Hi!

An ongoing discussion with the ultimate goal to rename the command center is progressing on the Gutenberg repository and several new proposals are waiting for feedback from the community. Also, WordPress.com will now allow users on the free plan setup monetization features.

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

Launch your WordPress contributor journey through the Mentorship Program Pilot

The mentorship program pilot is a four-week event between July 12th and August 9th, 2023. The Participants will asynchronously work together with a group of mentors to build a strong foundation in the WordPress project and make initial contributions to the contributor team of their choice.

• WordPress contributors considering renaming command center tool: The command center that was introduced in Gutenberg 15.6 is being considered to be renamed. The goal is to give the feature a name that better captures its different use cases, helps work on messaging that reflects benefits, and appeals to a less technical audience.
• WP Feature Notifications: Request for feedback on admin notices: The WP Feature Notifications team is looking for feedback from the community regarding the current state of notices with the WordPress dashboard which in turn will also help plan the future roadmap of the project.
• Proposal: Criteria for removing “Beta Support” from each PHP 8+ version: The primary goal of the proposal is to set criteria for determining when WordPress Core has reached compatibility with a specific PHP version that WordPress supports.
• Make Team Dashboards: The post aims at finding the best way to build a dashboard that would track team metrics across the 22 Make teams to motivate and quickly identify impactful work for incoming contributors.
• Proposal: Let’s actively promote the Learn WordPress platform in Learn WordPress content: The training team is looking for more opportunities to promote the Learn WordPress platform. The proposal also provides a couple of examples that can help achieve the goal.
• Proposal: New Contributor Guide Program: The proposal seeks to team up experienced training team members with new team members and they will act as guides and regularly check in with the new members as they make their first contributions to the team.
• WordPress.com makes monetization features available for free: Now WordPress.com users on the free plan can also avail the monetization features without opting for a paid tier. The only limit is that you’ll need to be in a country where Stripe payments are currently supported.
• New on Gravatar: Collect payments on the go!: Gravatar has launched new payment features and users can add verified payment links for PayPal, Venmo, and Patreon and even share their cryptocurrency wallet addresses.
• WordPress pattern directory updated to show curated patterns by default: The latest update to the pattern directory resulted in an overhaul to the homepage as it now displays the curated patterns by default.
• Attention WordPress event organizers: This important workshop on July 20, 2023 is for you!: The community team has added one more #WPDiversity workshop and it will be a 2.5-hour interactive watch party on how to create welcoming and diverse WordPress meetups and WordCamps for your WordPress community.
• Reusable blocks renamed to patterns with synced and non-synced options: Reusable blocks have now been renamed to patterns, with the option to be synced, which offers the same functionality as the former reusable blocks where all instances can be updated at once.

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

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

StylemixThemes addresses authentication bypass vulnerability in BookIt WordPress plugin

The vulnerability allows an attacker to gain access to any account on the site, including the administrator account, if the attacker knows their email address. Users are advised to update to the latest version.

• WordPress Vulnerability Report – June 21, 2023: Weekly vulnerability report from ithemes
• Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (June 12, 2023 to June 18, 2023): Last week 60 vulnerabilities were disclosed in 52 WordPress Plugins.
• Millions of GitHub repos likely vulnerable to RepoJacking, researchers say: The warning comes from AquaSec’s security team, ‘Nautilus,’ who analyzed a sample of 1.25 million GitHub repositories and found that about 2.95% of them to be vulnerable to RepoJacking.
• Massive leak of ChatGPT credentials: Over 100,000 accounts affected: Info stealers such as Raccoon, Vidar, and RedLine are largely responsible for these breaches. Users are advised to create a strong password and enable two-factor authentication.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

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

Aster Vlogger theme

A modern and versatile theme specifically designed for vloggers, video bloggers, and content creators.

• Flat blocks theme: A modern responsive flat style theme with numerous block patterns, alternate layouts, and color schemes.
• NewsHit theme: A feature-rich WordPress blog theme that is perfect for creating news, magazine, and publishing websites.
• WPGraphQL BuddyPress plugin: A free and open-source extension for the WPGraphQL plugin, bringing the power of GraphQL to BuddyPress.
• Interactive code block plugin: The plugin enables running PHP code directly in the browser thanks to WordPress Playground.
• Pressidium cookie consent plugin: The plugin makes it easy to add a stylish, customizable cookie consent banner to your website and conditionally load third-party scripts (analytics, performance, targeting, etc).

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from WordPress Community

Introducing Pressable hosting extension for MainWP

Pressable and MainWP recently introduced their all-new extension, the “Pressable Extension for MainWP”. The Extension enables users to perform essential Pressable-hosting tasks, including site creation, deletion, staging, backup management, and more, directly from the MainWP Dashboard.

