#WordPress Core

[aedininsight]

How Am I a WordPress SME?

🚀 20+ years in WordPress Core. I don’t just build WP sites—I engineer them. From AI-driven automation to next-gen performance tuning, this is WordPress at its peak. #WordPress #WordPressSME #WebDevelopment #AI #PerformanceMatters #DigitalStrategy

Being a WordPress Subject Matter Expert (SME) isn’t just about knowing how to install a theme or tweak a plugin. It’s about understanding the DNA of WordPress itself and after 20+ years as a WordPress Core Developer, I’ve done more than just work with WordPress. I’ve helped shape it. What Defines My WordPress Expertise? 🔹 Deep Core Development Experience – I’ve been part of WordPress’s evolution,…

[bobwp]

The Refresh of Learn.WordPress with Kathryn Presner, Nick Diego and Laura Adamonis

Contributors to the WordPress Training Team, Laura Adamonis, Nick Diego, and Kathryn Presner share insights about the latest updates to the Learn.WordPress.

[fi-mendez]

Never Regret Something That Made You Smile

-Mark Twain

https://www.instagram.com/fi_mendez

[melancholiacs]

people talk big about dying for love but can't handle living for it. dying is one brave moment. living is a thousand daily humiliations.

[emilyscastlevania]

If I turned into a vampire, I’d turn all my favorite people and we’d feed on our enemies 🧛‍♀️🩸

[cadencewishes]

best wishes, Cadence.

[thegodthief]

If you have your own domain name, please take the time to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on your account. Even if you don't use it to send emails, if a spammer tries to use your domain name in a joe-job, their attempts will fail and your domain won't get flagged as malicious.

[jamesmartindev]

From Slow to Speedy: How to Optimize WordPress for Core Web Vitals

Website performance plays a crucial role in user experience and search engine rankings. Google’s Core Web Vitals, introduced as part of the page experience update, have become essential metrics to consider when optimizing your WordPress site. These metrics focus on three key areas: loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. In this blog post, we'll explore practical steps to optimize your WordPress site for better Core Web Vitals.

 Understanding Core Web Vitals

Before diving into optimization techniques, let's briefly review what Core Web Vitals measure:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.

2. First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. Pages should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds to ensure quick responses to user inputs.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. Pages should maintain a CLS score of less than 0.1 to prevent unexpected shifts in page layout.

 Step-by-Step Optimization Guide

 1. Choose a Lightweight Theme

The theme you choose plays a significant role in your site's performance. Opt for a lightweight, well-coded theme that minimizes unnecessary scripts and styles. Themes like Astra, GeneratePress, and Neve are known for their performance optimization.

 2. Use a Reliable Hosting Provider

Your hosting provider's server speed directly impacts your Core Web Vitals. Choose a hosting provider that offers optimized server environments, such as SiteGround, WP Engine, or Kinsta, which are specifically tailored for WordPress.

 3. Optimize Images

Images are often the largest contributors to page weight, affecting LCP. To optimize images:

   - Resize and compress images: Use tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel.

   - Implement lazy loading: Use plugins like Lazy Load by WP Rocket to load images only when they come into the viewport.

   - Serve images in next-gen formats: Convert images to WebP using plugins like Smush or Imagify.

 4. Minimize and Combine Files

Reduce the number of HTTP requests by minimizing and combining CSS and JavaScript files. Plugins like Autoptimize or WP Rocket can help you achieve this by:

   - Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files.

   - Combining multiple CSS or JS files into one to reduce requests.

 5. Enable Browser Caching and GZIP Compression

Caching improves LCP by storing a version of your site’s files in the visitor's browser, so they don't have to be reloaded each time. Use a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache to enable:

   - Browser caching: Store static files in the user's browser.

   - GZIP compression: Compress files to reduce their size before sending them to the user's browser.

 6. Optimize Your Database

A clean and optimized database contributes to faster server response times, which can improve FID. Use plugins like WP-Optimize to remove unnecessary data such as post revisions, spam comments, and transient options.

 7. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN stores copies of your site’s files on multiple servers worldwide, reducing the distance between the server and the user, thereby improving LCP. Cloudflare and StackPath are popular CDNs that integrate seamlessly with WordPress.

