I can’t help but think this article is aspirational and not aligned with reality, but it suggests the direction in the age of AI.

In this article Matt Cromwell pulls together information from plugin shops, annual transparency reports, seller surveys, and other sources to get a finer grained understanding of the plugin market. He looks at the vulnerabilities and where firmer footing might be found.

And another one for your watch list – Automattic releases Code for the People. This is a video about open source and WordPress.

Jean Galea published a very insightful and balanced article about the current state of WordPress. It takes enterprise, agencies / freelancers, plugin developers, new users, and other groups into account. It will resonate with a number of conclusions we have drawn, but also brings in some new perspectives.

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?