Prefer to read this on the blog? Click [here](. All the good WordPress stuff, once every two weeks Your Favorite Newsletterâs Favorite Newsletter Read to the end to see a baby penguin who, for some reason, has the energy of a 58-year-old mob boss. In todays email: - Hello to everyone in Portland posting selfies with folks IRL that theyâve worked/gossiped with on Slack for ages.ð
- Etch, please! Kevin Geary attempts to stir up FOMO with his big, bold launch.
- The Eddie Money parody no one asked for. Hot Off the Presses: Whatâs New? WP Event Organizers Can Now Have a Little Marketing Budget, As a Treat WordCamp US is underway! If youâre there, have a West Coast IPA at the Upright Brewing taproom for us. Need some tips on getting around? [Cami Kaos wrote a great guide.]( Speaking of WordPress Events, Global Community Teams Programs Manager Rocio Valdivia recently [published a proposal]( allocating a portion of the WordPress Events/WordCamp budget to marketing and advertising. The goal? To attract more newcomers to their events - aiming for at least 50% [first-time attendees](. WordCamp organizers will get a whopping $50-$400 per event to make that happen. This is the first time in the 21 year history of WordPress that organizers have been allocated an advertising budget. After WordCamp Netherlands was [rescheduled due to low ticket sales](, it appears that good olâ word of mouth isnât cutting it anymore. The recommended channels for these funds include event directories, online calendars, newsletter listings, influencer partnerships and even posters, flyers and banners in strategic locations. (Surprised they didnât mention homemade âzines, viral chain emails or just everyone putting the event info in their AOL screen name.) What about targeted campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn as well as TV, radio and newspaper placements, you might ask? These should only be considered when the prior options have already been explored, because they can âdeplete a budget very quickly.â Of course, the most important part will be getting the targeting right. Any amount of money spent on advertising is always a waste if it isnât reaching the right people. Could Etch be a lil bit⦠Sketch? Only time will tell. Automatic.css and Frames creator Kevin Geary announced the launch (kinda) of Etch recently, touted as the biggest WP announcement in 20 years. From what we can gather, it promises to be a unified builder that takes care of page building, CPTs, SEO and all other developer activities, all from one spot without jumping between plugins and different interfaces. The idea for the project seems to stem from Kevinâs frustration with the â[context-switching](â required to work in WordPress. Guess he doesnât do what the rest of us do - have 4,967 tabs open at once. But anyway⦠the catch? Etch doesnât exist⦠yet. Itâs merely a vision, scheduled to be finished in about three years. Kevin bypassed the typical funding avenues to take a more grassroots approach, asking the community itself to pay up-front at a minimum buy-in rate of $499 to fund his hypothetical product. Apparently, Kev said on his live stream (which Mañana No Mas! founder Kurt von Ahnen [said]( evoked memories of [Jim Carreyâs Fire Marshall Bill]() that those who donât blindly buy into his vision are a bunch of ânegative nanciesâ and âhaters.â Well⦠call me Nancy if thatâs what you fancy, but is it not unreasonable to want to see more than just [a panel of white dudes]( to prove that your product will actually be something? I dunno⦠perhaps a visual or a demo or a figma file or an MVP or maybe even a Q&A? Kevin - can ya show us something?! Sounds like Kevinâs following the âgetting the audience to pay you to create the thingâ playbook he laid out on [this podcast appearance]( several years ago. As Lawrence Ladomery points out [in his response](, itâs a great way to outsource the financial risk of failure. Kevâs drawn a lot of attention by being critical. But at the end of the day, heâs gonna have to back it up with, you know, a real product. Can Kev and the team make Etch happen? Promising to build something that will replace everything else is a big claim. I guess weâll just have to wait a few years and find out. Congrats on Your Funding Round, Patchstack! Meanwhile Patchstack, a product that actually exists, has secured $5m in a Series A funding round led by Karma Ventures, with additional investment from G+D Ventures and Emilia Capital, the investment firm of Yoast founders Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt. Patchstack, founded in Estonia, is a cybersecurity startup that saves developers from sleepless nights by helping them quickly identify, prioritize and mitigate new vulnerabilities. Its âvirtual patchesâ instantly deploy protection for your site - kinda like having a Kevin McCallister on your side 24/7 setting up booby-traps for any pesky virtual bandits. Patchstack recently released their free tool, co-funded by the EU, that helps open-source software vendors comply with the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act. Today, over 5 million websites are scanned with Patchstack and their customers include big names like GoDaddy, Plesk/cPanel and Digital Ocean. Their uniquely impressive access to vulnerability data is built on a gamified bug bounty program, attracting an army of ethical hackers to hunt down vulnerabilities. (If you fancy yourself a bug hunter, [first place on the leaderboard]( each month gets $2k!) ðµ Weâve got two tickets to paradise, wonât you communicate in The Hub tonight⦠ðµ Weâve got a [surprise, especially for you](
