Justin Ferriman & Chris Lema on Liquid Web acquiring LearnDash

Do the Woo!: We have a quick run down this week…let’s Do the Woo! (Hi, Bob) WooCommerce has invested in one-click checkout platform, PeachPay. According to PeachPay’s PR post: Cart abandonment is a significant problem for eCommerce businesses – in 2021, the global average rate has risen from previous years to 78.65%. PeachPay aims to significantly reduce this by providing shoppers with a frictionless, one-click checkout experience. Robert Jacobi covered the investment: So if we do a little math, the investment for PeachPay is no more than $450,000 (assuming that the 30% filled of $1.5 million includes the recent investment). View his link in the show notes to read through his interview with David Mainayar, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of PeachPay. Other Woo news: Automattic purchased woo.com for an undisclosed sum of money. Yoast has re-shaped their Diversity Fund project in the wake of COVID and the challenges of travel, stating: We want to keep our D by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

Chock-full of news: In a surprise tweet overnight (at least here in the US timezone), somewhere in Australia Elliot Condon announced the acquisition of his iconic WordPress plugin, Advanced Custom Fields by the Delicious Brains software company. WordPress News: ⁦@dliciousbrains⁩ acquires ⁦@wp_acf⁩ | 10 Years of ACF – A truly wonderful time https://t.co/ytgpkcQ0l8— The WP Minute (@TheWPMinute) June 2, 2021 Delicious Brains of course famous for WP DB Migrate Pro and DIY WordPress hosting, SpinupWP. I have reached out to both Brad Touesnard, founder of DB and Elliot for comment, I hope to have those replies back to publish a blog post soon. Rob Howard, CEO of Howard Development & Consulting announced the acquisition of the Understrap theme framework, ironically in a Medium post. Reportedly a $50,000 investment. It’s the first time I’ve heard of Understrap: “The UnderStrap package allows you to quickly and easily build search engine optimized websites with Wor by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Success in WordPress: Its the WP Minute! This episode is brought to you by Search WP. Improve WordPress search by visiting SearchWP.com You know the drill, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Checkout thewpminute.com for the links. Sshh…no major acquisitions this week. WordPress 5.8 is slated for release on July 20. In just over a month, many users will get their first experience of the template-editing mode. This can be exciting for users allowing them to create custom templates without ever leaving the post-editing screen. New powerful blocks like the Theme blocks and Query blocks will be introduced. Beta 3 of 5.8 is available today for testing. If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Maps, Sarah Gooding from WordPress Tavern breaks down some of the recent happenings with the MapLibre Project. Citing she even opened a ticket for Jetpack to consider using it in a future release. Chris Lema shares his thoughts by The WP Minute - WordPress news

2 min listen

So much future; So much past?: Liquid Web continues to expand it’s nexus of acquisitions with it’s latest grab of GiveWP. From GiveWP’s own blog post: The future of GiveWP remains a top priority.Every team member is critical to our success.Leadership of the team and product are staying the same. You can check out our own interview with the GiveWP’s leadership team, Devin Walker and Matt Cromwell at thewpminute.com and friend of the show Joe Casabona featured a chat on the How I Built it podcast. Can’t get enough audio/video? How about over 2+ hours on the future of WordPress?! The WP Cafe podcast sat down with Josepha Haden Chomphosy & Matt Mullenweg to highlight the project’s future as of May 10th 2021. As you’d imagine most things point to Gutenberg, Full-site editing, but one particular discussion I thought was interesting was the term Universal Themes. Give this show a listen to learn more about that or attention a scheduled Universal Themes Hallway hangout on Friday Ma by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

The WP Minute Trailer Episode: Welcome to The WP Minute — its your WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Listen to the debut trailer to find out more details behind the podcast. If you’re looking for a weekly WordPress news podcast that gets you the headlines in under five minutes or less — you’ve come to the right place! by The WP Minute - WordPress news

