Themes Directory Revamped, Proposal For A Unified Sponsorship Initiative

Issue #176

June 25, 2024

Hello!

WordPress-to-WordPress migration will now be a core focus area within the Data Liberation Project. WordPress 6.6 release will enter its RC phase later today. Also, WooCommerce 9.0.1 was released which fixes a Legacy REST API error in WooCommerce 9.0.

Don’t forget to subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, where you can hear more details and discussions about these topics and more.

See you next week!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

Data Liberation and WordPress migrations

WordPress-to-WordPress migrations are now going to be an important part of the Data Liberation project.

WordPress 6.5.5 is now available: This is mainly a security release that patches three vulnerabilities and also includes 3 bug fixes in Core.
WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 released: The beta 3 is now available for testing. We can expect the RC1 later today.
What’s new in Gutenberg 18.6: The latest version introduces background image support for Quote, Verse, and Post Content blocks, enhancements to Data Views, and more.
The Theme Directory gets a refresh and is now powered by blocks: The WordPress Theme Directory has received a visual revamp and Nick Diego has provided a quick overview of the all changes.
Proposal for a Unified Sponsorship Initiative: This proposal aims to enhance support for WordCamp organizers by forming a task force focused on streamlining sponsorship efforts, ensuring sustainability, and improving the overall sponsor experience. This is not intended to diminish the autonomy of WordCamp organizers but to offer them additional resources and support.
Cynthia Norman is the 2024 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship recipient: Cynthia Norman is this year’s Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship recipient. Cynthia joined the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program in its inaugural year as a mentee, and she credits that program with giving her the boost she needed to dig into WordPress and grow professionally.
Google AI Overviews showing less often, with less Reddit, data shows: Google’s AI Overviews appear for 7-9% of queries, on average and Reddit is no longer one of the top 10 most cited domains.

🗣️TALK OF THE TOWN

New Features in WordPress 6.6

WordPress 6.6 CSS specificity: One of the goals of WordPress 6.6 is to simplify the process for theme authors to override core styles while also maintaining support for Global Styles.
Editor: Unified extensibility APIs in 6.6: WordPress 6.6 unified the different slots and extensibility APIs between the post and site editors. Plugin authors do not need to integrate their extensions twice (once using wp.editPost and once using wp.editSite). From WordPress 6.6 several slots are now available under the wp.editor global variable.
Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition): Birgit Pauli-Haack shared a table that lists all core blocks available in the inserter marks in the grid the feature they support in the block editor. It’s a basic lookup table that helps developers to find the information quickly.
Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6: WordPress 6.6 will allow users to define site-wide background images in theme.json and the Site Editor.
Theme.json version 3: The version 3 of theme.json will land with WordPress 6.6 and is also recommended when your minimum supported WordPress version reaches 6.6.
Social Links block changes in WordPress 6.6: WordPress 6.6 includes some changes affecting both the social link and social links blocks. This includes HTML changes when using a social links block inside a navigation block and Class name changes to the social link block.
Options API: Disabling autoload for large options: An overview of the changes coming to the Options API in WordPress 6.6.
Improvements to active block variation detection: WordPress 6.6 includes improvements to how a block variation is detected as active for a given block via the variation’s isActive property. This property can be either a function (that compares block and variation attributes), or a string[] shorthand that specifies which of the variation’s attributes to consider when comparing them to the block’s.

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

A collection of web security and vulnerability news and updates for the past week

Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (June 10, 2024 to June 16, 2024)

There were 73 vulnerabilities disclosed in 62 plugins.

Supply chain attack on WordPress.org plugins leads to 5 maliciously compromised WordPress plugins: A supply chain attack on WordPress.org led to five plugins being compromised with malicious code. The affected plugins include Social Warfare, Blaze Widget, Wrapper Link Element, Contact Form 7 Multi-Step Addon, and Simply Show Hooks. The malware attempts to create new admin accounts and also injects SEO spam.
WordPress vulnerability report — June 19, 2024: Weekly vulnerability report from SolidWP.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

Be one of the first ones to explore some fresh plugins and themes

Cookbook theme

A versatile theme designed to cater to various content creators

MagnewsPress theme: A theme designed for news and magazine websites.
FSE Fashion Store theme: A theme designed specifically for fashion boutiques, apparel shops, and online fashion stores.
Global Search for Gravity Forms plugin: The plugin provides the users with a single search box that simultaneously searches all forms, entries, fields, and notes.
Email Customizer for WooCommerce plugin: The plugin allows you to customize WooCommerce emails easily with a visual email customizer.
Image Overlay Cues plugin: The plugin enhances the core image block with an additional overlay count feature.

💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

Ahmad Hussein has acquired the AI Bud plugin: The AI Bud plugin which can be used for all kinds of AI-generated content, comment generation, chatbot, and images. was recently acquired by Ahmad Hussein from Çağdaş Dağ.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Scanfully is now live

Scanfully, a new WordPress site health and performance dashboard created by Remkus de Vries and Barry Kooij, is now available to everyone.

