Business Roundup Week Ending March 15

Site Editor Complaints? The Core Team is Listening

There is a growing feeling that the Gutenberg project is not prioritizing the needs of builders, developers, agencies, and freelancers.
As a result, many continue to use the Classic Editor or page builders instead.
Lead Architect Matias Ventura believes the Site Editor is ready for some use cases, but acknowledges that it still needs plugins to fill functionality gaps for others.
Automattic Product Wrangler Anne McCarthy has collected common complaints about the Site Editor in a post titled “Overlapping Problems”.
It is encouraging that core contributors are openly discussing the Site Editor’s weaknesses as it demonstrates willingness to collaborate on solutions that benefit everyone.
You can get involved and share feedback in the #outreach channel in Make WordPress Slack.
Are you involved in the shaping of the Site Editor? Core needs you!
Read this thoughtful summary from the Tavern.

The latest Google helpful content update is now live, and leads to a big reduction in unhelpful content.
Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Google’s Search Product, says: “We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low- quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”
This update is much more complex than usual with changes to multiple core systems.
Among the changes include more careful scrutiny of outgoing links for spammy intent or low-value content.
Also, repurposed expired domains are also analyzed to see if their content is contrary to their original purpose (like a former elementary school site now serving gambling content).
Have these changes impacted your rankings?
For a deeper dive into these latest Google changes, read these excellent articles in Search Engine Journal, and Search Engine Land.

CSS-Tricks was once a vibrant resource for developers, a consistently fresh spring of tutorials and clever uses of CSS.
In March 2022, CSS-Tricks was sold to DigitalOcean. A year later DO fired the entire content team, stopped publishing new articles, and made changes to the site that many considered bizarre.
The Founder, Chris Coyier, offered to return to help right the ship and publish new content. But the offer was rejected by DO as too risky.
Many former readers have expressed disappointment at the wasting of a beloved community asset.
Read Chris Coyier’s take on what happened.

Check this out! Ploogins AI Powered WordPress Plugin Search from Javi Guembe. Finally, a plugin search that actually delivers the results you’re looking for (with nifty sorting features too)!
The founders of Cwicly have updated their future plans, including refunds for recent purchases and an maintenance plan for bug fixes and security updates. This certainly lets Cwicly devs breathe easier. Details here.
The WCAG 2.2 guidelines have been released. Do you know what they include and how to test your site for them? Read this excellent article from Amber Hinds of Equalize Digital.