2 min listen

Half-full site editing: Full Site Editing; we’re almost there We’re almost there with Full Site Editing in WordPress core. During the meeting that was happening the same day our last episode went live, the team made the decisions for WordPress and the parts of Full Site Editing hitting version 5.8: Improvements from Gutenberg 9.9+.Introduce new blocks (Query, Site Logo, Navigation, etc).theme.json mechanism.Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template.Widgets Screen & Block widgets in Customizer.Design tools: Duotone, Layout controls, padding, etc. What won’t make it? Global Styles and Site Editor. If you’re left yearning for some Global Styles, Frank Klein’s got you covered with an in-depth tutorial on his YouTube channel and the fine folks at WordCamp Miami hosted a livestream Mega Meetup which covered all things Full Site Editing. Okay okay, still hungry for more? Gutenberg Times has a complete wrap up, be sure to listen to the latest episode of the Gutenberg Changelog. by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

GiveWP acquired by Liquid Web: I had the chance to sit down with Devon Walker and Matt Cromwell of GiveWP to talk about their sale to Liquid Web. GiveWP has been the dominant WordPress donation plugin over the last few years. This move makes sense for Liquid Web as they continue to round out a complete managed WordPress solution for their customers. Liquid Web acquisitions have been on a steady increase lately, with their most recent large acquisition of the Events Calendar plugin. I hope you enjoy today’s episode with Devon and Matt. Transcript Liquidweb acquires GiveWP [00:00:00] Matt Medeiros: [00:00:00] We were just chatting before we hit record. Devon, you were mentioning that things were getting wrapped up started to get almost wrapped up last week. [00:00:06] I’m sure this has been a process. When did this start? What does the timeline look like for some kind of acquisition this size? [00:00:15]Devin Walker: [00:00:15] We’ve known Chris Lema for a whi by The WP Minute - WordPress news

16 min listen

Put that WP down: In the News WordPress.org was in the news again. This time there was a lot of confusion about WordPress rejecting plugin submissions with the WP prefix. They said this was to address potential trademark abuse. As you can imagine, this sparked some interesting debate (read: controversy) on Twitter and Slack channels. This information ended up being misinterpreted as WPSteward reported, but it generated responses across the entire Community in record time. People legitimately freaked out because of how the information from WordPress.org has been handled in the past. We all have kind of felt this. There has been a track record for this type of communication and folks generally feel as though they are not being heard. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern and Jeff Chandler over at WPMainline went into further detail about how this was “making mountains over molehills”. Go check their articles out for different perspectives on this news flash. This is also t by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Yoast acquired; Automattic moves mountains of money: In the News Everyone in the WordPress world is talking about the acquisition of Yoast to NewFold Digital. Yoast SEO, the well-known plugin for WordPress with over 12 million active installs, is the flagship product of Yoast. I interviewed Joost de Valk on the WPMinute. The most important takeaway was that despite all of the speculation, the feedback has been mostly positive. Like many other WordPress concerned citizens, Jeff Chandler shares his initial thoughts on the acquisition on his podcast over at WP Mainline. As with all acquisitions, people are afraid that stuff will change for the worst — especially in ads or upsells. At this time, the Yoast product will not be adjusting free or premium features or adding in any other pesky upsell ads. Also keeping up with the news, Matt Mullenweg discusses the funding rounds from Automattic since last February. Automattic closed a primary funding round of $288M, bringing in by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Steady as she goes: Gutenberg, WordPress 3.8 Release, WooCommerce & Jetpack WordPress 5.8 is still marching along with modifications for release in July. Eighteen bugs and fixes were applied from Release 3 concentrating on polishing existing default themes, fixing bugs in the new block Widget screen, and squashing Editor bugs collected during beta. WPTavern posted a review of the Gutenberg 10 updates in the plugin. The Query and Query Loop blocks were renamed, hopefully clearing up all the confusion for end users. The Query Loop block has been renamed to Post Template to better represent its purpose within Query, whereas the Query block label now refers to it as Query Loop. I enjoyed Justin Tadlock’s take on WordPress theme lock-in, in the block-era. “I do not necessarily see this as a Bad Thing. We have always had these little silos in the WordPress ecosystem, and they have mostly worked out.” WooCommerce News. The first release candidate is now available for WooCommerc by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

