Introducing… DEV!

July 24, 2024

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Welcome to our new roundup blog post / email, it’s called DEV. We’ll be publishing over email and here on the blog every two weeks, we hope you like it 🙂 Sign up here to get the email.

Read to the end for a sweet tune from WP 6.6’s namesake, the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing.

In today’s post:

Hide yo kids, Hide yo wife… or Awesome Motive might try to acquire them.
We shine a light on Dark Mode. Is it actually better for your eyes?
A gallery of the worst web designs we’ve ever seen.
And more!

Hot Off the Presses: What’s New?

The Latest #WPDrama Gossip: BuddyBoss Acquired by Awesome Motive

In news that will surprise absolutely no one: Awesome Motive have acquired yet ANOTHER WordPress company.

The team behind some of the most popular plugins in the WordPress ecosystem including WPForms and OptinMonster, acquired BuddyBoss on July 9th, 2024.

BuddyBoss is not a plugin that helps you make awkward friendships with your supervisors, but rather a tool for creating online communities, membership sites, courses and forums with WordPress.

Is there NOTHING they won’t sweep up? Is WP just going to become Awesome Motive and Automattic? (And most importantly: Where’s our offer, Syed?)

Oooo… WP 6.6 To Introduce More Web-Destroying AI Features… maybe?

When WordPress 6.6 launches on July 16, 2024, it will introduce “overrides” for synced patterns, allowing you to pull content from several different sources.

EMPHASIS: sources!
DOUBLE EMPHASIS: sources!!!!

Does this mean that WP will now automagically be able to import your freshly minted GPT content? Is the autoblogmageddon upon us? Could this be WordPress freshly minting its own demise?

Or is it kinda just a nerdy feature that does what, um, shortcodes have been doing for the last two decades?

One Gravatar To Rule Them All…

Gravatar, which has been quietly powering billions of avatars across the web (including within Slack, OpenAI, Atlassian and more) has just been updated with a new API that allows people to bring in more profile data.

Is this part of a secret conspiracy to slowly take over the web, one collection of carefully curated profile data at a time?

Watch out Gravatar: Awesome Motive just might come and snatch you up too!

Mind-Bloggling Stats

90% of vulnerabilities on the WordPress platform come from outdated plugins, and 6% from outdated themes. (When’s the last time you updated your plugins, huh?) (Source)
Referrals remain the most popular way for agencies to source leads, with 71% of respondents citing it as their #1 lead source. (Source) (Plus, here’s a helpful in-depth guide to referral programs for web agencies.)
The headless CMS software market size is predicted to develop at a CAGR of 22.1% from 2022 to 2032, with an estimated market size of US$5,528 million by 2032. (Source)
According to Builtwith, the most used WordPress theme is Hello Elementor, with 12,920 websites. That’s 1.29% of the top 1 million sites! (Source)
There are roughly 59,208 free WordPress plugins currently available in the directory. (Which one will Awesome Motive acquire next?) (Source)
About 7.7% of WordPress websites are still running WordPress 4.9 or earlier. Umm… shouldn’t someone tell them there are updates available? (Source)

Deep Dive: Ow My Eyes! Shining a Light on Dark Mode

We’re glued to our screens for an average of 6 hours and 40 minutes per day. It’s no wonder so many of us want to switch to dark mode to give our aching retinas a bit of a break.

WordPress block themes are jumping on the dark mode bandwagon, letting you flip between dark and light mode with ease.

But is dark mode ALWAYS better? Or is it just a fad for edgy vampires who love blackout curtains and looking down on lame light-mode losers?

Dark Mode: Why bother?

People love dark mode because it:

Makes their eyes less hurty as they lay in bed for 4 hours telling themselves, “Ok, just one more reddit AITA thread and then I’ll go to sleep…”
Saves battery life, apparently. (Although this is debatable.)
Can reduce the risk of triggering migraines, which do really suck.

However, if you have astigmatism, dark mode can cause glowing “halos” around the light characters on the dark background – which is no doubt pretty annoying.

The downsides?

Dark mode pitfalls include:

Graphics and backgrounds looking like a hot mess.
Thin fonts “swallowed up” by the dark background.
Too-saturated colors creating a neon nightmare.
QR codes that are impossible to scan. (Looking at you, trendy cocktail bar sites.)

You can’t just slap a dark mode filter on and call it a day. Good design is still key.

The best solution? Make sure your designs are easy on the eyes in both light and dark mode, then let the user decide.

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Ding Ding! Our AI Search Assistant battles ChatGPT to see who’s the heavy-weight client-converting champion. | “Cheapskate clients HATE him!” Boost your recurring revenue with this one weird trick. | Is there a solution to the death-by-a-thousand-subscriptions model WordPress has become? | If you haven’t considered accessibility on your website at all (oops), a) you’re not alone but also b) this expert inclusivity advice will help. | This guide from Yoast helps you create guardrails to prevent your AI from hallucinating too wildly. | Want to be part of the team for WP 6.7? Here’s the official call for contributors.