 8. Reduce Third-Party Scripts

Third-party scripts like ads, social media embeds, or analytics can significantly impact your Core Web Vitals, especially FID and CLS. Reduce their number where possible and load them asynchronously.

 9. Implement Critical CSS

Critical CSS refers to the essential CSS required to render the above-the-fold content of your site. Loading critical CSS inline and deferring non-essential styles can improve LCP. Tools like CriticalCSS.com or the Critical CSS feature in WP Rocket can help automate this process.

 10. Monitor and Test Regularly

Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, or GTmetrix to regularly test your site’s performance and Core Web Vitals. Monitoring tools like these will help you identify issues and track the impact of your optimization efforts over time.

 Conclusion

Optimizing your WordPress site for Core Web Vitals requires a combination of strategic choices and ongoing monitoring. By focusing on these key areas—theme selection, image optimization, file minimization, and more—you can significantly improve your site’s performance, leading to better user experiences and higher search engine rankings. Implement these strategies today to ensure your WordPress site meets the latest standards for web performance and user satisfaction.

[jollykryptonitecollection]

Mastering Web Development: Setting Up VS Code for JavaScript Development

For modern web developers, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a powerful tool that enhances productivity and streamlines the coding process. If you’re focused on JavaScript development, setting up VS Code properly is crucial for an efficient workflow.

Why Choose VS Code? VS Code offers robust features, including an integrated terminal, version control, and extensive extensions. Its flexibility makes it ideal for JavaScript projects, whether you’re working on small scripts or large applications.

Setup Steps

Install VS Code: Download and install the latest version from the official website.

Configure Extensions: Enhance your JavaScript development experience with extensions like Prettier for code formatting and ESLint for code quality.

Customize Your Environment: Adjust settings and themes to suit your preferences. Configure the integrated terminal for seamless command-line access.

By optimizing your VS Code setup, you’ll improve your coding efficiency and enjoy a more productive development process. Embrace the full potential of your development environment and see how it transforms your workflow!

[sassygrrl32]

Rachel Holbert Jones: Rehabbing, Audiobooks, and Travel-Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

So, here I am, writing a new blog post in a Starbuck’s cafe. I’ve been so busy with work and a lot of other things, I haven’t had the opportunity to write since March. Back in March, I promised I would write more but I never got around to it. Today could be a much better day. I’m sick with a sinus infection and it’s one of the worst I’ve had in awhile. Dad would say it’s my body trying to get rid…

[rocketpresses]

Google Core Web Vitals for WordPress: How to Test and Improve Them

Table of Contents

·         What Are Google Core Web Vitals?

·         Do Core Web Vitals Affect SEO as a Ranking Factor?

·         How to Test & Measure Core Web Vitals on WordPress

·         How to Improve Core Web Vitals on WordPress

·         Tips to Boost Your WordPress Performance if Core Web Vitals Don’t Improve

·         Start Optimizing Core Web Vitals on WordPress Today

Heard about this new Google Core Web Vitals project but not sure how it connects to your WordPress site? Or maybe you have no idea what the Core Web Vitals project is and why it matters for WordPress?

Either way, this post is going to cover everything you need to know about Core Web Vitals and WordPress. We’ll tell you what they are, how to test them, and how to improve your site’s scores to create a better user experience

What Are Google Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a new initiative from Google designed to measure and improve user experience on the web. Instead of focusing on generic metrics like how long it takes your entire website to load, Core Web Vitals focus on how your WordPress site’s performance connects to delivering a high-quality user experience.

Users care about how fast they can start interacting with a page. That’s precisely what the Core Web Vitals metrics aim to measure.

Currently, there are three Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint (loading performance), Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability), and Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness).

According to Google, these metrics are the most important ones for providing a great user experience.

If you think that these names are confusing, and if you tend to mix one metric with another, don’t worry! We’ll explain each metric in the easiest way. We want you to understand what each Core Web Vital means and its impact on user experience.

It’s the first step for improving the scores and your overall SEO and WordPress performance.

Explaining Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how long it takes for the most meaningful content on your site to load – that’s usually your site’s hero section or featured image.

According to Google, how long it takes for a page’s main content to load affects how quickly users perceive your site to load.

Practical example: you land on a page and don’t see the top image fully displayed right away. You would be annoyed, right? You would even think about leaving the page right away. Here’s why the Largest Contentful Paint metric is closely related to user experience — more than the overall site’s loading time.

