Some Surprises + Overcomplication

Summer is in full gear. Down here in Florida, it is hot and humid. The kids are out of school, so no cheese wagons in the mornings. And this week, my daughter (for the first time) is gone at a camp for the entire week.

It is odd having her gone, but it is a good experience for her to be more or less on her own for the week. Part of growing up! (Which really does happen fast…. damn.) Anyway…

I was surprised by two things this week. One was the timing of a new shopping cart solution…. and the other was a big announcement out of the WordCamp Europe event.

We’ll cover both in this issue.

Also…. how do you know you probably need to re-group on some things in your business? When things are feeling complicated. We’ll talk about that, too.

So, let’s dive into this bad-boy…

I enjoy starting my Mondays by writing these newsletters for you. I hope you enjoy reading them. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this newsletter if you send in your comments here, BTW.

FAIR: The Alternative Plugin Ecosystem for WordPress

I was not at WordCamp Europe in Switzerland. While I’d love to visit the country, the idea of flying overseas just for a WordPress event didn’t seem like the best use of my time. Heck, I’m probably not even flying to Portland for the next US event. The last one seemed like a waste of time except for the Matt drama. Speaking of which…

It was at WordCamp US that Matt Mullenweg officially went crazy and launched his attack against WP Engine. Now, that’s one thing…but in his hissy fit, he literally stole the Advanced Custom Fields plugin from them and forked it into a new one. He banned many WordPress developers from WordPress.org. I won’t reiterate it all, but it created a lot of uncertainty in the WordPress space.

A response was inevitable.

Joost deValk is one of the top veterans in this space and a former confidant of Matt… and he wrote a call to Break The Status Quo in December…. calling for a new leadership model for WordPress. Karim Marucchi furthered that and called for a new WordPress business roadmap.

Those two, along with a conglomeration of hundreds of other developers, have moved forward with a new effort called Federated and Independent Repositories, or FAIR. It started as an idea, but at WordCamp Europe, they officially launched the project to the world. Actually, it was done at Alt Ctrl Org, which was an alternate event operating just outside of WordCamp (because WordCamp’s have been so tightly controlled).

As it is described…

The FAIR Package Manager is a decentralized alternative to the central WordPress.org plugin and theme ecosystem, designed to return control to WordPress hosts and developers. It operates as a drop-in WordPress plugin, seamlessly replacing existing centralized services with a federated, open-source infrastructure.

As Karim puts it, “FAIR is a new distribution layer for WordPress. Think of it as a robust, independent package manager, much like those that are foundational to so many other successful open-source ecosystems.“.

If you’ve ever used a Linux operating system on your computer, this will feel familiar. And it would, seeing as the Linux Foundation has apparently backed this FAIR Package Manager.

I downloaded the FAIR plugin from GitHub and gave it a quick test. It is only at version 0.20 right now, so clearly this is pretty early. Other than a menu option for “FAIR Settings” showing up in the menu, you can’t tell much difference. But, when you go to add a new plugin, I am clearly seeing a very different selection of plugins than I normally would.

So, the plugin basically makes WordPress look at an entirely different source for plugin updates. Yet, when I search for something, it does seem to be reverting to the normal repository. Clearly, this is very early version.
The interesting thing about FAIR is that it is intended to span beyond WordPress. There is an actual FAIR protocol. And as was said in a comment on GitHub: “Basically the FAIR Protocol could be used by any CMS to distribute their addons. We’re planning this out so it’s agnostic.“

Questions remain, of course. And this is FAR too early for much use. Is there going to be any vetting for plugins before they’re included in FAIR? How will there by a community consensus mechanism so we don’t have plugins putting severe security issues into people’s sites? We’re going to need to see how this develops.

I think FAIR is important and I’m all for it. Back in Issue 510 of this newsletter, I said that Matt needed to be bypassed. This is the market’s move to do exactly that.

And the way I see it, it is simply about choice. The current, centralized repository is great and it has played a HUGE role in the growth and usability of WordPress. I want it to continue to work that way, frankly. But, I think people should have choice. And I think other repositories and decentralization makes things healthy.

There’s still a lot of maturity needed to FAIR, though. Questions remain. And I’ll continue to watch it. You can read more about the launch on The Repository.

This Week In Concierge

For awhile, I have had a “secret” option for Concierge. I didn’t really mention it much, but only in certain circumstances. But, as of right now, I actually have 5 clients on this plan despite the fact I didn’t really talk about it much.

It is the Concierge Basic plan.

My Core plan is, by far, the most popular. I also have many on the Platinum plan, although that one is mostly for larger membership sites and ecommerce sites that have higher support needs.

The Core plan is the main one and includes everything, including all of the premium tools of the Concierge Toolkit.

But, some sites don’t need all that. We’re talking about smaller sites. Small business sites. Blogs. Sites that don’t have a lot of bells and whistles and have light support needs. The Concierge Basic plan is intended for those types of sites.

As an example, I just helped a carpenter with a local business re-do his website on Kadence in order to alleviate some performance issues and improve the look. But, this site is sitting on Bluehost (ugh). He didn’t have any reliable site backup system. No image optimizations (until I set it up). And just this last week, he updated a plugin himself and the site broke. Apparently, it was a failed plugin update and his site was producing fatal errors and was completely unworkable. I had to pop in there and get it fixed up for him.

