WordPress News Roundup October 2018: WordPress 5.0 Beta 1, Twenty Nineteen and WP Engine Buys Array Themes

October 2018 turned WordPress 5.0 from an idea into a schedule. Matt Mullenweg, leading the release, published a scope and timeline at the start of the month, the first beta landed on October 24, and a new default theme, Twenty Nineteen, was unveiled to show off the block editor.

It was also one of the most tense months in the project’s recent history. The accessibility team’s lead stepped down, a formal accessibility audit stalled, and many developers argued the November target was too aggressive. Meanwhile, WP Engine made another theme acquisition and TinyMCE’s parent raised fresh funding.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Investments

• WP Engine acquires Array Themes (October 26): Four months after buying StudioPress, WP Engine picked up Array Themes, the shop behind the Atomic Blocks plugin. The deal brought one of the earliest popular Gutenberg block collections in-house and pointed to WP Engine’s plan to pair Genesis with block-based tooling.
• Sandhills Development acquires WP Simple Pay (October 1): The Stripe payments plugin joined the company behind Easy Digital Downloads, with founder Phil Derksen staying on.
• Awesome Motive acquires SeedProd (October 16): Syed Balkhi’s company bought John Turner’s SeedProd, maker of the popular coming-soon page plugin, outright.
• Tiny raises $4M: Tiny Technologies, maker of the TinyMCE editor, announced a $4 million Series A on October 11 and published an FAQ on what Gutenberg meant for TinyMCE inside WordPress.
• Polldaddy becomes Crowdsignal: Automattic rebranded its long-running survey product Polldaddy as Crowdsignal on October 22.

WordPress Core Updates

• The 5.0 plan: On October 3, the proposed scope and schedule targeted November 19 for release, and focus leads were named for the editor, the default theme, documentation, migration, and more. A schedule update followed at month’s end.
• WordPress 5.0 Beta 1 (October 24) and Beta 2 (October 30): The first beta included the block editor in core for the first time, followed by a second six days later.
• Gutenberg feature complete: Gutenberg 4.0 reached release candidate status on October 11, and by October 31 the team declared the editor feature complete, meaning remaining work would focus on bugs and polish.
• Twenty Nineteen announced: On October 16, Allan Cole introduced Twenty Nineteen, a minimalist, typography-led default theme designed to ship with 5.0.
• Phase 2 leaders: Alexis Lloyd and Riad Benguella were named to lead the next phase of Gutenberg, which would extend blocks beyond post content.
• PHP 7.3 and privacy: The core team detailed PHP 7.3 compatibility work, and privacy contributors published a roadmap for the next version of core’s privacy tools.

Other WordPress News

• Accessibility lead resigns: On October 9, the WordPress accessibility team lead resigned, citing political complications around Gutenberg. A planned accessibility audit was then postponed indefinitely, and WPCampus announced it would pursue an independent audit. The Gutenberg team responded with a post on the editor’s accessibility and a call for testers, but on October 30 the accessibility team delivered a sobering assessment of the editor’s readiness.
• Calls to slow down: Developers questioned whether a November release so close to the holiday season was wise, with some suggesting an early January date instead.
• HelpHub prepares to launch: The documentation team issued a call for volunteers to migrate HelpHub, the replacement for the Codex’s user docs, onto WordPress.org before 5.0 shipped.
• WordCamp Europe 2019 tickets: The first wave of tickets for Berlin sold out in about three hours on October 1.
• WordCamp Nordic: Helsinki was confirmed to host the first WordCamp Nordic on March 7–8, 2019.
• GoDaddy funds a core contributor: GoDaddy hired Mike Schroder to contribute to WordPress core full time.
• Genesis goes Gutenberg: The Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes added block editor compatibility.
• WooCommerce 3.5: Released in late October, it introduced version 3 of the REST API and improved transactional emails.
• PWA for WordCamps: The WordCamp Europe team began building progressive web app support for all WordCamp sites.

Security Alerts and Plugin Vulnerabilities

• AMP for WP pulled: On October 21, the AMP for WP plugin was temporarily removed from the WordPress.org directory over a security flaw that let any logged-in user reach admin-level functions. It returned in November with a fix, but attackers went on to exploit unpatched sites.
• WP Cost Estimation fix: The developer of the WP Cost Estimation plugin shipped version 9.644 in October, closing a file upload bypass. Details only became public months later, after the flaw had been used in attacks.
• PHP 5 end of life: Wordfence warned on October 30 that running PHP 5 would become dangerous in two months, when PHP 5.6 stopped receiving security fixes at the end of 2018.

Industry Trends and Insights

• Blocks as products: Theme and plugin shops were pioneering the first layout blocks, and acquisitions like Array Themes showed that block collections now had commercial value.
• React at the centre: The new WooCommerce admin adopted Gutenberg components, part of a wider shift in which JavaScript skills became essential for WordPress developers.
• Accessibility as governance: The month’s disputes raised broader questions about how decisions are made in an open source project and how much weight specialist teams carry.
• Old PHP, new pressure: With PHP 5.6 support ending, hosts faced growing pressure to move customers onto PHP 7, a change that would benefit both performance and security.

Theme of the Month: Genesis Framework

Genesis has long been a foundation for agency builds, and its October compatibility update for Gutenberg, alongside updated StudioPress child themes, reassured a large base of developers. Under WP Engine ownership, Genesis was clearly being positioned for the block era.

Plugin of the Month: Atomic Blocks

Atomic Blocks offered a tidy collection of blocks for testimonials, calls to action, pricing, sharing and more, built for the new editor before most competitors. WP Engine’s acquisition of its maker at the end of October confirmed how valuable early, well-crafted block libraries had become.

Host of the Month: GoDaddy

GoDaddy, which hosts a very large number of WordPress sites, made a visible investment in the open source project by hiring Mike Schroder to work on core full time. It was a welcome example of a major host giving back through Five for the Future style contributions.

Founder of the Month: Mike McAlister

Mike McAlister founded Array Themes and built Atomic Blocks, one of the first block plugins many WordPress users installed. His bet on Gutenberg paid off in October when WP Engine acquired the business, and his design-led approach helped show what blocks could look like.

Looking Ahead to November 2018

November is scheduled to bring more 5.0 betas and the first release candidate, with the release itself currently targeted for later in the month. Expect continued debate about the date, decisions about how the Classic Editor will be offered to users, and the launch of HelpHub as WordPress.org’s new support documentation. WordCamp US, where the State of the Word is delivered, follows in early December.