The LCP “element” is different for each site, and it’s also different between the mobile and desktop versions of your site. Sometimes the LCP element could be an image, while other times, it could just be text..

If you’re wondering what a good LCP time is, here are Google’s thresholds:

·         Good – Less than or equal to 2.5 seconds

·         Needs Improvement – Less than or equal to 4.0 seconds

·         Poor – More than 4.0 seconds.

On a side note: LCP is very similar to First Contentful Paint (FCP), another metric included in PageSpeed Insights.

The key difference is that LCP measures when the “main” content loads. FCP is focused on just when the “first” content loads — which could be a splash screen or loading indicator, that’s a less relevant user-experience element.

Explaining Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how much your site’s content “shifts” or “moves around” as it loads.

Practical example: you’re about to click on a link or CTA, and you can’t do it because your content has just gone down after being loaded. You have a terrible user experience, and that’s a layout shift. The same goes when you accidentally click the wrong button because the late-loading content caused a button to shift.

Or, have you ever been on a news website where the content in the article keeps shifting around as the site loads ads, and you are unable to keep reading? That’s a layout shift, too.

You can see from yourself how the cumulative layout shift is super annoying for users and how they will have a poor experience.

Here’s how Google defines the CLS scores:

·         Good – Less than or equal to 0.1 seconds

·         Needs Improvement – Less than or equal to 0.25 seconds

·         Poor – More than 0.25 seconds.

Explaining Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a webpage responsiveness metric measuring the latency of all user interactions on a page. Responsiveness means pages react quickly to user interactions. When a page responds to an interaction, the browser promptly displays visual feedback in the next frame to confirm the interaction’s success – this is what users expect.

Here’s how Google defines INP scores:

·         Good – Less than or equal to 200 ms

·         Needs Improvement – Between 200ms and 500 ms

·         Poor – More than 500 ms.

Do Core Web Vitals Affect SEO as a Ranking Factor?

In June 2021, Google will start using Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor – therefore, these metrics could affect your SEO performance.

Core Web Vitals will be part of the new Page experience signals, together with HTTPS-security, safe-browsing, mobile-friendliness, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.

Core Web Vitals will affect both mobile and desktop organic results, as well as whether or not your site appears in Top Stories. Previously, your site needed to use AMP to appear in Top Stories. That will no longer be the case when Google rolls out the change, but your site will need to meet specific minimum Core Web Vitals scores to appear in Top Stories.

What’s more, it seems like all Core Web Vitals metrics need to be met to improve organic ranking. And the Core Web Vitals score for noindexed pages may matter, too.

In short: if you care about your SEO performance, improving your Core Web Vital scores is now mandatory.

How to Test & Measure Core Web Vitals on WordPress

You can test and measure the Core Web Vitals with all of Google’s tools for web developers, from PageSpeed Insights to the Chrome DevTools, the CrUX Report, and much more.

As you can see in the image below, Google’s tools measure all the three metrics — except for Chrome DevTools and Lighthouse.

Google’s tools to measure Core Web Vitals

If you prefer using another performance tool, you should know that both GTmetrix and WebPageTest have started to use the Lighthouse performance score.

Keep in mind that both tools only provide you with the Largest Contentful Paint and the Cumulative Layout Shift scores.

The reason is always the same: the First Input Delay can only be measured with real user interaction, and these tools rely on the Lighthouse Lab Data.

Let’s now go over two of the most popular tools: PageSpeed Insights and Search Console. The first one helps you detect individual page issues; the other allows you to diagnose sitewide problems.

How to Test and Measure the Core Web Vitals with PageSpeed Insights

The easiest way to test your site’s pages against Core Web Vitals is via Google PageSpeed Insights.

Google’s tool provides data on all three metrics and gives specific recommendations to improve their performance.

The Diagnostics section will become your best ally to get a better score!

Just plug in your site’s URL, and you’ll get the Core Web Vitals assessment:

You should keep in mind to always check both the mobile and desktop results. Your Core Web Vitals metrics will differ between the two. Keep in mind that the mobile score is the most relevant and the most challenging.

Let’s now look at how you can use PageSpeed Insights to identify the Core Web Vitals elements that need improvement.

