing, marketplaces, user reviews, support, functionality, updates, demos, speed… you got it.