Hi!

WordPress 6.2.1 is set to arrive soon and a new campaign to celebrate the 20 years of WordPress is live. Also, the WordPress community is open to discussing AI and its various possibilities.

You can also subscribe and listen to the podcast version of this newsletter on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

Until next week,

Bye!

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WordPress & Around

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

20 Days to celebrate 20 years of WordPress, From Blogs to Blocks

This is a campaign to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of WordPress and will run from May 7 to May 27, 2023. All the participants are requested to use the #WP20 hashtag and may even stand to earn recognition in the form of a unique WordPress profile badge.

• Proposal for enhancing LCP image performance in WordPress core: WordPress core committer Felix Arntz is proposing adding the fetchpriority=”high” attribute to LCP images in WordPress core to enhance LCP performance. The proposal was created as a collaboration between members of the Core Performance Team.
• FAQ for the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks campaign: The WordPress Marketing team answers all the questions and doubts regarding the recently launched campaign to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of WordPress.
• What’s new in Gutenberg 15.7: The new version will allow the users to replace the site logo via the sidebar, the duotone filter controls are now available with the style settings in the sidebar, refinements have been made to fluid typography, and includes many other enhancements and bug fixes.
• 2022 Annual survey results & next steps: The 2022 edition of the survey experienced a 26% increase in completion rate, however, submissions decreased by 56% to roughly 3400, including about 800 contributors. Also, a glimpse into the proposed route for the 2023 survey has also been published.
• Announcing the 2023 Community Team Goals: This year the focus will be on three areas. Firstly to improve the contributor event experience, secondly to expand the contributor training and support, and thirdly to improve the processes and workflows.
• FSE Program Build a Block Theme Summary: An update on the Build a Block theme exploration program is now live. In this approach, the participants used the Create Block Theme plugin to augment the Site Editor into even more of a block theme-building tool in order to test the limits of what’s possible and find gaps.
• Let’s talk: WordPress Core & Artificial Intelligence: Discussion regarding AI and WordPress Core is underway. Feedback, ideas, and questions are open to all and the three main areas to be focused on are also highlighted.
• Upgrade/Install: Create a temporary backup of plugins and themes before updating: WordPress 6.3 will ship out with a feature to make the update process more reliable and ensures that if a plugin or theme update fails, the previous version can be safely restored.
• WordPress 6.2.1 planning: The proposed schedule of WordPress 6.2.1 has been published. As of now, the targeted release date is May 16, 2023.
• Safely jazz up your website with staging sites on WordPress.com: Staging sites are now available to WordPress.com users. This is a useful addition as it allows the users to test out the changes in a safe environment without trying it out on the live site.
• Automattic defends .blog premium model: Automattic, which operates the .blog top-level domain through its company Knock Knock Whois There (KKWT), has successfully defended a .blog domain in a cybersquatting case.
• Google provides an update on Chrome’s lock button: Soon, the lock icon in Chrome will be replaced by a new “tune” icon – both to emphasize that security should be the default state and to make site settings more accessible.
• 8 new top-level domains from Google: Google registry has launched eight new top-level domains and they are,  .dad, .phd, .prof, .esq, .foo, .zip, .mov, and .nexus.

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

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

Reflected XSS in Advanced Custom Fields plugin affecting 2+ million sites

The vulnerability affects both the free and premium versions of ACF and was patched with the release of version 6.1.6. All users are advised to update to the latest version immediately.

• Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (Apr 24, 2023 to Apr 30, 2023): 77 vulnerabilities disclosed in 68 WordPress Plugins and 3 WordPress themes.
• WordPress Vulnerability Report – May 3, 2023: Weekly vulnerability report from ithemes.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

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

Stacks Theme

The first WordPress community theme is designed specifically to create slide decks that can be used as a presentation.

• Hey theme: A simple personal blog theme with two style variations.
• Paimio theme: A minimal blogging theme inspired by architects and designers.
• Lupr theme:  A multipurpose theme with custom colors, typography, full customization of page layouts, and 7 style variations.
• Frost theme: A clean minimal design theme with 8 style variations and a preset bundle of blocks.
• OneShip Shipping for WooCommerce plugin: A plugin to manage shipments, book couriers, track parcels, and collect COD payments.
• Announcement notice plugin: The plugin allows the users to easily show an announcement in the sticky header

INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

• Caseproof has acquired WishList Member: Caseproof, the parent company of MemberPress has acquired WishList Member, which is a WordPress membership plugin.
• WPBeginner Growth Fund invests in Hero Themes: The latest addition to the portfolio of WPBeginner Growth Fund is Hero Themes, a WordPress company focusing on themes and plugins.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from WordPress Community

Jetpack 12.1 – Under-the-hood improvements for your site

The updated version includes a visual refresh to the Jetpack plugin’s WP Admin pages, added support for footnotes to the Markdown Block, and various other improvements.