Discovering the Largest Contentful Paint Element with PageSpeed Insights

As we explained, the LCP score measures how long it takes for the most meaningful element to become visible to your visitors.

To discover your site’s Largest Contentful Paint element, scroll down to the Diagnostics section and expand the Largest Contentful Paint element tab.

There, Google will display the HTML for the element that it’s using to measure LCP.

For example, on the desktop version of the WordPress.org homepage, the LCP element is an image:

The LCP element from the desktop – PageSpeed Insights

However, on the mobile version of the site, the LCP element is the subheading text:

The LCP element from the mobile  – PageSpeed Insights

Discovering the Cumulative Layout Shift Elements with PageSpeed Insights

Quick recap: the Cumulative Layout Shift deals with how your site loads and whether or not your content “moves around” as new content is loaded.

To find the individual elements on your site that are “shifting” and affecting your score, go to the Avoid large layout shifts section in the Diagnostics area:

The CLS elements – PageSpeed Insights

How to Read the Core Web Vitals Report on Search Console

If you want to diagnose issues with your site as a whole, you should use the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console.

The report is based on an aggregate of real users’ data from CrUX. For this reason, the data included in the report could take a while before reporting issues. That’s why the Lab Data from Lighthouse is always valuable.

That said, the Core Web Vitals report is great to identify the groups of pages that require attention – both for desktop and mobile.

The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console – Overview

Once you open the report, you’ll find a Details tab that groups the URL performance by several criteria:

·         Status (Poor or Need improvement)

·         Metric type (e.g., CLS issue: more than 0.25 (desktop))

·         URL group (the list of URLs with similar performance).

Once you have fixed the URLs that needed an improvement, you’ll also be able to click on the Validation column and move forward with the “Validate Fix” option. Keep in mind that the validation process takes up to two weeks — be patient!

The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console – Details tab

How to Measure Core Web Vitals with Chrome Extensions

If you’re looking for a useful Chrome Extension, you could choose Web Vitals.

It gives you the Core Web Vital scores for any page you’re browsing:

Web Vitals Chrome extension

You may also want to try CORE Serp Vitals, which shows you the Core Web Vitals results directly on the SERP. Remember that you need to enter a Chrome UX Report API key to let the extension work.

How to Improve Core Web Vitals on WordPress

Now for the critical question — if you aren’t currently meeting Google’s recommendations for the three Core Web Vitals metrics, how can you optimize your WordPress site to improve your Core Web Vitals scores?

The strategies are different for each metric. Most optimizations involve implementing WordPress performance best practices, though with a few points of emphasis — and that’s why choosing the best WordPress caching plugin will help you with no effort from your side.

Watch the video to understand how to optimize your Core Web Vitals, and keep reading to learn more about it.

Please note that the video still includes the former Core Web Vital, the First Input Delay. As you’ll read later in the article, optimizing INP does not differ from optimizing FID. Simply, INP has a broader scope than optimizing only the First Input Delay.

How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint on WordPress

Optimizing for Largest Contentful Paint is the most straightforward metric as it’s pretty much entirely WordPress performance best practices:

1.     Set up page caching. Page caching speeds up how quickly your server can respond and reduces the server response times (TTFB). Did you know that RockePressenables this automatically?

2.     Optimize browser caching. You should set the right option for the static files that your browser keeps in its cache. By doing so, you’ll address the “Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy” PageSpeed Insights recommendation. Guess what? RockePressenables the optimal expiration length automatically.

3.     Optimize your images. A lot of times, your LCP element will be an image. Optimizing your images will speed up your site and address PageSpeed recommendations such as “Properly size images”, “Defer offscreen images”, “Serve images in next-gen formats”, and “Efficiently encode images”. You can use Imagify to optimize WordPress images automatically.

4.     Optimize your code. Loading unnecessary CSS or JavaScript files before your main content will slow down the loading time. You can fix this by eliminating render-blocking resources on your WordPress site. You should also minify CSS and Javascript files and remove unused CSS. Optimizing your code will help you address the “Avoid chaining critical requests” PageSpeed recommendation. Once again, you’ll get most of the job done by setting these optimizations up in the File Optimization tab in WP Rocket.

5.     Use server-level compression. Using Gzip or Brotli compression will reduce your site’s file size, which speeds up LCP and addresses the “Enable text compression” recommendation. RockePress automatically enables Gzip compression.

