Hack Insights + Time to Learn WordPress 6.5

If you’re serious about building better WordPress sites, this is the newsletter for you.

In the week of 6.5 seeing RC1 and pretty much my entire timeline going to WordCamp Asia (and not me 😭), we also saw a lot of news. And I do mean a lot. So much so that I actually had to filter hard to not double the size of my newsletter. Well, unless that’s what you want me to do?!

Anyway, lot’s to cover in this 109th Within WordPress so let’s jump right in!

🗞️ Within WordPress News

Here’s what I saw happening this past week:

  • Jamie Marsland shared 250 seconds of the majority of changes coming to WordPress 6.5

I very much enjoyed his “this is all the wonderful stuff you can do with the Cover block” video as well. One of my favorite of his, actually.

Highly recommended. From a friend’s perspective, but also knowing the knowledge she has on the topic. Go and check it out.


  • Rafał Tomal and Chris Huffnagel (finally 😅) released their interpretation of what a perfect Site Editor compatible (FSE / Block Theme) WordPress theme looks like. It’s called Rockbase and I’ve played with it already. It is indeed, uhm, rock solid.

I got my copy and can’t wait to stack it up against Mike and Patrick’s Ollie Pro!


  • The first article over on Scanfully about one of our main features has also been published.


  • Curious about all the Woo stats? Want to know how big WooCommerce actually is? Well, yeah, there’s a page for that.

I sat down with Calvin Alkan to discuss every angle we can learn something about from the Bricks vulnerability, and subsequent hack. A little over 1500 folks have watched it, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. My favorite was from Paul, Mr. WPTuts himself. Paul said:

So yeah, if you really want to understand how sites can get hacked and what you can and cannot do about it… Or, what you must do to make the impact minimal… go watch that video.



  • I wrote an article about how we can get rid of Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. And why we should. From a performance perspective, as well as “this is just a smarter way”. With Zaraz.


Good read. And my answer is: yes, we do.


🚀 Performance & Security



  • Calvin Alkan’s research, the reason he found the Bricks (and others) vulnerability in the first place lead him to the release of Code Freeze.

A VERY interesting solution to limit anyone on/in your WordPress site with mal intent.

My favorite performance optimizing tools in WordPress:


🔆 Within WordPress Highlight

You should definitely also check out the A11y Collective’s wonderful courses on the same subject.

Some of my favorite WordPress tools:


💡 Interesting Finds


🎁 Bonus

Check out this wonderful list of miscellaneous developer changes for WordPress 6.5. Lots, and I do mean LOTS of good little changes everywhere.

Lastly, I’ll be going to CloudFest next week. Will I see you there?


That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!

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