Not yet Y'all: In the News WordPress 5.9 (RC3) is here. 5.9 is slated for next week and you still have time to help with testing. Go over to make.wordpress.org to see how you can still help with this important release. WooCommerce The WooCommerce development team announced that they have started working on an implementation of custom tables for orders. Sarah Gooding over at WPTavern covers the details of how this long-awaited improvement for the custom tables will be developed. The release is scheduled for Q3. You can check out her article for the details. Events The WordCamp Birmingham Organizing Team has unanimously decided to postpone WP Y’all until a future date in April or May when we can safely hold the event for our attendees. Nathan Ingram has a Twitter thread and he will share the updates as they become available. From Our Contributors and Producers Have you started using Blocks in your workflow? Nick Diego forked the core social block and created the Soci by The WP Minute - WordPress news

6 min listen

Wix’s latest noise amplifying headphones: Welcome to the first official episode of The WP Minute and I’m officially slapping the “beta” tag on to this thing. I’m still working out how I produce the show and fill in these posts, for now, here are the links mentioned in today’s episode. Kadence WPhttps://www.kadencewp.com/blog/kadence-wp-is-joining-ithemes/?ref=376Matt Mullenweghttps://ma.tt/2021/04/wix-dirty-tricks/Avishai Abrahamihttps://www.wix.com/blog/2021/04/letter-from-avishai-abrahami-to-matt-mullenweg/Joe Casabonahttps://casabona.org/2021/04/wix-wordpress-marketing/WP Tavernhttps://wptavern.com/will-full-site-editing-land-in-wordpress-5-8-a-decision-is-forthcomingUdaipur Timeshttps://udaipurtimes.com/people/obituary-puneet-sahalot-cofounder-udaipurtimes-rest-in/cid2703347.htm by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

What the FLoC?!: Let’s start with the good news, before we get into the…not so good news. Matt Mullenweg announced that CC Search is joining the WordPress project stating that the WordPress community has long advocated for a repository with GPL-compatible images. I think this is timely and needed with the not-so-recent announcement of Unsplash being acquired by Getty Images. Now time for the not so good news — What the FLoC?! First, what is FLoC? Well, here’s the definition straight from Google: Federated Learning of Cohorts, FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out its “interest cohort”, which will be the same for thousands of browsers with a similar recent browsing history. The browser recalculates its cohort periodically, on the user’s device, without sharing individ by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Awesome new home for SearchWP: Great News for the Castos Team in private podcasting Castos, a leader in podcast hosting and analytics, has successfully closed an investment round of $756,000. With investments by Automattic, Yoast SEO, along with individual investors, Castos will use this additional capital to fuel its advance into the Private Podcasting market. A quote from Craig Hewlett: “On both the individual and corporate investor side I think the investors see the vision that we have for what the Private Podcasting market can mean for Castos and want to help us achieve that potential,” Hewitt said. Big huge large news: I sold @SearchWP! Lots to say but the words can't fit in a tweeter https://t.co/OdfYlZDYXG— Jon Christopher (@jchristopher) July 7, 2021 SearchWP finds a new homeJonathan Christopher tweeted that his product SearchWP has been acquired by Awesome Motive. A quote from Syed Balkhi in the announcement post: “As he wanted to pursue the next chap by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