6.     Use preconnect for important resources. Preconnect lets you establish important third-party connections early and addresses the “Preload key requests” and “Preconnect to required origins” recommendations.

7.     Use a content delivery network (CDN) for global audiences. If you have a global audience, a CDN can speed up your LCP time for visitors around the world. It’s another effective way to reduce the Time to First Byte (TTFB)

.

8.     The easiest way to implement most of these best practices is to use RocketPress. RockePress will automatically apply page caching and server-level compression as soon as you activate it. It also includes other features to help you optimize your site’s code and performance, all of which improve your LCP time.

Don't Miss Out!

The Core Web Vitals Cheat Sheets are the easiest and fastest way to learn how to optimize LCP, INP, and CLS and prioritize your performance tasks.

How to Improve Cumulative Layout Shift on WordPress

Optimizing for Cumulative Layout Shift is a little more technical because it deals more with your site’s code.

Some of the most common problems and fixes are:

1.     Fix images without dimensions – if you add images via the WordPress editor, WordPress automatically adds dimensions for you. However, make sure to add dimensions if you’re manually adding images anywhere using your code. You’ll then address the best practice about serving scaled images.

2.     Fix ads, embeds, and iframes without dimensions – just as with images, loading embeds without dimensions can also cause problems. Make sure to always specify sizes when using these embeds. Or, if placing ads, make sure to “reserve” space for each ad.

3.     Optimize web fonts (FOIT/FOUT) – if you’re using custom web fonts, a late-loading font can cause issues such as Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT) or Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT). As a result, you won’t follow the PageSpeed recommendation: “Ensure text remains visible during webfont load”. One strategy to fix this is web font preloading. If you need help, keep in mind that RockePressautomatically optimizes Google Fonts. As for other fonts, the plugin helps you solve the issue through the Minify or Combine CSS option — already mentioned for improving LCP (Optimize your code).

4.     Be careful with injected content – don’t dynamically inject any content above existing content unless it’s in response to a user’s action.

How to Improve Interaction to Next Paint on WordPress

Optimizing INP means speeding up the page’s responsiveness. The former Core Web Vital, First Input Delay, was limited to the first interaction and only measured the input delay. On the other hand, INP measures interaction throughout the page’s lifecycle and takes into account more elements: input delay, processing time, and presentation delay.

INP is especially related to optimizing the main thread which needs to be available when a user interaction happens.

You should start by eliminating unnecessary JavaScript, if possible.

By doing so, you’ll address PageSpeed recommendations such as “Reduce JavaScript execution time”, “Remove unused JavaScript”, and “Minimize main thread work”. The Delay Javascript Execution feature and the Load Javascript deferred option provided by RockePresswill help you deal with these issues.

As for the LCP, optimizing your code and images, using server-level compression, and using preconnect for important resources can help you improve your INP score.

In general, improving INP can be difficult if you’re not a developer. That’s why RockePresscan help you save time and energy. If you want to dig deeper, though, Google has a good explainer on the more technical parts of optimizing this metric.

Tips to Boost Your WordPress Performance if Core Web Vitals Don’t Improve

What if you start applying the PageSpeed Insights recommendations and your Core Web Vitals grades are not as good as you would expect?

Take a look at the suggestions we listed for you. Your WordPress performance will likely improve by following these tips:

1.     Choose a fast hosting provider. Hosting affects server responsiveness, which plays a significant role in the LCP grade. If you’re using shared hosting, you may want to consider switching to a dedicated one and get excellent server performance.

2.     Don’t overlook image optimization. We’ve mentioned above how image optimization can affect both LCP and INP grades. These scores are also the most relevant ones for the overall PageSpeed score.

3.     Use only essential and lightweight plugins, and optimize their performance. WordPress websites tend to use many plugins. The majority of these plugins impact the front end because of their JavaScript files – and you know how JS files are critical for your site’s performance. Let’s say that your site uses a plugin to create the contact form page. Even though the plugin is used for only a page, the plugin will load the CSS and JS files across the entire site — and these are 100% unnecessary files! You should use your plugins only on the dedicated pages. Asset CleanUp and Perfmatters (Script Manager feature) will help you enable your plugins only on the relevant pages and solve these JavaScript file issues.