WooCommerce 9.0 released: WooCommerce 9.0 has been released with a lot of improvements such as an improved checkout experience, a new REST API endpoint for refunds, the Product Collections blocks are ready to be used, and so on. A day later the WooCommerce team issued a developer advisory to notify users of a Legacy REST API error in WooCommerce 9.0. This was fixed with the release of WooCommerce 9.0.1.
WPMU DEV joins Vultr Cloud Alliance Partner program: WPMU DEV is now part of the Vultr Cloud Alliance Partner Program. This collaboration combines WPMU DEV’s specialized WordPress solutions and Vultr’s high-performance cloud infrastructure, delivering unparalleled value and efficiency for WordPress users.
Exciting updates for all WPML form plugins: The latest updates to WPML form plugins include a better display of conditional fields, fixes to placeholders, and translation support for sub-labels in Name fields and support for the upcoming WPML 4.7.
All new AI-powered FAQ Generator: Aaron Edwards has launched a new website FAQ generator, which can be used to generate a list of frequently asked questions about a website for free and is powered by DocsBot AI.
A quick overview of Katie Keith’s and Matt Cromwell’s presentation at WordCamp Europe: Katie Keith and Matt Cromwell, co-hosts of WP Product Talk, delivered a talk summarizing insights gathered from interviews with 50 product owners. They have shared their key takeaways in this X thread. They have also shared access to the slide, for those interested.
Brian Gardner is the new host of the Press This podcast: Brian Gardner announced via X that he is the new host of the Press This podcast and the first episode is now available.
The WordPress Speed Build challenge is reaching more people: Jamie Marsland who started the WordPress Speed Build Challenge shared a screenshot of a WP meetup in Eindhoven which is centered on recreating a Dutch website in 30 minutes with just the WordPress Block Editor. This indicates a growing enthusiasm for the WordPress Speed Build Challenge among the community.
1 million websites milestone for InstaWP: Vikas Singhal announced that InstaWP has reached a significant milestone by creating 1 million websites in just two years.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

More blog posts and podcasts from WordPress Community you don’t want to miss

WCEU 2024 recap: From AgentWP
WordCamp Europe 2024: Recap & highlights: From NitroPack
WordCamp Europe 2024 Wrap-Up: From Freemius
WordCamp Europe 2024 – Our recap: From Atarim
Jetpack in Turin: WCEU 2024 highlights: From Jetpack
Five takeaways from WordCamp Europe 2024 (From a first-time WordCamp attendee): From WordPress.com
WordCamp Europe 2024 recap: From Greyd
Behind the booth: Our first WCEU sponsorship experience: From Studio Wombat
My WCEU 2024 story: First-time speaker, meeting awesome people, & more: From Barn2 Plugins
Our WCEU 2024 recap (and our first Kestrel team meetup recap, too): From Kestrel
Lesley Sim’s journey from free diving to craft brewing to WordPress plugin owner: From Women in WP
Mina Tamang on SEO techniques that prioritise the user experience: From WP Tavern Jukebox
Open letter to WordCamp Europe 2025 organizers: From Shahjahan Jewel
WordPress Photo Directory: Elevating standards and purpose: From Sam Alderson
What would we do with the keys to the kingdom?: From The WP Minute
How better communication can benefit WordPress: From The WP Minute
Plugins: If I did it…: From Half-Elf on Tech
Google and Bing stress the importance of lastmod in XML sitemaps: From Yoast
Contributing to WordPress: the Open Source Project: From StellarWP
Google turns off Universal Analytics July 1: What you need to know: From Search Engine Land

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

Styling sections, nested elements, and more with Block Style Variations in WordPress 6.6: From WordPress Developer Blog
An introduction to overrides in Synced Patterns: From WordPress Developer Blog
How to install WordPress on an Ubuntu VPS: Apache edition: From WordPress.tv
How to manage and optimize WordPress menus like a pro: From WPMarmite
A beginner’s guide to the WordPress Interactivity API: From WPShout
The art of fixing broken permalinks in WordPress: An ultimate guide: From Codeable
How to create a custom post or media grid in WordPress with WPBakery Grid Builder (2024): From WPBakery

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 on July 5th, 2024: Organized under the theme, “Problem Solving With WordPress”, it is a dynamic next-gen event that brings together high school and university students. The call for sponsors and projects is out.
WordCamp Canada on July 11-13, 2024: The call for volunteers, and sponsors is now open.
Stellar Spark on July 19, 2024: A free online event with a focus on growth, creativity, collaboration, and more. The call for speakers is now open.
WordCamp Bengaluru on July 21, 2024: The call for speakers and sponsors is now open. The tickets are also now available.
do_action Ahmedabad on July 27, 2024: The call for sponsors and charity organization applications is now open.
WordCamp US on 17-20 September 2024: The tickets are now available.
WordPress Accessibility Day on Oct 9-10, 2024: The call for speakers is now open.
WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: The venue will be the Philippine International Convention Center, Manila, Philippines
WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: The call for organizers is now open.

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

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50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
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20% off for Fluent Forms plugin
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