Hi,
It was a pretty dark week for WordPress as the dark side reared its ugly head. The usually vibrant WP community found itself under the grip of racism and those who spoke against it got attacked online. We hope all these discriminations and unethical practices will soon give way to a healthy and welcoming community.
We are celebrating Maha Navami here today. It signifies the victory of good over evil and we pray for the triumph of goodness everywhere.
See you next week.
Bye!
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📰 WordPress & Around
- Gutenberg 14.2 has been released: It comes with writing flow improvements, a more polished Calendar block, and smarter autocompletion.
- WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 is now available: Please help test it as testing for issues is critical for stabilizing a release throughout its development.
- Help improve the overall Make/Community Onboarding: You can help by commending about frequently used information that you struggle to find, information that is confusing or outdated, processes that are confusing or outdated etc.
- WordPress 6.1 contains “massive improvement to database performance”: WordPress 6.1 contains an improvement that will produce significant performance gains by caching database queries. This is due to the merging of a ticket, Jonny Harris had been working on for 5+ years
- WordPress punts locally hosted fonts for legacy default themes to 6.2 release: It has disappointed many as it is still a serious issue in Germany (and other GDPR territories).
- Please complete the Annual Meetup Survey by 15 October: This is an important opportunity to share your feedback on WordPress meetups in 2021 and 2022.
- Core Editor Improvement: Catalyst for creativity and control: This post goes through each category of design tools, what blocks they are available in, the progress made, and some fun examples showing off what you can now do.
- TikTok adds Downvote button for comments: TikTok users can express their dislike for individual comments with a new downvote button. And it’s reportedly still planning to launch live shopping in the US
- Twitter Ads suspended by top brands because of child exploitation: At least 30 major advertisers have dropped advertising on Twitter after it was revealed that their ads were displayed alongside tweets soliciting illegal child abuse content.
- Meta institutes hiring freeze, budget cuts, corporate restructuring: Facebook parent, Meta, plans to do a hiring freeze, reorganize teams and reducing headcount for the first time in company history.
- YouTube searches for health topics to show personal stories: YouTube is updating the way it delivers search results for health-related queries, adding a section dedicated to personal stories from patients. YouTube is also enabling creators to add voiceover narration to Shorts videos.
🗣️Talk of the Town
🚫 Unethical Marketing in WP
- Inside Awesome Motive’s self-perpetuating marketing machine: From Ellipsis
- Is deceptive marketing ruining WordPress’ reputation?: From WP Mayor
- This article expires in 3 hours, 47 minutes, 22 seconds: From MasterWP
- WooCommerce adding top-level menus to advertise for payment gateways: Jon Brown tweeted about this issue and others too are not impressed. Mike McAlister suggested “to get rid of the ability to hook into anywhere in the core menu like that.”
⚠️ WordPress & Racism
- Enough with this woke stuff: and other racist speech you can unlearn: From MasterWP’s Nyasha Green. Ironically several Newsletter readers unsubscribed as the discussion on diversity hurts their feelings and Nysha had a hard time the next days. “Waking up in this community lately has been a freaking doozy.”
- And for some people Racism is limited just to US. “Europeans keep telling me there’s no racism in Europe. I don’t really know how to respond to that.” tweeted Nyasha Green.
- Pierre LeBaux too was vocal against racism -“I can give you the names of 12 people from different EU countries that will all tell you racism was and is a big issue.”
- Racism is a Weed: From Tom Finley
❌ Active Installs Growth Chart Removed
- WordPress removed active installs stats: WordPress Meta Team states that it is “due to insufficient data obfuscation”. But several plugin developers do not agree with simply disabling such an important metric.
- Bring back the active install growth chart: A ticket opened by Mark Zahra to discuss bringing back the stats.
- Post Status and WPTavern too shared their take on the issue.
- Carl Hancock (founder of Gravity Forms) has this advice “Don’t want your WordPress plugin to be reliant on the .org repo policy decision making you have no control over? Distribute it yourself and don’t rely on the repo.”
- Chris Lema (Founder of CaboPress) replied that “Don’t play a game on someone else’s playground and then get frustrated when you don’t get to make the rules.”
🚨Web Security & Vulnerabilities
- WordPress Vulnerability Report – September 28, 2022: Regular report from iThemes
- These 80+ apps could be running adware on your iPhone or Android device: The investigation by a cybersecurity company Human uncovered a cache of over 75 Android apps listed in the Google Play Store and nearly a dozen apps on Apple’s App Store that are engaged in various forms of ad fraud.
- Drupal warns of critical high severity vulnerability: There are two vulnerabilities currently affecting Drupal that could allow an attacker to access sensitive information. One is rated as a high severity critical vulnerability.
- Critical WhatsApp bugs could have let attackers hack devices remotely: WhatsApp has released security updates to address two flaws in its messaging app for Android and iOS that could lead to remote code execution on vulnerable devices.
🔌 New Plugins & Themes
- WooCommerce Product Options plugin: It allows customers to effortlessly personalize WooCommerce products and choose extra options and add-ons.
- Gravity Forms File Renamer plugin: It will automatically rename and organize files uploaded to Gravity Forms.
- Sticky Admin Menu plugin: This plugin ensures that whatever page you are on in the WordPress Dashboard, you will always see that page’s menu item at the very top of the menu.
- CubeWP plugin: CubeWP helps you add custom fields and details on your website such as pages, posts, custom post types, forms and anywhere you want.
