#185- Jamie Marsland To Head WordPress YouTube, John Blackbourn Receives Record Bounty

Issue #185 | August 27, 2024 | Reading time: 13 mins

Hello!

It was an exciting week for WordPress. Jamie Marsland is joining Automattic to head WordPress.org YouTube channel. It’s raining bounties for security researchers and hosting companies are on an overdrive.

On a personal note, our remote team had a fantastic time last week, getting together with our families!

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

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📰 WORDPRESS & AROUND

All the updates around WordPress and its closely related technologies

Jamie Marsland to lead WordPress.org’s YouTube strategy

Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that Jamie Marsland will oversee the WordPress YouTube channel. The founder of Pootlepress is famous for his WordPress Speed Build Challenge. He shared that he will continue to maintain his plugins and YouTube channel and will restart the WordPress Speed Build Challenge next month.

He shared more details in WPTavern: “As for my own situation, new sponsorship deals have been stopped for my channel, although I do have a few pre-signed agreements that I need to honour. I will not be promoting my own plugins or developing new ones going forward. It’s possible I will sell my plugin business at some point, but in the meantime it’s important to continue to maintain plugins for existing customers.”

The Test jQuery Updates plugin now includes jQuery 4.0.0-beta.2 and jQuery Migrate 3.5.2.: WordPress plans to update to jQuery 4.0 in version 6.8, with early testing encouraged to identify potential issues and provide feedback.
Community Team retiring CrowdSignal for post-event attendee surveys: They decided to move away from CrowdSignal primarily to address the need for a multilingual solution, ensuring that all attendees worldwide can choose the language in which they complete the survey. They are replacing it with Jotform – it’s user-friendly, allows easy addition of collaborators, facilitates sharing results while maintaining confidentiality, and includes built-in accessibility checks.
Tickets open for State of the Word 2024: This year, State of the Word will broadcast live from Tokyo Node Hall, in Tokyo, Japan. Request a ticket to be one of the 300 members attending in person. This event will be live-streamed to WordPress enthusiasts and newcomers around the globe via the WordPress YouTube channel.
WooCommerce seeking feedback on a new feature – Woo Blueprint: It’s a tool for exporting and importing WooCommerce settings. Please leave your feedback and complete the survey to help them decide whether to officially integrate it as a feature.
Google confirms AI Overviews affected by core updates: In a recent LinkedIn exchange, Google’s Senior Search Analyst John Mueller confirmed that core algorithm updates impact the search engine’s AI-powered overviews. He also offered a surprising explanation about the ranking impact of title tags.
Google to replace classic Merchant Center with Merchant Center Next by September: This mandatory upgrade affects all retailers using Google’s platform for product listings. The new version will introduce AI tools and unified management for online and local listings.

🚨WEB SECURITY & VULNERABILITIES

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

Critical privilege escalation in LiteSpeed Cache plugin affecting 5+ million sites

John Blackbourn, a member of the Patchstack Alliance community, reported the vulnerability and was awarded $14,400, marking the highest bounty ever given in WordPress bug bounty history.

Unique Remote Code Execution Vulnerability patched in WPML WordPress plugin: This vulnerability allows authenticated threat actors with contributor-level permissions or higher to execute malicious code on the server. The vulnerability has been addressed in version 4.6.13 of the plugin.
Wordfence Intelligence Weekly WordPress Vulnerability Report (August 12, 2024 to August 18, 2024): There were 161 vulnerabilities disclosed in 126 WordPress Plugins and 9 WordPress Themes
WordPress Vulnerability Report — August 21, 2024: Weekly report from SolidWP

🔌 NEW PLUGINS & THEMES

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

Partygurl theme

A block theme from Automattic that embodies a bold and rebellious aesthetic, inspired by edgy, chaotic fun and the unapologetic “brat” energy popularized by cultural trends.

Careers theme: Block theme for Careers websites, recruitment agencies, hiring/people departments.
Business Accountant theme: A theme specifically designed for accounting firms, freelancers, and professionals in the financial industry.
UserCheck plugin: UserCheck prevents disposable or throwaway email addresses from registering or commenting on your site.
Duplicate Page Post plugin: It allows users to copy or duplicate a post or page with a single click.

👥 COMMUNITY NEWS

Updates and News from the WordPress Community

WordCamp Asia Speaker application deadline extended to September 8, 2024

This extension aims to give more WordPress enthusiasts the opportunity to apply for the prestigious event. The Organizing Team also announced the return of the “Invited Speakers Program”.

Liquid Web introduced Bare Metal Server Hosting: Bare metal hosting is designed for self-managed environments and for a limited time, they are offering 50% off your first month of any bare metal server or select bare metal cloud hosting.
WPMU DEV introduced annual hosting plans: With this Annual Hosting Plan, you’ll get a free .com domain, and a free webmail account.
New hosting plan from InMotion Hosting – Extreme: Prized at $249.99/mo (annually), this plan provides customers with additional resources, including 2 × 4TB NVMe storage and 32 dedicated IPs.
Elementor launched Platinum Support: This premium service priced at $99 per month, is for users who need rapid responses via WhatsApp and live chat.
Gravity Connect from Gravity Wiz: A new product suite focused on integrating Gravity Forms with top-shelf services. Avail launch discount up to 40% for a limited time with coupon code GCLAUNCH.
Gravity Forms released MailerLite Add-On: With the Gravity Forms MailerLite Add-On, you can automatically send form submission data directly to your MailerLite account.
‘What just happened?’ – A new podcast: A new quarterly podcast with Rae Morey of The Repository newsletter and Nathan Wrigley of WP Builds. The first episode is out.
WooCommerce 9.2.2 released: It reversed the changes that caused unexpected conflicts with the WooCommerce iOS app and third-party plugins.
WPBakery 7.9 released: The update includes a brand-new color picker with color presets, the ability to copy AI content anywhere, quick access to the most used elements, and more.
Astra 4.8 released: It comes with Style Guide – a unique dashboard that provides a single place to adjust the style of your template.
Perishable Press celebrated 20 years on the World Wide Web: Jeff Starr shared, “Since its inception, Perishable Press strives to provide a clean, simple, easy-to-read environment where thoughts and ideas can be shared freely and openly. I’ve built this site and kept it going as a “labor of love.”
Orderly Ape is currently seeking Sponsorship: Orderly Ape is an open-source load testing project by Review Signal / WPHostingBenchmarks to help simulate traffic in a manner that is expected (or hoped for) to see how the infrastructure responds under expected stress.
Beaver Builder revamps subscription offerings after ten years: They announced that they were lowering the price of their least expensive plan and slightly raising the price of their middle-tier plan and implementing site limits for support. The changes will be applicable only to new customers from September 10th.