From The Repository:

The WPOCC’s first-of-its-kind survey of 431 WordPress community members surfaces deep frustration with governance and a stubborn refusal to walk away.

Governance and leadership is the problem respondents report most, with 73.3% having experienced or witnessed problems with project leadership or governance — the highest of any issue the survey measured. Transparency, accountability, and a new governance model came up repeatedly across the open-ended responses.  

The survey also found broad agreement on what the community values most. Respondents overwhelmingly rated four things as important: security, web standards, open source values, and the WordPress software itself. That consensus held across every segment The WPOCC asked respondents about, including those who are deeply negative about the project, respondents who’ve stopped attending events, and people who no longer consider themselves community members.

https://www.therepository.email/state-of-the-community-survey-finds-three-in-four-feel-worse-about-wordpress-but-90-agree-on-what-matters

To change or to not change the due dates of activities, that is the question.

The most often debated topic when working with activities or tasks in CRMs like Pipedrive is whether you should change the due dates of overdue activities.

I will present what I think is the best thing to do with overdue tasks or activities.

Problem

On any given day, a salesperson has to do a number of tasks. Life happens and they may not be able to get through their tasks for the day, even if the number of tasks is manageable. Moreover, more often than not, salespeople are burdened with more tasks than they can handle. So any task they are not able to complete on a given day becomes an overdue task the next day.

The argument in favor of changing due dates is that people do not want to deal with the burden of having ‘overdue tasks’.

The biggest problem with moving due dates is that you lose context of how overdue you’re. On any given day, it is impossible to tell apart a task that is actually due for today from a task that was rescheduled for today. So there is a very high chance that activities that have been overdue for long will continue to be overdue because you will always have more activities than you can reasonably complete in a given day.

Secondly, it gives you a false impression that you’re on top of your sales pipeline and that things are fine when they’re actually not. The workload in the upcoming week far outweighs the workload in the weeks after.

So, my advice is to not move due dates. When you start your day, focus on everything that’s due for today. Once done, move to the Overdue list, and get cracking. Over time, you will get rid of overdues, but if you keep moving due dates of tasks, you will have to do this due date moving activity every day, which is a complete waste of time.

Scenarios where you need to change due dates

Apologies if this heading got you excited.

But I am going to rule out every case where you want to change the due date of the activity or, in simple words, move the activity.

Moving an activity without talking to a lead

Don’t do that.

If you do that, you’re asking the prospect to move according to your pace, where in fact, you should be responding to the prospect’s needs by moving along their pace.

Moving an activity when your outreach attempt was not successful

If your outreach attempt was unsuccessful, mark the activity as done, and schedule a new activity for a future date.

If you do that, you will get a clear idea of the number of attempts you’ve had to make to finally get in touch with somebody. This information will be very useful when you try to model “what happens if our leads increase by 10%”.

If you don’t do that, you will lose sight of how hard you’ve tried to reach out to somebody, and if you have tried enough. At some point, you have to give up on trying to reach out to a prospect, right?

Moving an activity with an incorrect due date

This one’s easy.

Just be careful when creating activities. Make it a habit to check these details when creating activities to avoid wasted time and effort, and frustration.

Be patient and diligent.

Moving an activity to follow up in the future

Again, don’t do that.

Just mark the previous activity as done, jot down your notes, and schedule the next activity. Let the logged data tell you and your team how many activities are required to get prospects into a particular stage of the pipeline. This will help them plan staffing requirements too.

Conclusion

My advice was always going to be ‘don’t do it’.

I just wanted to rule out every case one would think of to justify moving activities.

So, don’t do it.

It’s better to have overdue tasks than to move due dates of activities or tasks.

I’m starting a CRM and sales operations service and I’m looking for one small business using HubSpot to work with as a pilot.

I’d review and tidy up your sales pipeline things like stale deals, missing information, unclear ownership and missed follow-ups.

I’m doing the first one for free because I want to build a proper case study from real work. I’d just ask for honest feedback and, if you’re happy with the result, a short testimonial.

If your HubSpot pipeline has gotten a bit messy and you’d like some help, feel free to reply.

https://preview.redd.it/hu6bv2brflkh1.png?width=2896&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0e01380690d33b09a8a0e7437eefbe9114f4eab

I’ve been working on a WordPress plugin called Retail Cash Manager (RCM), and it’s now available free on WordPress.org.