Small business owners like this is exactly the target audience for Concierge Basic.

The Basic plan costs less… because it offers less. But, for a small fee, I can remove any headache associated with trying to self-manage your WordPress site.

More info on the Basic plan here… and a comparison of the different plans can be found here.

WordPress Quick Bits

FluentBoards Update. FluentBoards 1.65 was released, with pinned boards, enhanced task filtering by CRM contact, customizable task priorities, etc. You can read the announcement here.

Database Speed Matters for SEO. In an interesting writeup on SearchEngineJournal, it is confirmed that database speed can definitely affect your SEO. There’s this idea of “crawl budget”. When it comes to page volume, barely anybody here would need to think about it because you’d need to have a million pages or more before it is even an issue. But, he says slow database queries can definitely impact your crawl budget. One of the best ways to reduce the impact of database queries is to employ static page caching, such as what FlyingPress does. (Which is in the Concierge Toolkit, BTW).

Vibe Coding Tutorial. Interested in learning more about vibe coding WordPress plugins? Matt with WP Minute has a Youtube tutorial on just that. Kinda interesting.

FluentCommunity 1.7. FluentCommunity 1.7 was officially launched, introducing quiz capability to the course system. They’ve also added a course completed trigger for FluentCRM and… well, a lot of other enhancements. Click here to see the whole enchilada.

Automattic Resuming WordPress Dev. As was mentioned last week, Automattic is resuming it’s contributions to WordPress Core, which is good news. But, to add a little more meat on that bone, Matt says (on TechCrunch) that he wants to get a 6.9 release out this year with an admin refresh and something from the “new AI team.”.

WooCommerce 9.9 Delays. The original release date for WooCommerce 9.9 was pushed back and, as of this writing, still hasn’t been released. In this post spelling out the reason for the delay, he says “We ran into an issue in both 9.9.0 and 9.9.1 where fatal errors were triggered.”. Hehe…. seems important. 🤣 They re-evaluating today to see where things stand.

FluentCart News. Last week, things began coming out about the upcoming FluentCart. And as you can see above, I was able to do some testing and give some first impressions. I was a little surprised at the timing, just because I know FluentAffiliate is due out really soon.

Filter AI. Filter has released a new (free) plugin called Filter AI. This brings the leading AI platforms right into WordPress so you can use AI for things like excerpts, alt text, titles, content re-writing, etc. You will need to bring your own API keys for AI tools.

WordCamp Europe Sessions. You can catch the sessions from WordCamp Europe in this playlist over on Youtube.

The Power Of Simplicity

Right on my about page on my website, I list out my core values when it comes to business. And right there, it says:

Power lies in simplicity. I believe complexity is a symptom of a system breakdown. When things have gotten overly complicated, it is best to re-evaluate your approach.

I’ve seen complication rear it’s ugly head many, many times. Not only in my own business, but with various clients I work with.

I can see it in their websites. In their offers. In their outgoing emails.

They try to do too much on their site. They keep trying different marketing tactics, or different tools. It is like they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

Sometimes, I push back. My clients find that useful in that I’m not just a little “do boy” that does whatever they ask. In the end, I have over two decades of actual business and marketing experience of my own here, so I’m one of those people who can do the “tech stuff”, but I also understand the strategy behind it. I bring an outside perspective that actually knows a thing or two. 😇

Because, when I feel things are getting complicated, my instinct is to stop. And reevaluate. Because, we’re probably doing something wrong.

Complication introduces friction. It is like pushing through an intense headwind.

Sites break. You lose sight of what goes where. Your marketing automations feel like a web of stuff you don’t even remember what’s going on in there. Your list of tags is so long you don’t even remember what the hell they were for. Your plugin list is getting longer.

But, even more importantly, YOU might feel confused. Like you’re barely hanging on. Like you’re losing sight of the right things to do to grow your business, or the things to focus on at the right time.

All of this…. are symptoms of things getting too complex.

But, power lies in simplicity.

Simple businesses are often the ones which grow the easiest. And they’re easiest to run.

I tell ya one thing, even though Concierge is a lot of work, my pivoting of my own business to Concierge really simplified things. It is one productized service which is my core offer. I don’t worry about constantly creating courses, or how I’m going to enroll my next member. I don’t worry about product launches. I don’t have any webinar funnels. No need to have a big community or pump out a bunch of noise on social media.

No baggage. No need to chase tactics. Just one main core offer which my clients love.

This gives FOCUS. I can build the site around that core offer. Sure, I might have a few other things, but I don’t over-complicate the site by trying to do everything.

In last week’s issue of the newsletter, I talked about the critical client flow. It is that one core system for the business. And that one core system is the one you put the most work into perfecting and streamlining. I know what my critical client flow is. That makes things simpler.

Identifying your core product and building your critical client flow around that provides a lot of power. Because it makes things simpler.

Can you name your core offer? Can you name the valuable final product of your business?

And if/when you do, do you have the process laid out for it?

If not, you can (and likely will) feel splintered. Overwhelmed. And you’ll feel like things are complicated. And it’ll probably show in your website, too. 😜

If you’re feeling that way, it may be time to pause. And to re-evaluate the approach. To maybe let some pieces go. And to simplify.