This bi-weekly serves to inform and enlighten our minds on latest happenings in the sprawling countryside we call WordPress Land.
Release News
- WordPress 4.9.1 Security and Maintenance Release dropped last week to much fanfare and merriment. In addition to fixing some security issues, it also fixes an issue with page templates which was driving me bonkers last week, so that’s cool. So update and make your site safer and stop all the baloney.
- The latest version of Gutenberg includes better support for meta-boxes including a way for plugin authors to declare incompatibility, forcing a fallback to the classic editor. This is a very solid stop-gap in the move over to Gutenberg as it will allow popular plugins (thing Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce, etc) to still run in sites that are currently using them while the plugin authors update their code to work more seamlessly with Gutenberg.
- 94.8% of WordPress’ core code now meets the WordPress Coding Standards. That other 5.2%? I wouldn’t worry about that little 5.2%.
Extending WordPress
- Tide, an XWP project, is a new service promising to improve code quality in WP plugins and themes by running automated tests and scoring. This will be releasing shortly and I personally cannot wait to give it a shot. Trust in 3rd party plugins needs to be better and this will go a long way to making that a reality.
- This brand new Trigger Happy plugin looks pretty cool. It can be used to trigger a variety of actions based on other events in WordPress.
- So the deadline for GDPR compliance is less than 180 days away and if most Americans are as ignorant as I am, this means nothing. But it should for anyone who manages or develops site that will do business in the EU. Delete Me is a new plugin offering help with one aspect of GDPR – the ability for users to remove their data, also known as the Right to be Forgotten.
- 10up’s upcoming free plugin, Distributor, promises to provide the functionality to publish, push, and pull content across a network of websites, both in a multisite environment and separate sites. I already have two projects I plan to implement this in as soon as it drops, so clearly there was a need for it. This will greatly speed up workflow on multisites that have largely similar content.
Grab Bag
- WordCamp US happened this past weekend in Nashville. It was also livestreamed, so I am sure those videos will be available online in the weeks to come. In the meantime, Torque wrote up a nice little recap of the annual State of the Word delivered by Matt Mullenweg.
“Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.” -Simon Sinek