While WordPress 6.5 saw it’s first, well, technically second, point release with 6.5.2 (update when you haven’t!), we also got a glimpse this week into what 6.6 will offer. I’m just, mostly, childishly excited for the inevitable 6.6.6 release we’ll see at one point. Pun definitely intended.
Lot’s to cover this week, let’s jump in and hope you enjoy it!
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🗞️ Within WordPress News
Here’s what I saw happening this past week:
- Derek Ashauer has been diligently working on Conversion Bridge, which was updated to 1.2 this past week. It’s a solution that aims to simplify WordPress conversion tracking in an easy, fast, no-code setup.
Check it out if you’re in the market for something like this.
- Justin Tadlock gave us a new iteration of “What’s new for developers” over on the WordPress Developer Blog. Must read.
- I’ll be releasing a tutorial on how to move a WordPress site to Cloudflare Pages on my YouTube channel shortly, but Cloudflare Pages saw a whole bunch of updates in these past week.
Including database integrations (with D1) 👀
- While we’re on the subject of Cloudflare, do check out what they’ve added in their Developer Week recently.
You can already do a lot with Cloudflare, but they’re most certainly dedicated themselves in making all of their services indispensable.
- Jamie Marsland called me WordPress Influencer. It’s official now. He also mentioned quite a few other friends!
- While I’m super happy with LocalWP for my local sites, I am very curious about WordPress.com‘s interpretation of a local development tool. It’s called Studio and you can sign up for early access.
- We have a full introduction into WordPress Playground. You know, the tool that allows us to run WordPress in the browser.
- On GitHub you can also find a Blueprints crash course.
There’s also a filter on the plugin repo that allows you to browse through plugins that have Playground configured to allow for a preview of the plugin 😍
- WordSesh, a virtual conference for WordPress professionals featuring hands-on workshops and incredible sessions is returning May 7 – 9, 2024
- Brian Coords discussed the missing link in the existing workflow we have for Pattern Management on X. Things like version control from local to production, that sort of thing. It sparked an interesting discussion between how pain points are perceived. Definitely worth a read!
If it’s made anything clear to me, it’s that we’re forced to work with a broken system, currently. There’s still so much we have to fix in Project Gutenberg for us to end up with a proper development workflows that cover all the scenarios as they are discussed in that thread.
I am, however, still very bullish on where we’re going.
- Matt Medeiros debated WordPress in 2024 with Mark Zymanksi on his podcast. Matt, in this discussion, gives a comprehensive overview of what makes WordPress (the open source software) unique on the internet.
- Listen, did you know Gravity SMTP integrates beautifully with popular email providers, including SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, and Brevo? As well as offer support for custom SMTP and API-based services? Well, now you do!
- Ronald Huereca‘s Pattern Manager is maturing ever so nicely. To the point that I think this should be in Core. Download it here.
- WordCamp Europe published their schedule! Looks like a pretty amazing line up!
- If you didn’t know, The Create Block Theme plugin is what you need when you’re building FSE themes for a great many of reasons. But one extra as of this week: It now has a theme.json inspector in the Site Editor. It’s handy for quickly inspecting.
🚀 Performance & Security
- There’s a new Colab between WordPress, BigQuery, HTTP Archive and CrUX. It aims to provide a starting point to conduct WordPress performance research in the field.
So… are you a WordPress developer working on core, plugins, or themes and interested in obtaining real-world user data on your product’s performance and usage? Look no further.
- WordPress 6.6 will drop support for PHP 7.0 and 7.1. About time!
- A whopping 43% of new WordPress vulnerabilities found last year had a high or critical severity score 😱
My favorite performance optimizing tools in WordPress:
- The best Front-end optimization plugin
- Cleaning up WordPress + script manager
- Cloud based performance optimizations
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
A nice walk-through with what Gravity SMTP can do:
Some of my favorite WordPress tools:
- The most versatile and accessible form solution for WordPress
- LocalWP, the easiest to use local dev solution
💡 Interesting Finds
- Looking for inspiration for your 404 page?
- Bored of the same old card demos for Container Queries and struggling to see where you’d use them in real projects?
- How to think about HTML responsive images.
🎁 Bonus
🎙️ with Roger Williams. We talk about Data Privacy, the WordPress Community, organizing WordCamps, where the WP Community is headed, and many more topics. Have a listen!
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