4.     Take advantage of your page builder. Your page builder could also help you manage your file optimization. Check it out!

Start Optimizing Core Web Vitals on WordPress Today

Now you know what Core Web Vitals mean and how they affect performance. It’s time to optimize your grades!

Not a RockePress customer yet? Save yourself time and let RockePressdo the job for you. RockePress will automatically apply 80% of web performance best practices. You don’t even have to touch any settings. You’ll see an instant improvement to the naked eye in your Core Web Vitals scores right away.

What’s more, you’ll stop managing multiple web performance plugins. You will only need RocketPress to achieve an excellent Google page speed score and loading time – no technical knowledge required, we promise!

[bobwp]

Diving into WordPress 6.6 with Insights from Mary Baum and Meher Bala

In this episode of The WordPress Way, host Abha Thakor is joined by Mary Baum and Meher Bala, as they chat about the recently released WordPress 6.6.

[bloggertipstalk]

3 Tools to Optimize WordPress and Core Web Vital Metrics

If you want to improve your website’s loading time and performance, this could be the most helpful piece of information you’ve ever read.  I say this because I’m about to share how I made a WordPress website load incredibly fast and pass Google’s Core Web Vitals assessment metrics – LCP, CLS, FID, TTFB, FCP, and INP using only three tools. My advice here works for most WordPress blogs. You only…

[jnexttech]

Established in 2014, Google has added the new core Web Vitals metric designed to the search engine results pages (SERPs). The metric appears right below the website address and displays various vital signs that can provide valuable information about the overall performance of your website or your online business.

[bestseoexperts0]

Best WordPress Web Design For Core Web Vitals 2024

Welcome to Digital Idea Pro, where we redefine your online presence with our specialized WordPress Web Design services focused on enhancing Core Web Vitals. Our commitment is to elevate your website's performance, user experience, and search engine rankings.

🌐 WordPress Web Design for Core Web Vitals:

✨ Performance Optimization: We fine-tune your website for speed, ensuring swift loading times and smooth navigation. A faster website not only improves user experience but also aligns with Core Web Vitals metrics.

🚀 Mobile Responsiveness: Our designs prioritize mobile responsiveness, catering to users across various devices. With a seamless mobile experience, your website meets the criteria for Core Web Vitals and reaches a broader audience.

🎨 Visual and Interactive Excellence: Elevate the visual appeal of your website while maintaining optimal performance. Our designs strike the perfect balance between aesthetics and functionality, creating a captivating user experience.

📊 User-Centric Design: We focus on user-centric design principles, ensuring that visitors can easily find what they're looking for. This not only improves user satisfaction but also positively impacts Core Web Vitals metrics.

⚙️ Technical SEO Integration: Our WordPress Web Design services go beyond aesthetics. We incorporate technical SEO elements, optimizing your website's structure, meta tags, and other crucial components to align with Core Web Vitals requirements.

💡 Continuous Monitoring and Optimization: We don't stop at the initial design. Continuous monitoring and optimization are key to maintaining Core Web Vitals standards. We proactively address any performance issues that may arise, ensuring sustained excellence.

📈 Impact on Search Rankings: A website optimized for Core Web Vitals is more likely to rank higher in search engine results. By choosing our services, you invest in not just a visually appealing website but also one that performs exceptionally well in search rankings.

Join hands with Digital Idea Pro, and let our WordPress Web Design for Core Web Vitals propel your online presence to new heights. Your website deserves to not only meet but exceed the expectations of both users and search engines. Let's create a digital masterpiece together! 💻✨ #WebDesign #CoreWebVitals #DigitalIdeaPro

[tinystepsforward]

autocrattic (more matt shenanigans, not tumblr this time)

I am almost definitely not the right person for this writeup, but I'm closer than most people on here, so here goes! This is all open-source tech drama, and I take my time laying out the context, but the short version is: Matt tried to extort another company, who immediately posted receipts, and now he's refusing to log off again. The long version is... long.

If you don't need software context, scroll down/find the "ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening" heading, or just go read the pink sections. Or look at this PDF.

the background

So. Matt's original Good Idea was starting WordPress with fellow developer Mike Little in 2003, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) that was originally just for blogging, but now powers lots of websites that do other things. In particular, Automattic acquired WooCommerce a long time ago, which is free online store software you can run on WordPress.

