Issue #182 | August 6, 2024 | Reading time: 14 mins
Hello!
WordPress.com has joined hands with Perplexity AI and this partnership will also benefit the users, as Perplexity will share a part of their advertising revenue. The Learn WordPress has undergone a visual refresh and we can also expect the latest version of WP-CLI later today.
Also, the recently discontinued Woo Express has been moved to WordPress.com as the “Commerce” plan.
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
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend and WP Job Openings
📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND
All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies
Learn WordPress has completed its revamp which is a part of the ongoing WordPress.org redesign. Beyond its fresh aesthetic, the new Learn WordPress site prioritizes learners with a revamped user experience consistent with familiar modern learning platforms. It features a new navigation menu, eye-catching thumbnails, and search filters so you can explore and discover content quickly.
- What’s new in Gutenberg 18.9: The latest version includes improvements to the Data Views, brings broader control to support more blocks, and so on.
- WP-CLI v2.11.0 releasing today: The v2.11.0 release of WP-CLI is scheduled to be published later today. This will include bug fixes, compatibility improvements, and a few command and parameter additions.
- Why WordPress 6.6.1 was flagged for trojan malware: It was a false positive from Windows Defender, regarding an “XML namespace” and marked it as a URL to downloadable files.
- Google may rely less on Hreflang, shift to auto language detection: Google hints at a potential shift to automatic language detection, which could reduce reliance on manual hreflang annotations for multilingual websites.
- Google introduces new AI tools for Performance Max campaigns: Google introduces AI tools for Performance Max, enhancing reporting, creative capabilities, and brand safety measures for advertisers across multiple campaign types.
- Google expands ‘About This Image’ to more platforms: Google expands “About this image” feature, enhances deepfake detection, aiming to combat misinformation in search results.
🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES
A collection of web security and vulnerability news and updates for the past week
There were 69 vulnerabilities disclosed in 52 plugins and 2 themes.
- Over 8,000 exploit attempts already blocked for recently patched unauthenticated arbitrary file upload vulnerability in 简数采集器 (Keydatas) WordPress plugin: This high number of exploits suggests that attackers were actively scanning for sites with unpatched versions of the plugin.
- All new Patchstack Academy launched: The academy is centered on teaching users about ethical hacking and securing their code. The focus areas will be security, vulnerability types, how to report vulnerabilities, and prevention methods.
- Patchstack Bug Bounty program upgrade: The Patchstack Bug Bounty program gets its most significant upgrade since its release in 2021. This has led to an increase in monthly competition bounties to be twice as big, and an increase in bounty for the Zeroday program as well. There’s also a special event called “Back to SQL” to find SQL Injection (SQLi) vulnerabilities. It will take place from 1 August 2024 to 31 August 2024, and the scope is to find SQLi vulnerabilities with severity not lower than 8.0 in components with 10K or more active installs with the last update not over three years old. Also, the bounty per vulnerability if CVSS 8.x is $75, CVSS 9.X is $100, and CVSS 10 is $150.
- WordPress vulnerability & patch roundup July 2024: Monthly report from Sucuri
- WordPress vulnerability report — July 31, 2024: Weekly report from SolidWP
🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES
Be one of the first ones to explore some fresh plugins and themes
- Mobile App Company theme: A theme suitable for businesses in the mobile app development industry.
- AvatarNews theme: A theme suitable for blog, news, and magazine website.
- Admin Backend Color Coded Post Notes plugin: This allows administrators to leave color-coded notes on posts and pages within the WordPress editor.
- Simple Markers Map plugin: This plugin allows you to easily add customizable maps to your posts and pages using the Gutenberg editor.
💵 INVESTMENTS, ACQUISITIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
- WordPress.com partners up with Perplexity: Perplexity, is an AI-powered answer engine, and WordPress.com is now a part of its Publishing Partners Program. This partnership enables users to earn a portion of Perplexity’s advertising revenue whenever their website is referenced in search results.
👥 COMMUNITY NEWS
Updates and News from the WordPress Community
The application for Media Partners is now open and the deadline to apply is September 10, 2024. Also, the first batch of tickets were released and sold out.
- PersonalizeWP 2.3 brings a host of improvements: The latest version brings several enhancements such as the use of URL fragment identifiers in query parameters, improvements to flexible condition matching, full support for WooCommerce cart and checkout blocks, and more.
- Introducing Divi Dash: Divi Dash is an all-new WordPress management dashboard and will be free with your Divi membership. With this dashboard, you can get an overview of all your websites, manage updates, themes and plugins, and more.
- Call for testing the Data Views in WordPress 6.6: Anne McCarthy invites users to join her in testing the new Data Views introduced in WordPress 6.6. She has created a WordPress Playground instance to stress test the feature and encourages users to provide feedback.
- The block editor in WordPress 6.6 no longer has a minimum height set: Brian Jackson on X drew everyone’s attention to this issue as it can cause large meta boxes which are used by several plugins to completely disappear on mobile or tablet views until they are collapsed.
