Pippin, LearnDash, Awesome Motive, Liquid Web all walk into a bar

It’s the WP Minute! This is Kathy Zant and I’m filling in for Matt.

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You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links.

News time!

If you thought the WordPress acquisition train was safely tucked away at the station, think again, it’s full-steam ahead! 

Breaking news announced earlier this morning, AwesomeMotive has acquired one of the — if not the most — highly regarded brands in WordPress: SandHills Development, widely known for Easy Digital Downloads. 

Pippin Williamson penned an excellent summary of the events sharing what led him to the decision. 

Every business owner knows (or will eventually learn) that there are three possible fates for their business:

1. It will one day be passed on to someone else, perhaps through family inheritance

2. It will slowly or rapidly decline and at some point be shut down entirely

3. It will be sold to a new owner for one reason or another.

If you’re a business owner, his post is absolutely worth the time.

Liquid Web announces another top-tier brand is being added to their stack, one of the most popular LMS plugins for WordPress: LearnDash. 

LearnDash will join the Liquid Web Family under the StellarWP brand, which is the umbrella for our premium WordPress software solutions and includes well-known and respected WordPress leaders such as iThemes, The Events Calendar, GiveWP, Restrict Content Pro, Iconic, and Kadence WP.”

You can learn more about how the acquisition went down in our interview with Justin Ferriman and Chris Lema. Highlights include:

• How long the process took
• What you should do if you want to get acquired
• Speculation on WooCommerce and the ecommerce space

Speaking of WooCommerce, they’ve announced the acquisition of extension maker SomewhereWarm who currently has seven products available in the marketplace. 

“This is a huge opportunity for us to help shape the future of WooCommerce, having a clearer view of the path ahead, more resources than ever before, and the support of like-minded people.”

DeliciousBrains did a stealth acquisition of the ACF Blocks plugin, picking it up from the folks at Extendify. Extendify acquired EditorsKit earlier this year and the Redux framework last year. 

The fantasy league of WordPress

We’re thinking about starting a fantasy league of WordPress business & All-Star community members with all of this news!

• Carole Olinger is now the Social Media Manager at XWP
• Chris Lema changes his title to GM of LearnDash
• Richard Tabor joins the Extendify team
• Brian Gardner is back at WPEngine as Principal Developer Advocate
• Kathy Zant joins the team at NinjaForms to lead content marketing

From the grab bag!

Check out the new Tove theme by Anders Noren. You must have Gutenberg installed to activate + for Full Site Editing features.

Fabien Kaegy rebuilt his site using a block-based theme, developers pay close attention to this article.

We’re excited to be Media Partners for the upcoming WordCamp US kicking off on October 1st! Go grab your FREE virtual tickets today!

Vito Peleg and Andrew Palmer announced Bertha.ai, “the fastest way to create content for your WordPress website.”

Josepha Haden shares an update to WordPress 5.9 in the latest episode of WP Briefing.

That’s it for this week’s weekly dose of WordPress news in less than 5 minutes.

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Some folks to thank this week. Bob Dunn, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and Brad Williams for joining the membership as producers to help contribute to the news. If you want your hand in the weekly news buymeacoffee.com/mattreport. You can buy me a coffee to support the show or join the membership for $79 for the year.

I also have an interview with Pippin Williamson who announced this morning that SandHills Development was acquired by Awesome Motive over on the Matt Report. Check that out if you want to hear the conversation with Pippin who ran one of the most respected WordPress businesses in the space for the last decade.