1-Star bomb: WP User Avatar, a plugin that was acquired by Collins Agbongama with over 400k active installs, took a hard pivot in it’s latest 3.0 version. The WordPress tavern reports what the plugin looked and functioned like, before becoming ProfilePress, it’s new name. Lots of end users share their opinions in the comments of the Tavern, and as you can imagine, they aren’t too happy. I reached out to Collins to learn more about him, his company, why the change to ProfilePress, and what he plans to do next. Read the interview to find out the back story. Release the themes! WP Engine’s head of Marketing for StudioPress, Chris Garret, shares the upcoming changes to WordPress once beloved framework for new developers. Most notably: ProPlus customers will get access to Genesis Blocks Pro and Genesis Custom Blocks ProGenesis Framework and the Sample Theme will be available for free.StudioPress-made themes will no longer be sold individually Hosts go round’n’round More fr by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

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. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com! 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 ar by The WP Minute - WordPress news

6 min listen

We be Classic Editing until 2022: In the News You’re in luck for 2021 if you are dragging your feet using Gutenberg and the block editor. The Classic Editor Plugin was published in 2018 to help with the transition to the block editor with support through the end of 2021. Now the Classic Editor plugin will be supported through the end of 2022. It may be a good time to re-think your transition plans on your websites. Frontity has been acquired by Automattic. Even though Frontity is a React framework, it doesn’t mean that they are going to push React to the WordPress frontend. Matt Mullenweg wrote in his recent blog post that there’s still a lot that: We can learn from decoupled systems and we can incorporate those learnings into WordPress itself as we emphasize performance, flexibility, and ease of development.I look forward to Frontity joining WordPress and channeling their efforts into the WordPress APIs, documentation, and Gutenberg’s full-site editing tools by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Brad Touesnard on Delicious Brains acquiring Advanced Custom Fields: Today is an interview with Brad Touesnard, founder of Delicious Brains, talking about his recent acquisition of Advanced Custom Fields. A series of questions I’ve provided him, where he’s recorded answers to via audio. I hope you enjoy today’s episode and learn more about one of WordPress’ most historic acquisitions. Check the transcript at the bottom of the post and please share this episode out on your social media channels! Transcription [00:00:01] It’s the WP minute. This episode is brought to you by easy support videos, support your WordPress users by placing videos right in the WordPress admin. Get it@easysupportvideos.com.[00:00:12]Today is an interview with Brad two Nard, founder of Delicious Brains, and talking about his recent acquisition of advanced custom fields, a series of questions he’s recorded answers to via audio. Let’s dive right in.[00:00:24]Can you give us a sense of how you vetted a p by The WP Minute - WordPress news

7 min listen

Post Status equals future: Post Status founder Brian Krogsgard has sold the remaining half of his ownership of the WordPress media brand to his partner, Cory Miller. Kicking off his his farewell post, A New Era for Post Status, Brian states: “It has been an extreme privilege to create and run this community — and see it blossom into a wonderful entity with its own identity. In the last few years, I’ve worked to bring more voices and more talent into the fold, and I’m confident that I leave Post Status in very able hands.” I had a chance to Interview Cory Miller about the transition, and here’s what he had to say. (Hit play on the podcast, reader!) You can gain more insight from Cory’s announcement on the website and his Draft podcast episode. The Blocksy Theme, was covered on the Tavern recently highlighting all of their investments into the theme + Gutenberg. It’s better for all of WordPress when we see a privately owned theme company growing these days. Stackable Gu by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Is this the Titan we need?: In the News Titan, a professional e-mail service, raised $30 million from Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com. This investment deal takes the company’s valuation to $300m. Titan will use the funds, the single largest investment made by Automattic, to expand its range of products, the professional email platform said on Wednesday. It did not disclose any details on the new products. Here’s a clip from CNBC-TV18 featuring the CEO of Titan. Professional #email platform @TitanEmail raises $30 M from Automattic, the parent company of @wordpress.com, and is valued at $300 MN@MugdhaCNBCTV18 finds out from serial entrepreneur @bhavintu on how he plans to take on #Google & #Microsoft in this space pic.twitter.com/C0EZAIJTgL— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18News) August 5, 2021 All of this leads to the question… How do the new products get integrated into the Automattic ecosystem? Justin Tadlock, from WPTavern, reviewed a new theme by Automattic by The WP Minute - WordPress news