- Woo Express was rebranded: Last week Rodolfo Melogli on X notified the community about the closure of Woo Express and now James Kemp, the Product Lead at WooCommerce has given further details regarding it. After the closure, Woo Express was rebranded to the “Commerce” plan on WordPress.com.
- Kamala Harris’s website is built with WordPress: Michelle Frechette on X pointed out that Kamala Harris’s website is also using WordPress.
- Katie Keith expressed her disappointment with the venue of WCUS2025: WordCamp US 2025 was recently announced and will take place at the same venue as WCUS 2024. Katie Keith expressed that it would have been better to choose a different venue to explore a new location.
- Justin Ferriman tweeted about the WordPress industry and pricing: “WP products are underpriced b/c there is a certain price expectation from the community…It’s a race to the bottom for businesses, value fatigue for consumers…. Freelancers are unable to charge what they really should be charging if they were outside of WP” said Just Ferriman, the founder of LearnDash which he sold in 2021.
- James LePage provided a glimpse of things coming next week: James LePage gave a demo showcasing unique data visualizations and reports on WordPress, along with popular plugins set to be released next week. He will also provide a detailed overview of these tools and their integration into products like AgentWP and CodeWP.
- Patricia BT is looking for sponsorship: A familiar face at WordCamps, Patricia is searching to be sponsored for her time contributing to the WordPress project. She has shared 4 ways to sponsor her and her projects and WordCamp journeys.
- Matt Medeiros on how long it takes to start a Wix site: Matt Medieros recently created a Wix website with the original intention of finding out how many steps will be required to reach the editing screen. Along with this, he has also highlighted several key points of the process.
- jQuery UI 1.14.0 released: This release has several changes such as reduced support for older browsers or jQuery, backward compatibility with the 1.11 API is disabled by default, aria-modal support in the dialog widget, and more.
🔖 INTERESTING READS & PODCASTS
More posts and podcasts from the WordPress Community you don’t want to miss
- Building Studio in public: Using WordPress components and Tailwind CSS in our local development app: From WordPress.com
- Welcome to the Fediverse Files: What is the Fediverse?: From WordPress.com
- How VIP mitigated the impact of Polyfill.io malware: From WordPress VIP
- WCCT2024 slides: From Jonathan Bossenger
- My July in WordPress: From Aaron Jorbin
- WordPress is thriving in Nigeria w/ Emmanuel Eluwa: From The WP Minute
- Elena Panciera & Chiara Pennetta on making the web for the deaf: From WP Tavern Jukebox
- Unleashing the power of theme.json: customizing your WordPress theme like a pro: From Kinsta
- Accessibility trends in 2024: From Yoast
- Syncing WordPress database changes between environments: How we handle merging: From Delicious Brains
🛠 GUIDE ZONE – HOWTO’S and MORE
Handpicked fresh guides from WordPress circle
- Building a card layout with a “hover reveal” effect: WordPress Developer Blog
- Registering custom aspect ratios in WordPress 6.6: From WordPress Developer Blog
- Making the most of the Font Library: From WordPress.tv
- WordPress user enumeration: How to prevent and stop: From Melapress
- How to create a classic WordPress theme: step-by-step guide: From Kinsta
📆 SAVE THE DATES
Do not miss a WordPress event ever again
- BlackPress meetup, Making the most of WCUS 2024 on Aug 26, 2024: This a free online event that will focus on the actions one should take to prepare for WCUS, mindsets to keep in mind during the event, and recommendations for when it’s all said and done.
- WordCamp US on 17-20 September 2024: The tickets are now available.
- WordCamp Netherlands on 27-28 September 2024: The call for speakers is now open.
- WordPress Agency Summit 2024 on September 27, 2024: The call for speakers is now open.
- WordCamp Nagpur on September 28, 2024: The call for sponsors is now open.
- WordPress Accessibility Day on Oct 9-10, 2024: The call for speakers and volunteers is now open.
- Rome Core Days on November 8-9, 2024: This will be a two-day event dedicated to WordPress Core developers with round tables, open discussions, and contribution rooms.
- WordCamp Romania on November 14-15, 2024: The event is in the early planning stages.
- WordCamp Asia on February 20-22, 2025: The venue will be the Philippine International Convention Center, Manila, Philippines. The call for speakers is now open.
- WordCamp Europe on 5-7 June 2025: The call for organizers is now open.
- WordCamp US 2025 on August 26-29, 2025: The event is in the early planning stages.
🎁 WORDPRESS DEALS OF THE WEEK
Again, these are the best deals of the week, handpicked by yours!
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- 50% off for Advanced Giftcards for WooCommerce plugin
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Team WP-CONTENT.CO
Issue #182 | August 6, 2024 | Reading time: 14 mins
This weekly newsletter is kindly sponsored by Omnisend and WP Job Openings
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