FOSS is... interesting. It's a world that ultimately is powered by people who believe deeply that information and resources should be free, but often have massive blind spots (for example, Wikipedia's consistently had issues with bias, since no amount of "anyone can edit" will overcome systemic bias in terms of who has time to edit or is not going to be driven away by the existing contributor culture). As with anything else that people spend thousands of hours doing online, there's drama. As with anything else that's technically free but can be monetized, there are:

Heaps of companies and solo developers who profit off WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, and other services;

Conflicts between volunteer contributors and for-profit contributors;

Annoying founders who get way too much credit for everything the project has become.

the WordPress ecosystem

A project as heavily used as WordPress (some double-digit percentage of the Internet uses WP. I refuse to believe it's the 43% that Matt claims it is, but it's a pretty large chunk) can't survive just on the spare hours of volunteers, especially in an increasingly monetised world where its users demand functional software, are less and less tech or FOSS literate, and its contributors have no fucking time to build things for that userbase.

Matt runs Automattic, which is a privately-traded, for-profit company. The free software is run by the WordPress Foundation, which is technically completely separate (wordpress.org). The main products Automattic offers are WordPress-related: WordPress.com, a host which was designed to be beginner-friendly; Jetpack, a suite of plugins which extend WordPress in a whole bunch of ways that may or may not make sense as one big product; WooCommerce, which I've already mentioned. There's also WordPress VIP, which is the fancy bespoke five-digit-plus option for enterprise customers. And there's Tumblr, if Matt ever succeeds in putting it on WordPress. (Every Tumblr or WordPress dev I know thinks that's fucking ridiculous and impossible. Automattic's hiring for it anyway.)

Automattic devotes a chunk of its employees toward developing Core, which is what people in the WordPress space call WordPress.org, the free software. This is part of an initiative called Five for the Future — 5% of your company's profits off WordPress should go back into making the project better. Many other companies don't do this.

There are lots of other companies in the space. GoDaddy, for example, barely gives back in any way (and also sucks). WP Engine is the company this drama is about. They don't really contribute to Core. They offer relatively expensive WordPress hosting, as well as providing a series of other WordPress-related products like LocalWP (local site development software), Advanced Custom Fields (the easiest way to set up advanced taxonomies and other fields when making new types of posts. If you don't know what this means don't worry about it), etc.

Anyway. Lots of strong personalities. Lots of for-profit companies. Lots of them getting invested in, or bought by, private equity firms.

Matt being Matt, tech being tech

As was said repeatedly when Matt was flipping out about Tumblr, all of the stuff happening at Automattic is pretty normal tech company behaviour. Shit gets worse. People get less for their money. WordPress.com used to be a really good place for people starting out with a website who didn't need "real" WordPress — for $48 a year on the Personal plan, you had really limited features (no plugins or other customisable extensions), but you had a simple website with good SEO that was pretty secure, relatively easy to use, and 24-hour access to Happiness Engineers (HEs for short. Bad job title. This was my job) who could walk you through everything no matter how bad at tech you were. Then Personal plan users got moved from chat to emails only. Emails started being responded to by contractors who didn't know as much as HEs did and certainly didn't get paid half as well. Then came AI, and the mandate for HEs to try to upsell everyone things they didn't necessarily need. (This is the point at which I quit.)

But as was said then as well, most tech CEOs don't publicly get into this kind of shitfight with their users. They're horrid tyrants, but they don't do it this publicly.

ok tony that's enough. tell me what's actually happening

WordCamp US, one of the biggest WordPress industry events of the year, is the backdrop for all this. It just finished.

There are.... a lot of posts by Matt across multiple platforms because, as always, he can't log off. But here's the broad strokes.

Sep 17

Matt publishes a wanky blog post about companies that profit off open source without giving back. It targets a specific company, WP Engine.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital. So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers?

(It's worth noting here that Automattic is funded in part by BlackRock, who Wikipedia calls "the world's largest asset manager".)

Sep 20 (WCUS final day)

WP Engine puts out a blog post detailing their contributions to WordPress.

Matt devotes his keynote/closing speech to slamming WP Engine.

He also implies people inside WP Engine are sending him information.