Something that developers and agencies wanna do
Youâve waited so long, waited so longâ¦
Youâve waited so long, waited so longâ¦
Weâre gonna take away those long email chaaains
And a simple ticket system, baby, is all that remains
Youâve waited so long, waited so longâ¦
Youâve waited so long, waited so long⦠Mind-Bloggling Stats - Security best practices recommend plugin auto-updates, but according to the annual WordPress Security survey published by Melapress, only 30% of those who are concerned with plugin or theme-related security issues have auto-updates enabled. Get on it! ([Source]()
- The Gender Equality in WordPress Business report is out and the results are not looking good, folks. Out of the 200 companies pledged to support Five for the Future, only 4% are led by women. ð¯ ([Source]()
- Some interesting stats on the WordPress Contribution Health Dashboards. For example, WP 6.6 has 38% new developers. ([Source]()
- WP 6.6.2 is available and includes 15 bug fixes in Core and 11 in the Block Editor. Hurrah! ([Source]() Deep Dive: How to Reduce Context Switching as a WordPress Developer Context switching really is a pain, and it can sap your productivity as a developer. Gloria Mark discovered in her study [âThe Cost of Interrupted Workâ]( that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on task after mental channel-flipping. Every time you need to switch between different projects, languages, tools or even various types of tasks such as coding, debugging or client communication, you have to âreloadâ your brain with all the information about the new task. And according to a [Collaboration Study by Livecycle](, nearly 50% of developers are struggling with this problem in their current workflows. So how do you avoid that loss of momentum and keep yourself in a state of [deep work](? Here are some tips: - Dedicate meeting-free days, or at least large blocks of time when youâre unavailable. As [Paul Graham wrote in his 2009 essay about the Makerâs Schedule](, âA single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.â
- Break a large project into smaller and clearly defined tasks, then do similar tasks [together in a batch](.
- Use build tools and task runners like Webpack, Gulp and Grunt to automate repetitive tasks so you can focus on the more complex elements of your project.
- Try Docker or Local development environments to [isolate WordPress projects](, ensuring each has its own environment and configuration, which avoids the need to switch between different server setups.
- The âDo Not Disturbâ mode on Slack is your best friend when youâre trying to get some uninterrupted work done. Your team doesn't need you right this second. They can handle async communication.
- When you DO need to stop working, take a ton of notes for yourself or try [interstitial journaling]( so you can easily hop back onto your train of thought when you return. (Jerry Ng says this is the [best thing heâs done for his career](.) Blogs & Resources You Shouldnât Miss Josepha Haden Chomphosy gets nostalgic on the [WordPress Briefing podcast](, as she looks back on her very first WordPress website and everything thatâs changed since then. (Trigger warning for a mention of GeoCities that will make some of you feel very old.) | The conversación about translations continues with [Matthias Pupilloâs appearance on the WPTavern Podcast](. What do you think? Would you trust AI to translate your site? | Listen to Marc Benzakeinâs wild story on the [WP Builds podcast]( of a hacker who demanded $40k. | Starting next month, [two-factor authentication will be mandatory]( for all plugin and theme authors, so make sure youâve got everything configured before then. | The â[Pac-Man Rule](â is a lovely piece of advice not just for WordCamp events, but for making new friends in any social context. Coffee-Break Distractions [The typing speed of the average person is 40 wpm. See how you compare.]( [Six Degrees of Wikipedia guides you through the wikihole between any two things you choose.]( [This site tracks what happens every second on the internet. Itâs actually pretty mind boggling.]( [If youâre quoting a client for a project and they insist on Good, Fast, AND Cheap⦠send them here.]( [This sarcastic, pretentious AI judges your music taste and roasts your guilty pleasure listens.]( [And last but DEFINITELY not least, this absolute UNIT of a baby penguin. Enjoy.]( Found this interesting? Forward it to someone who you think might also love it! INCSUB PO BOX 548 #88100, BIRMINGHAM, AL 35201, UNITED STATES You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.