- WPExtended plugin: WP Extended is a modular plugin designed to enhance the core WordPress experience by adding many of the tools you need without having to install multiple plugins.
💵Investments, Acquisitions & Partnerships
- Patchstack partners with Hostinger: Patchstack has partnered with Hostinger to offer their customers a proactive security monitoring and update tool.
- Ionut Neagu acquired WPShout: Ionut Neagu announced on Twitter he acquired Fred Meyer and David Hayes‘ tutorial website. They originally acquired it from Alex Denning in 2013.
- Commsor acquires ALTR: ALTR joins the Commsor ecosystem as Mithril, a product designed to turn single-dimension, chat room communities into multi-dimensional community experiences by unlocking the power of Web3 technology.
- Penpot inks $8M as signups for its open source spin on Figma jump 5600% after Adobe’s $20B acquisition move: The Spanish startup is taking a new approach to design collaboration through an open source platform that brings designers and developers into the mix simultaneously.
👥 Community News
- Radar Domain Rankings from Cloudflare: Domain Rankings is based on aggregated 1.1.1.1 resolver data that is anonymized as per their privacy commitments. One of the most used and trusted sources of domain rankings was Alexa, but that service was recently deprecated.
- WooCommerce Blocks 8.6.0 released: It has support for a new block that displays cross-sells for products that are based on the current product in the customer’s cart.
- WP Offload Media 3.0 released: This is the first major release since the acquisition of Delicious Brains by WP Engine and this release introduces a brand new user interface, powerful filters and columns in the Media Library, and revamped bulk management tools
- uFuzzy – a tiny fuzzy search JavaScript library: It is designed to match a relatively short search phrase (needle) against a large list of short-to-medium phrases (haystack). It might be best described as a more forgiving String.indexOf().
- WP BizDev website launched: Lawrence Ladomery launched the first job board dedicated exclusively to Marketing and Sales roles for WordPress businesses.
- New podcast – WPMotivate: Kathy Zant and Michelle Frechette are teaming up to bring you 5-20 minutes of Monday happiness, Monday joy, and Monday motivation.
- Snippet Club tutorial website launched: It is a collection of easy-to-follow WordPress tutorials and snippets you can use on your next project.
- Turnstile from Cloudflare: It is a user-friendly, privacy-preserving alternative to CAPTCHA and can be used without having to be a Cloudflare customer or sending traffic through the Cloudflare global network.
🔖Interesting Reads & Podcasts
- Some WordPress Core Contributor stats: From Chuck Grimmett
- What I learned at WordCamp US 2022: From WebCami Cafe
- Twenty Twenty-Three: A new default WordPress theme from the community: From Kinsta
- Beyond WordPress. Hello Jamstack: From Simple Revolutions
- What’s new in the Editor: More design tools, enhanced lists, easier block switching: From WordPress.com
- The death of third-party cookies: Prepare for a cookieless future: From Torque
- Traditional vs. Headless CMS: From Search Engine Journal
- Current state of Content Management System (CMS) ecosystems: From Web Almanac
- Why “Go Nuts, Show Nuts” doesn’t work in 2022: Matt Mullenweg about Tumbler
- Death, rebirth, and saying goodbye to the last life: From Justin Tadlock
- Custom Post Designs are easy with WordPress Block Themes – no plugins needed!: From Jamie Marsland
- Why WordPressers should start building real sites with FSE: From Torque
- Exploring 3 new features in WordPress 6.1: From Ryan Welcher Codes
- Joe Dolson on how to fix the six most common accessibility errors on your websites: From WPTavern
🛠 Guide Zone – Howto’s and More
- The developer’s advanced guide to the wp-config.php File: From Delicious Brains
- How to schedule posts in WordPress: From Kinsta
- Understanding WordPress Template Hierarchy for faster development: From Cloudways
- The ultimate beginner’s guide to WordPress Plugins: From WPLift
- Let’s build a custom block in 15 minutes: From WordPress.tv
- How to track & log user activity in WordPress: From Jetpack
- How to simplify WordPress patterns with content-only block editing: From Rich Tabor
- How to set up and install Google Analytics 4 on WordPress: From SEOPress
- How to submit your website to search engines: From Semrush
- How to detect browser language automatically: From TranslatePress
- How to customize your website with a webfont generator: From Torque
📆 Save The Dates
- WooSesh on October 10-14: A live, virtual conference for WooCommerce store builders. The schedule has been published.
- Adobe MAX Creativity Conference on October 20: In-person event in Los Angeles. Attend virtually for free from 18–20 October.
- WordPress Accessibility Day on November 2-3: A free, 24-hour virtual conference focused on building accessible websites in WordPress.
- Wordcamp Nagpur (India) on Nov 12: WordCamp Nagpur is now accepting speaker applications.
- WordFest Live on November 18: This will be the fourth 24-hour WordFest Live, and the theme is Transformation.
- WordCamp Kolkata (India) on December 17-18: It will be an in-person event
- WordCamp Asia 2023 on February 17-19 at IconSiam, Bangkok Thailand: Call for speakers and media partners is out.
- WordCamp Phoenix on March 24 & 25, 2023: More details awaited.
- WordCamp Europe 2023 on June 8-10, 2023: Call for organizers is out.
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- 20% off for Fluent Forms plugin
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- 30% off for FluentCRM plugin
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- 60% off at Hostgator India (Coupon Code – SUNSHINE)
- 75% off VPS Monthly Plans at Liquid Web
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