The idea is fairly simple. Proper cash management systems can cost a business thousands to implement, often followed by a substantial recurring subscription. At the other end of the scale, plenty of businesses are still managing daily cash with Excel sheets, paper forms and manual processes.

I wanted to build something in between.

RCM is for businesses that handle physical cash and need to keep track of what should be there, what was actually counted, where the cash went afterwards, and who was responsible for each step.

Despite the name, it isn’t limited to retail. The same processes apply to cafés, restaurants, hospitality, service businesses and plenty of other cash-handling operations.

The current version includes:

• Daily cash-ups with cash and card discrepancies
• Denomination counting
• Till expenses
• Safe balances and safe counts
• Cash drops and recounts
• Lodgements using safe cash, cash drops or both
• Lodgement collection and cancellation
• Cash and change deliveries from a bank or supplier
• A cash movement ledger
• Staff signoff and audit history
• Multiple branches

It’s not a POS system and it’s not accounting software. It handles the operational cash management that happens around those systems.

Why WordPress?

That’s probably the obvious question.

WordPress gave me a lot of the underlying application infrastructure without having to build it all from scratch: users, permissions, database handling, email, localisation, hosting flexibility and a well-established update system.

The update system is particularly useful. As RCM improves, updates can be distributed to installations in the same way as any other WordPress plugin rather than every installation becoming its own bespoke piece of software.

Publishing through WordPress.org also means there are standards to meet around security, compatibility, packaging and Plugin Check before releases go out.

RCM doesn’t require WooCommerce, and you don’t need to have an existing WordPress website. It can run on a completely separate WordPress installation used only for RCM.

The current release is 0.4.5. At this stage the core workflow is there and working, although there’s plenty more I plan to add.

One area I’m particularly interested in next is more advanced multi-till cash management. For example, separately tracked tills, change given from a safe to a till, change returned at the end of the day, and outstanding change that has to be resolved before the till can be closed.

The plugin is free, so I’d be very interested in feedback from people who work with WordPress, retail, hospitality or cash-handling businesses. Particularly if you can see something obvious that I’ve missed or have experience with how other cash management systems handle things.

WordPress.org:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/website-guy-retail-cash-manager/

Short answer: document the business problem, the current workflow, the required outcomes, and the exceptions that matter. You do not need a finished technical specification, but you should give prospective implementers enough detail to distinguish a real solution from a generic software pitch.

A useful preparation packet can be only a few pages. Include these six sections:

1. The decision you are trying to make

State whether you are evaluating a new CRM, improving an existing system, automating a handoff, replacing spreadsheets, or integrating two platforms. Name the decision deadline and who will approve the work.

1. The current workflow

Describe where the process starts, each major step, who owns it, which systems are used, and where work commonly waits or gets re-entered. A simple numbered list is often more useful than polished diagrams. Include one representative example using fictional or redacted data.

1. The required outcome

Define what must be better in observable terms. Examples include one accountable owner per request, fewer duplicate records, visible failure queues, consistent approval history, or a reliable way to report status. Avoid prescribing a feature before explaining the operational result it must support.

1. Users, roles, and permissions

List the people who create, review, approve, assign, complete, and report on the work. Note what each role must see or change. This prevents an estimate built around administrator access while overlooking daily users.

1. Data and integrations

Identify the important records, their current sources, required fields, approximate data condition, and any systems that must exchange information. For every integration, describe the direction of data, trigger, timing expectation, and which system should be authoritative.

1. Exceptions and constraints

Document the cases that do not follow the happy path: duplicates, missing information, cancellations, reassignment, offline work, failed payments, unavailable APIs, or records that require manual review. Also disclose security requirements, retention rules, budget boundaries, internal technical capacity, and dates that cannot move.

Ask every proposer to separate assumptions, standard configuration, custom work, integrations, migration, testing, training, ongoing ownership, and out-of-scope items. Require them to explain how failures are detected and recovered, not only how the normal path works.

You do not need to choose the software first. In fact, documenting the workflow before selecting a platform makes it easier to compare options against the same needs and exposes where process decisions—not technology—are still unresolved.

