Hi!

Elementor a popular page builder has been selected as the CMS of the year by W3Techs. This in turn led the community to ask how a page builder can be considered as a CMS.

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

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Team WP-CONTENT.CO

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

Gutenberg 17.4 released

The latest version includes improvements to style revisions, improved controls for background images, and more.

• 2023: Year in review of WordPress Developer Blog: The post provides a quick overview of all the achievements of the WordPress Developer Blog in its first year.
• Reminder: 2023 Annual Meetup Survey: A reminder about the ongoing annual meetup survey with the closure date on Jan 14, 2024.
• Design Share: Dec 1-Dec 29: The design team has shared an update on a few projects they have worked on over the past few weeks.
• Google has started phasing out third-party cookies: A new feature called Tracking Protection, which restricts third-party cookies by default, began rolling out to 1% of Chrome users globally on January 4, 2024. At the same time, Google is allowing select sites to delay the phase-out of third-party cookies.
• OpenAI: New York Times lawsuit based on misuse of ChatGPT: OpenAI claims that The New York Times misused ChatGPT with adversarial attacks in order to manufacture a basis for lawsuit.
• Google says search result snippets primarily come from page content, not other sources: Google has clarified that the snippets it presents within the Google Search results primarily come from the content on the page and not from structured data or your meta descriptions.

🗣️ TALK OF THE TOWN

• Elementor has been selected as the CMS of the year: Elementor a popular page builder has been selected by W3Techs as the CMS of the year. The WordPress community was shocked and voiced the fact that it is a page builder and not a CMS. Joost de Valk called out this mistake as to how a page builder can be considered a CMS.

🚨 WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

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

CWordfence Intelligence weekly WordPress vulnerability report (December 18, 2023 to December 31, 2023)

There were 263 vulnerabilities disclosed in 217 plugins and 3 themes.

• WordPress Google fonts plugin vulnerability affects up to +300,000 sites: The vulnerability that allowed unauthenticated attackers to delete directories and stage cross site scripting attacks was patched recently.
• Complianz WordPress GDPR compliance plugin vulnerability: The plugin recently patched a stored XSS vulnerability that could allow an attacker to upload malicious scripts for launching attacks against site visitors.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

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

Suku theme

 A minimal block theme.

• Sharkpulse theme: A theme with nine style variations.
• Simppple theme: A multipurpose theme.
• Single post query loop selector plugin: The plugin introduces a query loop block variation that allows users to search and select a single post.
• InstaView for WooCommerce plugin: The plugin allows customers to get an instant overview of the WooCommerce products

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

WordPress Challenges is now live

Igor Benić via X has announced that the first challenge is now live and is about block development.

• WordPress: Introduction to custom block building: Nyasha Green published a new course on the Linked Learning Network which involves a total of five chapters that cover how to create custom blocks in detail.
• The PHP foundation team update 2024: For 2024 four new team members are joining as part-time team members of the foundation. They are David Carlier, James Titcumb, Saki Takamachi, and Shivam Mathur.
• InVision, a UX trailblazer, is shutting down in the era of Figma: UX design company InVision has announced plans to discontinue its design collaboration services at the end of 2024.
• Fountn will be moved to WordPress: Ozan Öztaskiran has confirmed via X that Fountn will soon be moved to WordPress.
• Query Monitor WordPress snippets: Edu Wass has released his first VSCode extension which provides useful snippets for debugging with the Query Monitor plugin in WordPress development.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

• When free becomes unsustainable: From Somebody’s Hero
• WordPress needs more dev-rel: From Joost de Valk
• Writing about WordPress in the age of AI: Tom McFarlin
• Plugins: When it restarted: From Half-Elf on Tech
• Year 2023 – A year of learning and exploring: From KafleG
• Audience growth: Unlocking more customers for your WordPress product: From WP Product Talk
• Getting started with web performance: From HTMLHell
• The good and the bad of open source WordPress: From HeroPress
• Build it with them: From Dave Martin
• 2023 Year in review: From Rich Tabor
• A look ahead at WordPress in 2024: From WordPress Briefing
• Preserving private Slack history: notes for my future self: From Jonathan Desrosiers
• Discover the Best Block Slider Plugins for WordPress: From Gutenberg Hub
• WordPress as a game development platform: From Jonathan Bossenger
• 3 Predictions for WordPress in 2024: From The WP Minute
• The grumpy designer’s guide to 2024: From Speckyboy
• How to thrive in an AI world, tips for life’s darkest hours, & the art of sabbaticals: From Tim Ferriss
• 6 essential tips to save time in SEO: From Yoast
• AI Content Detection: Bard vs ChatGPT vs Claude: From Search Engine Journal
• The Top 28 WordPress security best practices & tips: From Jetpack

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

• How to change the default WordPress login URL?: From Patchstack
• Building a terms list block for WordPress: From Matt Cohen
• Identifying and registering anonymous functions in WordPress: From Tom McFarlin
• Part 1: Creating a WordPress options page using React and Gutenberg: From Daniel Post
• What is Bun? An all-in-one runtime taking on Node.js: From Kinsta
• An introduction to nested blocks using innerblocks: From DLX Plugins
• Using Npm scripts as a build tool: From Delicious Brains
• How to fix ‘upload: failed to write file to disk’ error?: From RankMath

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

• Kolkata CareerCamp 2024: The event will take place on 6th January, Saturday, 2024.
• NextGen Jakarta 2024: The event will take place on 27 January 2024. The call for volunteers is now open.
• WordCamp Asia on March 7-9, 2024: The third batch of tickets was released and are still available. The sixth round of the speakers list has been published. WordCamp Asia is also searching for its 2025 location.
• WordCamp Europe on 13-15 June 2024: The call for speakers and sponsors is live.

🎁 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

• 40% off for 4 months on all hosting plans + 40 free migrations at Cloudways  (Coupon Code – BFCM4040)
• 25% off on Quiz and Survey Master (Coupon Code – CNY2024)
• 25% off on Responsive Menu (Coupon Code – CNY2024)
• 53% off for NordLocker
• 35% off for HappyAddons
• 50% off for FluentBooking‘s Early Bird Lifetime License Deal
• 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 77% off hosting plans at HostPapa
• 50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
• Upto 55% off hosting plans at Nexcess
• 86% off at AtlasVPN
• 40% off for Fluent Forms plugin
• 50% off at Formidable Forms
• 40% off for FluentCRM plugin
• 60% off for WP Social Ninja plugin 
• Upto 95% off for PitchGround products 
• Upto 75% off WordPress Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting
• 77% off hosting plans at SiteGround
• 60% off at Hostgator India (Coupon Code- SUNSHINE)
• Up to 74% off at Liquid Web
• 52% off on Managed Dedicated Server Hosting at Liquid Web

Latest from WP-CONTENT.CO

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