Hello!

WordPress 6.5 beta 2 has been released with a lot of fixes. We can expect beta 3 later today and we are just a month away from the release of WordPress 6.5. The latest update about WordPress 6.5 is that it will come with AVIF support.

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

Community Sponsor

Omnisend

Boost your sales with email & SMS—without breaking the bank
Check it out  →

WP Job Openings – Easy-peasy Recruitment Plugin.
Create a career page and start recruiting talents in a few minutes
Check it out  →

---

📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

WordPress 6.5 Beta 2

The beta 2 is now available for testing and beta 3 is expected later today.

• Introducing the WordPress Core Trac Sustainability Focus: The post provides more information about the creation of a Sustainability Focus on the WordPress core Trac bug tracker.
• WordPress 6.5 adds AVIF support: The upcoming first major release of 2024, WordPress 6.5 will support AVIF, a modern image format that offers significant improvements in image quality and compression over previous formats like JPEG, PNG, and even WebP.
• Font Library may end up being punted: Font Library, one of the main features of the upcoming major release could end up being punted. Peter Wilson in the Core channel on Slack has expressed his concerns and he feels that the feature is not yet ready to be shipped.
• Matt Mullenweg suggests a paid tool for checking Accessibility of WordPress.org and WordCamp sites: Matt Mullenweg suggested a paid external scanner for checking the accessibility of the WordPress.org and WordCamp sites.
• Adding WordPress to adopters of the Contributor Covenant: The post provides an update on the recent development to add WordPress to the Adopters of the Contributor Covenant list.
• Proposal: Host 3rd-party blocks in Gutenberg’s GitHub repository: Matias Ventura, Gutenberg’s Lead Architect, recently made a pitch to incorporate some 3rd-party blocks in the Gutenberg GitHub repository.
• Article complaining about being outranked on Google being outranked by Reddit: Google responds that it wants to do better with ranking smaller sites amongst larger sites, only to see that article being outranked by a larger site.
• Report: Reddit signs AI content licensing deal with Google: Google is reportedly paying Reddit $60 million per year to train its artificial intelligence models (e.g., Gemini). However, neither Reddit nor Google has officially commented on the deal, which was reportedly signed “earlier this year” and comes as Reddit heads toward an initial public offering (IPO).
• Google investigating Local Services Ads bug: Google Ads is working on a fix to prevent businesses from appearing in search results for their competitors’ names.
• Google launches Gemini Business & Enterprise for Workspace users: Google launches AI assistant Gemini for Workspace, available in 2 pricing tiers for business and enterprise.

🚨 WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

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

SQL Injection vulnerability patched in RSS Aggregator by Feedzy WordPress plugin

The vulnerability was recently patched and all users are to update to the latest version immediately.

• WordPress vulnerability report — February 21, 2024: Weekly vulnerability report from SolidWP
• Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (February 12, 2024 to February 18, 2024): There were 76 vulnerabilities disclosed in 62 plugins and 1 theme.

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

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

Creativity Hub theme

 A theme suitable for bloggers, writers, and content creators.

• Biralo theme: A blog theme with four style variations.
• Home Services Blocks theme: A theme designed for home service professionals.
• AnalyticsWP plugin: An all-new analytics plugin for WordPress.
• Woo AI plugin: A WooCommerce plugin that utilizes the power of artificial intelligence to enhance your eCommerce experience.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

Introducing QuickWP

Hardeep Asrani on X drew the community’s attention to the all-new QuickWP which allows users to create an AI-generated theme for Gutenberg in minutes.

• Introducing JS essentials for WP devs: This is a new mini-course from Aurooba Ahmed which consists of 15 lessons. The first lesson drops on March 4, 2024, and interested members need to sign up for the course.
• Our evolving roles & team at Post Status: Cory Miller has announced that he will be stepping back from the day-to-day operations, and Michelle Frechette will be stepping up as the new executive director. Also, Mike Klanac has joined Post Status officially as a partner and advisor.
• 8G Firewall is ready for use on production sites: Jeff Starr has announced via X, that the 8G firewall after a year of beta testing is ready for use on production sites.
• WordPress Photo Directory reaches a new milestone: The directory now has over 15000 photos. At this pace, the next milestone of 20k photos is pretty close.
• WooCommerce Blocks is being archived on GitHub and WordPress.org: As a result of the merger of WooCommerce Blocks into the WooCommerce mono repo, the WooCommerce Blocks plugin on WordPress.org will be archived and no longer available for download through the plugin repository.  Along with this, the WooCommerce Blocks GitHub repo will be archived. No further development will take place in this repository.
• Hafiz Usama Tahir receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community: Hafiz Usama Tahir a member of the WordPress Community Team is the latest recipient of the Yoast Care fund.

🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS

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

• On the Reddit IPO: From Matt Mullenweg
• Piracy and the GPL: From Half-Elf on Tech
• Changes in the plugin business in the last 15 years: From Post Status
• What I learned by organizing the first Bogotá Photo Walk event: From Jos Velasco
• 3 Genius business ideas we’re ‘borrowing’ from Syed Balkhi: From My First Million
• Clearing up the confusion surrounding block themes: From The WP Minute
• Block Bindings API & ACF preview: From Brian Coords
• Just one of us after all? A closer look at Taylor Swift‘s new website: From VONEFF.de
• How WordPress has changed my life – Gtarafdar: From HeroPress
• Advanced SEO strategies for headless WordPress sites: From Kinsta
• No Joke: Google is paying Reddit for more content, more often: From Search Engine Roundtable
• WordPress Hacked: What to do when your site is compromised: From Sucuri
• Maggie Cabrera: Turning a WordPress passion into a professional pathway: From Hostinger
• How Google is killing independent sites like ours: From HouseFresh
• How to write an SEO-friendly introduction for a blog post: From Yoast
• What is a Rainbow Table & how to prevent these attacks: From Jetpack
• Press Release: Future software should be memory safe: From The White House
• WordPress Photo Festival 2024, A five part retrospective, Part 1, Organizers: From WP Tavern
• Why Google seems to favor big brands & low-quality content: From Search Engine Journal
• Google Gemini failure offers lessons for SEO: From Search Engine Journal

🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE

Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle

• Introducing Block Bindings, part 1: connecting custom fields: From WordPress Developer Blog
• Using Xdebug to verify a core bug: From WordPress TV
• How to change or reset a WordPress Password: 6 Methods: From Melapress
• How to create custom post type in WordPress: From RankMath
• How to create a scroll snap effect for a series of WordPress Gutenberg Cover blocks: From Pootlepress

📆 SAVE THE DATES

Do not miss a WordPress event ever again

• WordCamp Asia on March 7-9, 2024: The organizers are on the lookout for passionate individuals to lead the Community Team Table during the Contributor Day. The final batch of tickets will be released on Feb 21.
• WPEngine Decode 2024: The registrations are now open and the event will take place on March 19 in the U.S. and March 21 in EMEA.
• WordCamp Europe on 13-15 June 2024: The call for speakers, volunteers and sponsors is live. The call for photographers is now open.
• WordCamp Canada on July 11-13, 2024: The call for speakers, volunteers, and 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

• 30% off for 3 months + $1000 migration package for free on Email marketing for WooCommerce by Omnisend (Coupon Code- ONLYWOO)
• 40% off for 4 months on all hosting plans + 40 free migrations at Cloudways  (Coupon Code – BFCM4040)
• 53% off for NordLocker
• 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
• 20% 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 75% off WordPress Hosting plans at InMotion Hosting
• 83% 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

---

Team WP-CONTENT.CO

Built with Newsletter Glue.