Business Roundup Week Ending March 8

Cwicly Discontinues Development: The Most Important Question WP Agency Owners Should Consider

This week, the developers of Cwicly (a block-based page builder) announced they were discontinuing development of the plugin.
Although the Cwicly official Facebook Group and Discourse forums were made read only, users have created an unofficial Facebook Group to discuss alternatives and migration workflows.
There are plenty of opportunities for discussion around the reasons for the closure and how the abrupt decision impacts developers who trusted the product to create client sites.
But to me the real question is… What would happen in my agency if our page builder of choice suddenly stopped development?
Like developers who trusted Cwicly, would we be scrambling to rebuild client sites? How would we even manage this?
Some might say that moving exclusively to blocks, but let’s face it. The core Block Editor is still far behind the capabilities of most page builders for creating complex layouts (unless you plan on creating lots of CSS and likely a lot of custom code as well).
Block plugins like Kadence and GeneratePress give the core editor far more capability, but pose the same risk since you’re relying on third party development.
For me the answer is vet my theme and plugin stack well and make the best choices based on developer reliability. But even the best vetting today can’t eliminate the risk.
What are your thoughts about this issue? How can we futureproof our client work?

The Font Library will finally provide a standard way for WordPress users (and developers) to add custom fonts to their websites without the privacy and performance issues of external loading.
Last week, some last minute concerns arose in the Make WordPress Slack over where fonts would be stored.
Are fonts uploads like any other file? Attachments? Or should they be treated differently?
Ultimately the decision was made that, at least for now, Font Library fonts will be stored at /wp-content/fonts.
Font Library will ship with WordPress 6.5 with future work planned to add additional features 🎉

The Oregon legislature has passed a Right to Repair bill banning parts pairing, despite strong opposition from Apple.
Parts pairing is where the serial number of a component (like a screen) is digitally paired to the serial number of the iPhone itself.
These components cannot be replaced without proprietary software from Apple, which makes third-party replacement difficult or impossible.
The implications of the bill require Apple to redesign iPhone to allow display repairs by independent repair shops. This change should ultimately make fixes more affordable, reduce e-waste from discarded devices, and give consumers more choices for service.
The bill signals growing bipartisan political will to support right-to-repair against corporate resistance.
It is currently waiting on the Governor’s desk for approval.
Read the full article here.