WordPress is in the middle of a perfect storm. Some people blame Matt, others blame AI, but there are a lot of forces at work. In the latest issue of the WP Perspectives newsletter I outline what is going on and also discuss some areas that are stable.

AI didn’t kill your job, it just made it clear what your job was … is this the re-emergence of the need for real design?

WordPress just turned 23 and Matt Mullenweg posted on the WordPress org website a post about how WP Engine is ruining his life.

A lot of arguments against Tailwind were about how ugly it is to have HTML littered with classes. Here is a similar take about BEM, along with a workflow argument, from Ovidiu Maghetiu.

An interesting article that discusses the recent merge into Gutenberg of the ability to create Custom Post Types. The technical details are examined along with the usage data and competitor profile. Among other questions it is asked why Custom Post Types, and not SEO, security, or caching?

Following the user survey, the Generate team said they would give a full response related to support of Full Site Editing. In this article they deliver with a well considered point-by-point discussion of the strengths and weaknesses and FSE and the Generate approach going forward. They decide that FSE does not provide any promised advantages over the GeneratePress / GenerateBlocks combination, but that FSE imposes a number of limitations.

For Elementor users – Imran Siddiq shares his thoughts on how to approach the transition from Elementor 3 to atomic elements in version 4.

Here is an interesting take on the impact of AI for agencies and freelancers. Jake Goldman is the founder of 10up and a partner at Fueled. He argues that today we can do more faster with AI and our pricing will need to reflect that. Over time competition will force prices down or deliverables up.

In this article Kim Coleman, one of the founders of Paid Membership Pro, acknowledges the changes taking place in the WordPress ecosystem and embraces focusing on solutions, rather than plugins.