The Week in Analysis

Dries Buytaert / dri.es

Who Sponsors Drupal Development? (2020-2021 Edition)

—

Dries Buytaert published the annual, in-depth analysis of how Drupal‘s development was sponsored. This edition covers July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.

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POST STATUS ANALYSIS

It would be fair to say from reading this report that Drupal is in good shape overall, although there are some areas of concern. There has been a slowdown in contribution, although there are silver linings Dries points out here for the Drupal community. This isn’t surprising — I believe the pandemic (mostly due to the restrictions of meeting in person) has affected contributions and efforts in open source in general — even for WordPress. I wouldn’t be surprised if Drupal and WordPress’s stats shared a few similarities.

It would be nice to know, wouldn’t it? I would love to see a similar, annual one post “update” like this one for WordPress. I always enjoy reading Dries’ posts as Drupal often mirrors trends in the other, related open source projects.

— David

Latest Post Status Feature

Michelle Frechette / Post Status Contributor

Lesley Sim

Member Spotlight: Lesley Sim

— Meet Lesley Sim from Newsletter Glue, a plugin that connects your email service provider to WordPress and turns the block editor into a newsletter builder so that you can build and send newsletters directly from WordPress.

News for the WordPress Professional

Vlad Bondarenko / models.substack.com

Facing the Blank Page Syndrome

— I run into writer’s block constantly, so I value Vlad Bondarenko‘s reminder that it’s hard to come up with good topics on demand, but there are solutions. Vlad has a few tips you can use to get around writing roadblocks. One approach is to keep working over an existing topic, theme, or concept to question your own thinking, discover mistakes, and correct or refine your ideas: “the purpose of iterating on an idea is mostly not to find new ideas and connect them to the original one, but rather to find what sucks about the idea and to fix it.” magnifying-glass

Aaron Jorbin / aaron.jorb.in

On with my Head! A return from Headless WordPress

— Aaron Jorbin explains why he is returning to a traditional WordPress site after running a headless one, which he calls “a mistake.” He summarizes the downsides for him being: no post reviews, loss of the “free” WordPress features, slower publishing time, and “no on the go publishing.” I still think Headless will (for the foreseeable future) be a niche solution. As Aaron says, over-engineering is fine for users, but as a publisher it “was the step too far.” On the other hand, if you are interesting in building a middle-of-the-road “nearly headless” WordPress site, then Alex Standiford as a recent, brief overview on CSS Tricks you should check out. – David magnifying-glass

Steve Burge / taxopress.com

TaxoPress 3.4 Has Big Improvements to Suggest Terms

— TaxoPress is an advanced taxonomy manager plugin with a new version release (3.4) that includes some “big improvements.” Steve Burge notes that after taking over the plugin six months ago, when it had 80k+ users, this update marks the end of a major overhaul. There are over 50 changes in this version, and it looks like active installs have been moving steadily upward. Congrats! 👍 magnifying-glass

Danny Crichton, Chris Morrison / techcrunch.com

Automattic TC-1

— TechCrunch has a “T-1” of Automattic, their four-part “analysis of breakthrough companies.” Most of it is behind their paywall, but if you have access it is worth a read and discloses some numbers that aren’t secrets, but neither are they well-known. I was reminded that after 16 years the company is currently valued at $7.5 billion. – David magnifying-glass

Matt Cromwell / www.mattcromwell.com

Empathy is the Best Anti-Itch Solution for Product Developers

— Matt Cromwell shares how GiveWP started as an “itch-scratcher,” but soon they were getting requests for features they didn’t have. They were not scratching their itch anymore but their users’ itches, and that required an adjustment in their thinking. The tendency to just scratch your own itch can be a trap. Matt says that empathy helps avoid this, and “You should learn to build products for customers that are nothing like you.” His advice is to read a post that covers this topic by Chris Lema, read about the “Single Purpose Philosophy”, and “implement a feedback forum like Canny if you don’t already have one.” magnifying-glass

Jonny Harris / www.spacedmonkey.com

Becoming a maintainer of the REST API in WordPress Core

— Congratulations to Jonny Harris (aka spacedmonkey) for becoming a maintainer of the REST API in WordPress Core! Johnny explains why he signed up for this role — because “the REST API is important to the future of the WordPress project and the open web… I hope to bring many improvements to the REST API in the coming releases.” magnifying-glass

Cate DeRosia / heropressnetwork.com

A New WordPress Resource Archive: Find It WP

— Find It WP has been launched on the HeroPress Network and will endeavour to be “a searchable database of all things WordPress.” It will be powered by plugins such as FacetWP and SearchWP. All of the resources are user submitted. Cate DeRosia shares that the network will give broader visibility to diverse organizations and simplified access to WordPress resources: “We’ve already discussed how it saves time when looking for resources… beyond that, it also opens your business to a broader market with minimal effort on your part.” magnifying-glass

Post Status Announcements

21 Days Since Last Acquisition

October 5, 2021 - Brainstorm Force Acquires ProjectHuddle

👉 We’ve created a page for WordPress acquisitions going back to 2007. We’d also like to gather major investment data. Help us make this table more complete by adding additional deals, data, and links.

Listen To The Latest Post Status Podcast:

Thu 10/21 - Post Status Excerpt (No. 29) — Better Ways To Support Customers

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