6 min listen

Joe Covering the News – Matt on Assignment: Joe Casabona is filling in for Matt this week, who’s on assignment. In the News Jeff Chandler has opened up subscriptions to WP Mainline. Subscribing to this site will eventually get you the most recent content about WordPress. At the moment you will provide financial support to Jeff as he publishes and produces audio content in the WordPress ecosystem. Mode Effect, LLC, a full-service e-commerce consulting, development and management agency recently acquired Amplify Plugins, a WooCommerce and WordPress plugin development company to expand its plugin solutions to existing and prospective customers. Termly, the GDPR Cookie Consent Banner is one of the easiest, most effective, and popular cookie consent plugins available for WordPress with over 200,000+ downloads. Just remember after upgrading, you will need to sign up for a Termly account from within the plugin, or on the site app.termly.io, then enable the consent banner again. by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

Bonus trailer: If you want to know why I started another podcast in the WordPress space — well — look no further. I’ll cover how I came up with this crazy idea and what I might be introducing next for the show. by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

WordPress, the multi-billion dollar software industry that has us begging for money: It seems a year can’t go by without the pesky lifetime WordPress license topic popping up to spice up the holiday conversation. A struggle dating back 7 years ago to the month when Jeff Chandler covered, now defunct, Sidekick.pro where then owner Ben Fox shared his pricing experiments. When Brad Touesnard purchased Advanced Custom Fields back in June, he was swiftly reminded how hard lifetime license pricing really is. I mean, he did his due diligence, he knew what he was getting into. But the lifetime license woes lingered well before the new owners arrived. Elliot Condon wrestled with it, “get it all for one price forever” that is, until he finally revised pricing for 2020 to build the business a better runway. Lifetime license holders will get **all** ACF Pro software updates forever. They won’t be required to pay for version 6.0 or any other major or minor releases in the future. They si by The WP Minute - WordPress news

7 min listen

WordPress news according to Carrie Dils: It’s the WP Minute! This is Carrie Dils and I’m filling in for Matt, who’s tweeting about podcasting. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com! 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. Let’s get to the News Stay tuned for the direction of block development in the next few months. Justin Tadlock over on the WPTavern wrote about whether block development is merely a templating system with no build process. Since there still is a big concern around the direction of block development, he went ahead and reviewed where the React-based WordPress block editor (sometimes referred to as Gutenberg) had been hitting speed bumps for WordPress developers who have been more PHP Centric. H by The WP Minute - WordPress news

4 min listen

$596 Billion with a B: Jetpack gave us all a boost by pushing out a forced update patching a vulnerability in the Carousel feature. Tony Perez illustrated his point of view on how forced updates, in the hands of bad actors, could be a risk for the software. Brandon Kraft, part of the Jetpack team, tweeted that the forced update was justified by the meta/security team since 18% of Jetpack sites were affected. We weren't part of the discussion. Provided details and got the response, but I wouldn't expect a security convo to be public. But, yes. Single feature impacted. A few things need to be all true for it to matter on a site, which looked like qualified about 18% of sites IIRC.— A Guy Called Kraft ❤️‍ by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

Time for the Tatum: A lot of WordPress News this Week After months of talking about the release of WordPress 5.8, it has finally arrived. Matt Mullenweg announced that “Tatum”, our latest and greatest release now available for download or update is in your dashboard. This release is named in honor of Art Tatum, the legendary Jazz pianist. But if you need a thorough review, I recommend you head over to Kinsta’s blog where Carlo Daniele had time to write an amazing summary that covers all the new features of WordPress 5.8. His full-featured post includes a table of contents along with the videos discussing what has been worked on and added in the latest few months. It is a great source for all of the new things in WordPress 5.8. Speaking of great sources… Birgit Pauli-Haack covers more WordPress Themes for Full-Site Editing along with their Resources in the latest post on Gutenberg Times. Birgit says: “Just remember that themes may be wonky at times until developers have by The WP Minute - WordPress news