• Liquid Web introduced next-gen VPS hosting: It is backed by powerful blade servers with AMD processors, blazing-fast SSDs, and a faster 10GB network. You get full management with Control Panel, DDoS Protection, and 50GB Acronis Cyber Backups included with every plan.
• SupportAgent.ai -ChatGPT for HelpScout launched: SupportAgent is an all-new AI-powered customer service agent for HelpScout. Once the user connects their HelpScout account, the service will begin drafting replies for all newly received conversations.
• End of life announcement and changes to Drupal 7 support: Drupal 7 will reach its end of life on January 5, 2025.
• Introducing Rix Chat: Hashnode announces rix.chat, an AI search engine for developers that’s fast, truthful, and accurate. With 3 powerful modes – web search, quick answers, and code writer – it’s about to change how users learn new concepts.
• Cristian Raiber, the CEO of WP Chill has announced that they have decided to stop supporting their plugins on the WordPress.org free forums: In a Twitter thread Cristian Raiber addressed the reason behind such a decision is the negative experience they have faced which includes being called names accused of “stealing,” threatened, and so on.
• Httpstatus.io: Easily check status codes, response headers, and redirect chains.
• Cloudflare snippets is now available in alpha: The snippets will allow customers to migrate their existing workloads to Cloudflare and in the coming weeks Cloudflare will be opening access to the waiting list.

🔖INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

• 18 Free plugins to help troubleshoot and debug WordPress: From Digging Into WordPress
• Navigating the block editor handbook: From WordPress Developer Blog
• How to use location-specific authority content for SEO: From Search Engine Land
• How to manage crawl depth for better SEO performance: From Search Engine Land
• Angela Jin on how and why WordCamps might change in the future: From WP Tavern Jukebox
• Reasons to change your web design workflow: From Speckyboy
• 10 Best tools to check a website for malware & viruses: From Jetpack
• Is WordPress secure? How reliable and safe is the platform?: From Jetpack
• 23 Amazing WordPress stats for 2023: From ithemes
• What is a WordPress phishing attack?: From ithemes
• 10 Ecommerce Best Practices for 2023: From Iconic
• Remote code execution backdoor uses unicode obfuscation & non-standard file extensions: From Sucuri
• What is appearance tools in theme.json?: From Gutenberg Market
• There is no “WordPress Dev”: From Felipe Elia
• Is your web agency about to go the same way as the typesetters?: From Pootlepress
• Behind the curtains of Wikipedia redesign: From Smashing Magazine
• Empowered and unleashed: Lessons for women over 40 who crave more in business: From Kim Doyal
• Benefits and best practices of sharding and partitioning in database management: From Taranjit Kaur

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

• How to make a header menu with a centered logo in WordPress with Oxygen: From Oxygen
• How to carry out complex Git merge tasks: From Kinsta
• Advanced Git: Power commands beyond the basics: From Kinsta
• How to host your WordPress website locally in 2023: From Elegant Themes
• Ultimate WordPress speed optimization guide – Revamp your site’s performance: From RankMath
• WooCommerce security best practices guide: From Sucuri
• The style book: a one-stop shop for styling block themes: From WordPress Developer Blog
• Advanced multisite management: From Learn WordPress
• How to use headings for accessibility and SEO: From Learn WordPress
• Using the block editor: Tips and shortcuts for efficiency: From Learn WordPress
• The WordPress database: From WordPress TV

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

• WordCamp Iloilo on July 8, 2023: Call for sponsors is now open.
• WordCamp Bengaluru on July 29, 2023: Call for speakers and sponsors is now open.
• WordCamp Kampala on August 5-6, 2023: Tickets are out.
• The WordPress Community Summit on August 22-23, 2023: 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.
• WordCamp Kathmandu on September 8-9, 2023: Call for sponsors is now open.
• WordCamp Masaka on October 6-7, 2023: Tickets are available now.

🎁 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

• 50% discount on yearly and lifetime plans on Variable Inspector Pro
• Up to 50% off on plugins & PHP scripts at CodeCanyon
• 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
• Up to 75% off hosting plans at HostPapa
• 50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
• 55% off for Annual Hosting plans at Nexcess
• 85% 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 
• Upto 95% off for PitchGround products 
• Upto 65% off WordPress Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting
• 73% off hosting plans at SiteGround
• 60% off at Hostgator India
• Up to 85% off on VPS plans at Liquid Web (Coupon Code – SUMMER85VPS)
• 50% off on Managed Dedicated Server Hosting at Liquid Web

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