WordPress just released today (Tuesday, Nov 12). If, like me, this release kind of snuck up on you, the first place to stop should be this WordPress 5.3 Field Guide. What it does very well is touch on all the more out-of-the-way features of the release with easy-to-access links so you can dig deeper into any particular topic where you feel particularly intrigued (or worried about some old code you wrote, etc).

I didn’t attend WordCamp US this year, for the first time since it started. As such, I was eager and excited to watch the State of the Word, which is definitely the most attention-getting talk of the conference to me. Thankfully, it did get published quite quickly. It’s already on YouTube:

I was pleasantly surprised to learn about this WordPress 5.3 feature which in highlighted by Justin Ahinon on Make WordPress Core. The issue it’s meant to solve is an uncompressed 12 megapixel fresh-from-the-phone type of photo being comically too large for your WordPress site.

Now that WordPress is actively pushing the community and sites that run it toward more modern versions of PHP, it’s extra important to follow language changes. That’s where this summary of the most consequential features of the forthcoming PHP 7.4 for WordPress development form Jonathan Desrosiers comes in. He does a great job of quickly and approachably explaining all the features and changes that the language will bring.

Almost everyone who reads us knows Matt Mullenweg, the leader of Automattic/Jetpack, and the WordPress project. And you may know David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) from his leadership of the Ruby on Rails project, or from their app Basecamp.

Back in 2007, when I was just coming to terms with WordPress, Justin Tadlock was out at the forefront of what I understood WordPress to be. In the (gosh!) 12 years since, Justin’s stayed busy in the WordPress space, but also done some other things like share on his blog about his small farm.

The weirdest piece of email I’ve gotten all month was courtesy of Brian Krogsgard and the Post Status newsletter: Automattic (owner of WordPress.com, Jetpack, Akismet, WooCommerce…) has just bought blogging giant Tumblr.

I like the direction that Josepha Haden is pushing WordPress. She’s making strides to put the whole project on an even better trajectory. Toward better collaboration, better effectiveness, more inclusive. It’s not the case that I (as a random person far from the core of most of the projects) know a lot about how it feels to people more involved, but I hope and see signs that those more-involved agree.

We were on the BoldLife podcast. It was a great time. We (well, especially Fred) talked a length about the complex reality of where generous human people meet the weird world of corporate policies. More than that, we talked about what that means when you’re shopping for the best WordPress hosting for  your own website. And why talking to the nicest person from one of the those companies is probably a less reliable way of finding good hosting than we are.

Reviewing the SEO of small business websites.