3 min listen

A Block, a scotch, and a Liam Dempsey for your WordPress news: It’s the WPMinute! I am Liam Dempsey with the following news and updates. This episode is brought to you by Easy Support Videos. Support your WordPress users by embedding videos and screencasts right inside the WordPress admin. Learn more at EasySupportVideos.com. You know how it goes, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. In The News Jetpack is acquiring WPScan. WPScan is being used across the WordPress ecosystem to identify vulnerabilities in WordPress core, themes, and plugins. Besides creating an outstanding security offering, Jetpack’s goal for this acquisition is to make malware data and APIs more open source. As part of the acquisition, two of the WPScan founders, Ryan Dewhurst and Erwan Le Rousseau, will be joining Automattic to continue their work improving security for the WordPress ecosystem. WPScan will continue to op by The WP Minute - WordPress news

10 min listen

Helen Hou-Sandi reads your WordPress news!: It’s the WP Minute! I’m Helen Hou-Sandi, filling in for Matt. This episode is brought to you by FooGallery, check out their latest WooCommerce integration to start selling images right through WooCommerce, head on over to Foo.Gallery for more information! You know what it is, everything I mention here will be linked up in the newsletter and the blog post. Check out thewpminute.com for the links. Let’s get into the News Video Press announced that they have a new refreshed player that offers creators an intuitive design that puts their content in the spotlight. Video Press is fully integrated into WordPress so neither you nor your audience need to be redirected to external apps. You may already be familiar with VideoPress which is included in the Premium, Business, and eCommerce plans on WordPress.com and powers WordPress.tv. If you are a self-hosted site, you can get VideoPress through Jetpack, now available as a standalone produc by The WP Minute - WordPress news

7 min listen

Automattic acquires Pocket Casts podcast app: Automattic purchases Pocket Casts, a popular podcast app that was facing an uncertain future. A quote from the creators of the app: “As part of Automattic, Pocket Casts will continue to provide you with the features needed to enjoy your favorite podcasts (or find something new). We will explore building deep integrations with WordPress.com and Pocket Casts, making it easier to distribute and listen to podcasts” Recent installs of WooCommerce were hit with a vulnerability which has since been patched. If you haven’t updated your WooCommerce site, please check that as soon as possible. A quote from the WooCommerce blog: Our investigation into this vulnerability and whether data has been compromised is ongoing. We will be sharing more information with site owners on how to investigate this security vulnerability on their site, which we will publish on our blog when it is ready. Pantheon host, known for WordPress hosting an by The WP Minute - WordPress news

2 min listen

Funding a WordPress news business: After appearing on the Post Status State of WordPress News roundtable, I felt like I had a bit more to say about my experience with WordPress news. WordPress news isn't a heavily trafficked topic on the web. How does a publisher build more than just a side gig from putting out WordPress news? How do we define WordPress news? I asked Kim Coleman, co-founder of Paid Memberships Pro, to see if she had any questions around the topic and if she had any interest in recording a podcast episode about it. Thankfully she was willing to chat and share her questions and her opinions on how we do WordPress news. If you enjoy today's episode, please say thanks to Kim on Twitter or consider becoming a supporting Producer here at The WP Minute! Episode Transcript [00:00:00] Matt: It's the WP minute, a special WP minute because I am joined by a special coat. Co-host the title of this episode is called challenges of a WordPress news business. I have my g by The WP Minute - WordPress news

47 min listen

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Justin Ferriman & Chris Lema on Liquid Web acquiring LearnDash

Justin Ferriman & Chris Lema on Liquid Web acquiring LearnDash

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