WordPress com vs org got a write up in Smashing Magazine. I don’t know about changing the name, but better “co-branding” that clarifies the differences between the platform and the CMS could help.

This WPTavern article has more information about the journey of Mike McAlister in his efforts to get the Ollie theme accepted into the theme directory. It is interesting that Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomphosy urged accepting it as an experiment, but I guess that is not going to happen.

Tom McFarlin reflects on his journey learning tech and sharing not only how to do something, but also how to problem solve, think about tech, and get to know others online.

In this podcast Se Reed shares her experience with 5 for the future as being lead of the WordPress org marketing team. It doesn’t seem good.

The block-based Ollie Theme, which has gotten a lot of interest, has run into problems getting accepted into the WordPress org theme directory.

Eric Karkovack argues that, for the most part, the web has moved beyond “fast and cheap” websites. What I don’t see in this article is a consideration for a site generator like ZipWP. It brings to mind that tools like ZipWP need to make sure they generate accessible sites to avoid liability.

So it looks like Automattic has duplicated the WordPress org theme and plugin directories as well as the LearnWP resources. It is not clear why they did this, but it will cause more confusion as you now get two versions when searching. Matt Mullenweg was asked about it on X and he said that the dot org version appears first (?). Here is the thread of X discussing this.

It has been a year and still no replacement for the plugin data, and not even any further information on the topic.

This article is in line with what I wrote several months ago, that there is no reason for me to publish free content on the web for AI bots to monetize for big tech.