• Milestone for block themes: The total number of block themes in the repository has crossed over 300, which is a positive sign that more and more users are adopting full site editing.
• Oxygen 4.6 Now Available: The new version comes with custom HTML tags for Repeaters and lazy loading for gallery & video elements. Alongside this release, the final stable 1.4.4 version of Oxygen’s Gutenberg integration has also been released.
• The first-ever ACF Annual Survey is now open: An annual survey is now open and the ultimate goal is to improve the ACF plugin by understanding how customers are using the plugin, its features, and the areas that need to be improved.
• Sendinblue rebrands to Brevo: The widely popular SaaS customer relation platform Sendinblue has been rebranded to Brevo after a decade to signify its business evolution.
• WPAI Universe: A directory of artificial intelligence resources and tools specifically made to be used with WordPress.
• WordPress Icons Library: A searchable guide to the complete WordPress Icon Library package from Gutenberg.
• Alpha access to GPT-4 with browsing shows results that are troublesome for Google: A Twitter thread from Rowan Cheung
• Turn your code snippets into images: A helpful Twitter post from Ishrat about four websites that could turn your code snippets into images.

🔖INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

• Will AI replace us all? (How I tried to get ChatGPT to do my job): From Torque
• Redis vs MongoDB: which one should you choose?: From Kinsta
• SEO basics: What is crawlability?: From Yoast
• What is Ransomware?: From ithemes
• The science of logo design: How to choose an effective logo for your ecommerce business: From WooCommerce
• Site structure: the ultimate guide: From Yoast
• The Beginning of the End of Passwords: From ithemes
• Google Discover Optimization: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site: From Rankmath
• Ahmed Kabir Chaion on how to find your place in WordPress even if you don’t Code: From WP Tavern
• What is Steganography? (Or, how hackers hide malware on websites): From Sucuri
• Premium plugins and free translations: Why, oh Why?: From Zé Fontainhas

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

• WordPress Permalinks: What they are and how to change them: From Jetpack
• The WordPress request lifecycle: From Learn WordPress
• What is XML-RPC? Security risks & how to disable: From Sucuri
• How to add footnotes in WordPress – The easy way: From RankMath
• How To Migrate From MySQL To MariaDB: From Kinsta
• There has been a critical error on this website: 6 quick fixes: From Rankmath
• Exploring category templates with block themes: From Learn WordPress

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

• YoastCon 2023 on May 10 & 11: It’s a two-day interactive conference focused on search engine optimization and online marketing. 
• php[tek] 2023 on May 16-18, 2023: It is the longest-running web developer conference in the United States that focuses on the PHP programming language.
• WordCamp Lisboa on May 19 & 20: It is one of the largest WordPress conferences in Portugal.
• WordCamp Europe 2023 on June 8-10, 2023: Tickets are available now.
• Call for Mentors – WordCamp Europe 2023 on June 8-10, 2023: Call for speaker mentors is out.
• The WordPress Community Summit on August 22-23, 2023: In the early planning stages, the Community Summit is an “unconference,” without slides, selected speakers, or planned presentations. 
• WordCamp US 2023 on Aug 24-26, 2023: Call for sponsors is now open.

🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK

Just the best deals of the week, again, handpicked by yours truly!

EXCLUSIVE DEALS

• 4 Months free offer on hosting plans of WP Engine (Coupon Code- FREEDOMTOCREATE)
• 15% off yearly plans at Videvo (Coupon Code – WPV15)

OTHER DEALS

• 33% off on Paid Memberships Pro plugin (Coupon Code – LOVE23)
• Up to 50% off on plugins & PHP scripts at CodeCanyon
• Up to 40% off on Astra theme
• Up to 40% off for CartFlows
• Up to 75% off on plugins, themes and hosting at WP Hive
• 50% off Web Hosting Packages at StableHost (Coupon Code – 50OFFYEAR1)
• 80% off for plugins at WPPool
• 40% off at OceanWP
• Up to 75% off hosting plans at HostPapa
• 50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
• 33% off for Annual Hosting plans at Nexcess
• 83% off at AtlasVPN 
• 30% off for Fluent Forms plugin
• 50% off at Formidable Forms
• 20% off for FluentCRM plugin
• 50% off for WP Social Ninja plugin 
• 10% Store Wide Discount for PitchGround products (Coupon Code – PG-D7WCAD75F)
• 68% off WordPress Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting
• 73% off hosting plans at SiteGround
• 60% off at Hostgator India
• 75% off VPS Monthly Plans at Liquid Web
• 50% off on Managed Dedicated Server Hosting at Liquid Web

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