This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress Land.
Release News
- I’ll be the first to admit I have not delved very deeply (read: at all) into the WordPress Customizer, but WP Tavern is reporting that WP 4.9 will include some feature improvements to this interface, including drafts and scheduling.
- There will be some new security features in WordPress 4.9 related to the changing of user and site admin email addresses. A confirmation email will now sent to the new email address as well as a notification email sent to the previous email address.
- I’ve always been pretty against the theme and plugin file editor in the WordPress admin for security reasons and typically disable them entirely in sites I build. But I guess a lot of people like them because it’s getting some upgrades in WP 4.9, like a new editor and protections against accidentally causing a fatal site error.
- User roles and capabilities are getting some love in 4.9 including granular control of activating and deactivating plugins and installing language files.
Extending WordPress
- WooCommerce 3.2 released and it includes some expanded functionality around coupons, the very promising addition of extension support version headers, and a slew of other minor updates and improvements.
- If you are a responsible writer and actually want it to work for you and perhaps for people to find it and read it (ie: all of the things I am not), Torque compiled a list of plugins that aid in content creation to help you achieve all of your digital content goals and aspirations.
Grab Bag
- Think you’re the fastest Word in the Press? Not if you aren’t up on your keyboard shortcut game. Torque put together a nice rundown of all the keystrokes you need to quit all that clicking.
- GoDaddy has launched a new pro-level managed WordPress hosting service that features PHP 7.1 by default, dedicated resources, staging environments, Gravity Forms license, 90 days of backups and more. This should firmly position them to compete with other managed WP hosts like WPEngine and Pagely if only they can get over the stigma of being GoDaddy.
- Camp Press is taking it’s unplugged event to Iceland and while I thing that’s really cool, they are being really shifty about the cost and never actually coming out and saying, “this will cost you $1500, not including flights.” Instead they only allow you do a payment schedule and tediously describe the process without ever just saying the total. Given that this is catered towards us nerd folk, they should probably realize we can all do math.
“Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything.” -Magnus Carlsen