Hi,
Hope you all had a wonderful week. We finally booked the tickets to WordCamp Asia in Thailand! We are so excited! Hope to see at least some of you there.
WordPress 6.1 will be out next week. Any guesses to the name?
Have a great week.
Bye!
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📰 WordPress & Around
- WordPress has 100 Million downloads: It is a major milestone.
- WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is available: Please help test it.
- WordPress 6.1 release day process: This post shares the release process, including the timeline and how you can help.
- WordPress.org redesign update: The main goal of this redesign project is to apply the updated design direction to all websites across wordpress.org as quickly as possible, making the sites visually consistent. The majority of the wordpress.org websites are likely to be updated by the end of Q1 2023.
- New design for HelpHub in WordPress.org: The end-user documentation or HelpHub will go through a transformation, both in the design and the site map. There will be changes for DevHub too in the future.
- WordPress Themes Directory adds Style Variation Previews: The previews now appear on block themes that include style variations.
- Multisite registration and activation pages have new HTML and CSS: In WordPress 6.1, the forms for the
wp-signup.phpandwp-activate.phppages have several enhancements to both the markup and the styles. - Gutenberg contributors explore a new browse mode for navigating the Site Editor: Although the project’s contributors have been referring to it as “browse mode,” it is essentially a redesign for the existing UI to make it more intuitive for users to navigate. It’s not ready to land in the next release of Gutenberg yet, but the concept is rapidly taking shape.
- Google spam algorithm update: Google confirms an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam is rolling out in October to search results worldwide and in all languages.
- Google shopping searches on desktop get more visual: Google is making the shopping experience on desktop more visual by adding a more comprehensive selection of product images.
- Google lets you disable targeted ads & keep personalized searches: Google’s new My Ad Center lets users disable targeted advertising without giving up helpful features like personalized search results.
- Google unveils open source project to improve software supply chain security: Google called for contributors to a new open source project named Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition (GUAC) as part of its efforts to improve software supply chain security.
- LinkedIn adds automatic captions to videos: LinkedIn is adding several features geared toward making the website more inclusive to individuals with accessibility needs, including automatic captions on videos.
- Meta to sell Giphy, by order of UK competition watchdog: Meta will accept a ruling by UK watchdog company ordering it to sell Giphy, the animated GIF library.
- Uber ads are coming, and they’re already raising privacy concerns: In what they call “journey ads,” Uber is planning to start rolling out ads to its riders based on their travel history and their geographic locations.
🗣️Talk of the Town
🔥Active Installs Growth Chart
- Discussion on replacing Plugin Active Install Growth Data continues behind closed doors: Samuel Otto Wood confirmed that the active install growth charts are not coming back in their previous form and that the endpoint people were scraping before will remain disabled.
- WordPress.org is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022: The Repository isn’t giving plugins organic reach and new plugins are not breaking 100k, 500k, or 1m active installs. Freemium model no longer works as the resources and work required to market a free WordPress plugin are so significant, that unless you’re a huge business, in 2022 you get vastly better ROI from offering a paid-only plugin.
- The case for the WordPress plugin freemium model: Matt Cromwell’s answer to the above article. Just as it’s gotten harder to compete on .org, it’s gotten equally hard to compete in Google Ads or social feeds or email marketing.
🚨Web Security & Vulnerabilities
- New Clicker Android malware infects 20 million users: The malware, dubbed Clicker, was sneaked into the Google Play Store using 16 different malicious applications.
- Microsoft confirms server misconfiguration led to 65,000+ companies’ data leak: Microsoft confirmed that it inadvertently exposed information related to thousands of customers following a security lapse that left an endpoint publicly accessible over the internet sans any authentication.
- Thousands of publicly exposed API tokens could threaten software integrity: The findings come from security researchers at JFrog, and showed that Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Telegram API tokens were the most leaked tokens.