Which part of your current workflow would be hardest to explain accurately to an implementation partner?

Treat CRM migration as a business-decision project, not a bulk copy. The safest goal is not “move every record.” It is “move the records people need, in a structure they understand, with enough traceability to trust the new system.”

Start with these six decisions:

1. Define what must move. Separate active customers, open opportunities, current contacts, required historical records, and data that can remain in a read-only archive. Keeping everything often preserves duplicates, obsolete fields, and unclear ownership.
2. Assign an owner to each data set. Sales should decide what makes an opportunity active. Finance should confirm which account identifiers matter. Operations should define the customer and job details needed after handoff. A technical team can map fields, but it should not invent business definitions.
3. Create a field-level mapping. For every source field, document the destination field, data type, allowed values, transformation rule, and what happens when the value is blank or invalid. Mark fields that will be retired. This catches ambiguity before import day.
4. Clean by rule, not by intuition. Agree on repeatable rules for duplicate contacts, inconsistent company names, stale statuses, malformed email addresses, and records without owners. Preserve original IDs so questionable records can be traced back to the source.
5. Rehearse with a representative sample. Include ordinary records and difficult cases: multiple contacts at one company, closed and reopened opportunities, missing values, unusually long notes, and records connected to several objects. Have actual users check search, ownership, timelines, reports, and downstream handoffs.
6. Reconcile after each test import. Compare source and destination counts by record type and status, then investigate differences. Spot-check key fields and relationships. “The import finished” is not the same as “the migration is correct.”

Before the final cutover, write down the freeze window, final export time, import sequence, validation owners, rollback threshold, and how changes made during the freeze will be handled. After launch, keep the old system read-only for an agreed period instead of immediately deleting access.

One practical test: ask a salesperson to find an active account, understand its recent history, identify the next action, and hand it to operations. If that flow is confusing in the migrated sample, more mapping work is needed before go-live.

This community is support by Hexagon IT Solutions

Which part of CRM migration has created the most uncertainty for your team: deciding what to keep, cleaning it, mapping it, or validating the result?

TL;DR

• WordPress 7.1 added a wp_pre_execute_ability filter that lets any plugin fully short-circuit Abilities API calls (including permission checks).
• Media Library infinite scrolling is back on by default (reversed since 5.8).
• Speculative loading still defaults to conservative; new constants let hosts override it instead of the planned auto-detection.
• Core grew 25% almost entirely from lazy-loaded admin JS (vips + video workers) with no measurable front-end impact.
• Not a security release - just inherits the 7.0.x fixes.

also - it's the first release that included my fix so now I'm officially Core Contributor :)

hi all

i am using custom gutenberg/acf blocks and my sites have just updated to 7.1, which seems to be completely messing up the admin editor section

all of our blocks are stuck in the sidebar and preview mode. i've tried changing in our acf_register_block function, supports mode from false to mode true to get the edit/pencil icon, but that doesn't work anymore. The pencil icon is not appearing to allow us to edit the block in the main editor area.

also tried changing block regsitration to use old API

add_action('acf/init', 'init_full_width');

function init_full_width() {

if( function_exists('acf_register_block') ) {

acf_register_block(array(

'name' => 'full-width',

'title' => __('Full Width Section'),

'description' => __('A custom full width block.'),

'render_callback' => 'my_acf_block_render_callback',

'category' => 'formatting',

'icon' => 'schedule',

'mode' => 'edit',

'api_version' => 2,

'acf_block_version' => 2,

'supports' => [

'mode' => true,

],

'keywords' => array( 'full', 'width' ),

));

}

}

any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. crisis mode engaged 😅

EDIT: resolved - sorry for the janky ass formatting. resolved by below. must specify API version

add_action('acf/init', 'init_full_width');

function init_full_width() {

 if (!function_exists('acf_register_block_type')) { return; } acf_register_block_type([ 'name' => 'full-width', 'title' => __('Full Width Section'), 'description' => __('A custom full width block.'), 'render_callback' => 'my_acf_block_render_callback', 'category' => 'formatting', 'icon' => 'schedule', 'keywords' => array( 'full', 'width' ), // Required for WordPress 7.1 compatibility. 'api_version' => 3, 'acf_block_version' => 3, ]); 

}