For the people sending me stuff from inside companies, please do not do it on your work device. Use a personal phone, Signal with disappearing messages, etc. I have a bunch of journalists happy to connect you with as well. #wcus — Twitter I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and that you get support. — Tumblr

Matt also puts out an offer live at WordCamp US:

“If anyone of you gets in trouble for speaking up in favor of WordPress and/or open source, reach out to me. I’ll do my best to help you find a new job.” — source tweet, RTed by Matt

He also puts up a poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed back at WordCamps.

Sep 21

Matt writes a blog post on the WordPress.org blog (the official project blog!): WP Engine is not WordPress.

He opens this blog post by claiming his mom was confused and thought WP Engine was official.

The blog post goes on about how WP Engine disabled post revisions (which is a pretty normal thing to do when you need to free up some resources), therefore being not "real" WordPress. (As I said earlier, WordPress.com disables most features for Personal and Premium plans. Or whatever those plans are called, they've been renamed like 12 times in the last few years. But that's a different complaint.)

Sep 22: More bullshit on Twitter. Matt makes a Reddit post on r/Wordpress about WP Engine that promptly gets deleted. Writeups start to come out:

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Co-Founder Mullenweg Sparks Backlash

TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg calls WP Engine a ‘cancer to WordPress’ and urges community to switch providers

Sep 23 onward

Okay, time zones mean I can't effectively sequence the rest of this.

Matt defends himself on Reddit, casually mentioning that WP Engine is now suing him.

Also here's a decent writeup from someone involved with the community that may be of interest.

WP Engine drops the full PDF of their cease and desist, which includes screenshots of Matt apparently threatening them via text.

Twitter link | Direct PDF link

This PDF includes some truly fucked texts where Matt appears to be trying to get WP Engine to pay him money unless they want him to tell his audience at WCUS that they're evil.

Matt, after saying he's been sued and can't talk about it, hosts a Twitter Space and talks about it for a couple hours.

He also continues to post on Reddit, Twitter, and on the Core contributor Slack.

Here's a comment where he says WP Engine could have avoided this by paying Automattic 8% of their revenue.

Another, 20 hours ago, where he says he's being downvoted by "trolls, probably WPE employees"

At some point, Matt updates the WordPress Foundation trademark policy. I am 90% sure this was him — it's not legalese and makes no fucking sense to single out WP Engine.

Old text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks and you are free to use it in any way you see fit. New text: The abbreviation “WP” is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is “WordPress Engine” and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.

Sep 25: Automattic puts up their own legal response.

anyway this fucking sucks

This is bigger than anything Matt's done before. I'm so worried about my friends who're still there. The internal ramifications have... been not great so far, including that Matt's naturally being extra gung-ho about "you're either for me or against me and if you're against me then don't bother working your two weeks".

Despite everything, I like WordPress. (If you dig into this, you'll see plenty of people commenting about blocks or Gutenberg or React other things they hate. Unlike many of the old FOSSheads, I actually also think Gutenberg/the block editor was a good idea, even if it was poorly implemented.)

I think that the original mission — to make it so anyone can spin up a website that's easy enough to use and blog with — is a good thing. I think, despite all the ways being part of FOSS communities since my early teens has led to all kinds of racist, homophobic and sexual harm for me and for many other people, that free and open-source software is important.

So many people were already burning out of the project. Matt has been doing this for so long that those with long memories can recite all the ways he's wrecked shit back a decade or more. Most of us are exhausted and need to make money to live. The world is worse than it ever was.

Social media sucks worse and worse, and this was a world in which people missed old webrings, old blogs, RSS readers, the world where you curated your own whimsical, unpaid corner of the Internet. I started actually actively using my own WordPress blog this year, and I've really enjoyed it.

And people don't want to deal with any of this.

The thing is, Matt's right about one thing: capital is ruining free open-source software. What he's wrong about is everything else: the idea that WordPress.com isn't enshittifying (or confusing) at a much higher rate than WP Engine, the idea that WP Engine or Silver Lake are the only big players in the field, the notion that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But he's started a battle where there are no winners but the lawyers who get paid to duke it out, and all the volunteers who've survived this long in an ecosystem increasingly dominated by big money are giving up and leaving.

Anyway if you got this far, consider donating to someone on gazafunds.com. It'll take much less time than reading this did.