🔌 New Plugins & Themes
- Pixl theme: Pixl is a simple yet opinionated blogging theme inspired by websites of the nineties. From Automattic
- SureMembers plugin: A membership plugin from the house of SureCart.
- ClickDesigns plugin: It helps get stunning logos, boxshots, covers, reports, digital mockups, product bundles, graphics & illustrations for your webpages.
- Maintenance Work plugin: You can add a maintenance page to your website that lets visitors know your page is down for maintenance while allowing you to work on the background.
- Kit Product For Woocommerce plugin: This plugin allows to create a single kit of products using multiple products from a single/multiple categories or chosen products.
💵Investments, Acquisitions & Partnerships
- Jasper raises $125 million: The AI content platform launched in January 2021 has raised a $125 million Series A round.
- WebDevStudios took over “WP Search with Algolia” plugin: WebDevStudios has taken over the development and maintenance of the plugin.
👥 Community News
- Openverse Audio Catalog passes 800,000 files, audio support now out of Beta: Deeper integration with WordPress core is on the roadmap for Openverse files.
- Introducing Ollie: Ollie is a new resource where WordPress creators can find tutorials and tools for the block editor and full-site editing.
- Randoma11y launched: A free online tool to discover accessible color combinations.
- Relay – the next-generation caching layer for PHP: Relay is a Redis™ client like PhpRedis and Predis, except two orders of magnitude faster.
- Jetpack Social Plugin adds paid plan: It has capped social sharing at 30 shares per month for the free tier whereas previously, users could share an unlimited number of posts automatically via their connected social media accounts. The community is not impressed.
- The future of iThemes: The company is to focus on the core products that power the engine of iThemes: Security, BackupBuddy, Sync, and Training.
- The Museum of Block Art is looking for submissions using WordPress 6.1: Create art (and perhaps find some bugs) ahead of the November 1st release or create whenever inspiration strikes when the release comes to a site near you.
🔖Interesting Reads & Podcasts
- How your WordPress website can benefit from visual regression testing: From Torque
- It’s OK to fear the command line: From the MasterWP
- Dynamic WordPress: On the current state of Gutenberg: From WebTNG
- Full-Site Editing themes in WordPress; are they there yet?: From WP Mayor
- A look at WordPress auto updates statistics in 2022: From WP White Security
- Ask the right questions if you want to avoid undesirable projects: From Speckyboy
- What is structured data?: From YoastSEO
- We used to get excited about technology. What happened?: From MIT Technology Review.
- Is WFH a trap for women?: From the MasterWP
- Glam That Plugin WP Stream: From Glam That Plugin
🛠 Guide Zone – Howto’s and More
- How to install Google Tag Manager in WordPress?: From RankMath
- How to create & add a contact form to a WordPress page: From Jetpack
- WooCommerce SEO: A complete guide to ranking #1: From Elegant Themes
- How to list MySQL databases (step-by-step code tutorial): From Kinsta
- 404 vs. Soft 404 Errors: What’s the difference & how to fix both: From Search Engine Journal
📆 Save The Dates
- WordPress Documentation Team to host its first online contributor day, October 25, 2022: Attendees can join via Zoom and are not required to stay for any length of time.
- WordPress Accessibility Day on November 2-3: A free, 24-hour virtual conference focused on building accessible websites in WordPress. Registration is now open and it’s free to attend.
- WordCamp Nagpur (India) on Nov 12: WordCamp Nagpur is now accepting speaker applications.
- WordFest Live on November 18: This will be the fourth 24-hour WordFest Live, and the theme is Transformation. You can register to speak.
- WordCamp Kolkata (India) on December 17-18: It will be an in-person event. Call for speakers is out.
- WordCamp Asia 2023 on February 17-19 at IconSiam, Bangkok Thailand: Last batch of tickets was released last week.
- WordCamp Phoenix on March 24 & 25, 2023: More details awaited.
- WordCamp Europe 2023 on June 8-10, 2023: Call for organizers is out.
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