How’s your first half of the year been? Mine’s been pretty busy, and I got a lot done. It doesn’t always feel like that, but looking back while checking my Daily Notes in Obsidian, I know I did get a lot done. Almost ready to properly pre-launch
That said, my brain still registers it as “not enough” 😅.
All this to say, let’s dive into this week’s roundup, shall we?
🗞️ Within WordPress News
Here’s what I saw happening this past week:
- I’m very happy to report we have a new Community Sponsor. Everyone, please welcome Greyd:
- Greyd, if you didn’t know, is a solution that helps manage and scale networks of sites with smart syncing of content, design elements, menus, and so much more!
Go check them out .
- Greyd, if you didn’t know, is a solution that helps manage and scale networks of sites with smart syncing of content, design elements, menus, and so much more!
- Here’s an interesting move from the Filter Agency: they’ve made their
pro version of PersonalizeWP Pro completely free. If you hadn’t seen their plugin before, it’s a super slick way to deliver unique content to the right audience, in the right place, and at the right time.
I’m quite the fan of its capabilities!
- I don’t know how much you’ve been paying attention to
Kinsta , but not only do they offer a really comprehensive solution for WordPress hosting. Lately, they’ve really been making a dent in sponsoring people in the WordPress Community to contribute back to the WordPress project. Just take a look at their Five for the Future page .
- Just FYI, but the
WooCommerce 10.0 Release is delayed to next week.
- This might seem like a niche problem to fix on, but I’ve seen clients do this. And that means I gotta share it: Bernhard Kau explains
why the Trash in WordPress isn’t as safe as you might think . Posts in the Trash can still affect menus, links, and queries, and might even resurface unexpectedly.
A good reminder to delete with intention!
- Another week, and another amazing solution to share with you. Sean Fisher just launched
REPL for WordPress , a browser-based playground powered by WordPress Playground. You can run WordPress code instantly online, and support for custom plugins, themes, and more is coming soon.
A super handy tool for rapid testing and sharing.
- My friend Taco Verdonschot, formerly of Yoast, now
Progress Planner , resurfaced this site this week: Flags Are Not Languages . It explains why using flags to represent languages is misleading and exclusionary. A smart, quick read that challenges a common UX pattern with global implications.
Now, don’t go and hate me for saying this, but this is especially important for you Americans out there to catch up on 😘.
- Oliver Sild, CEO of Patchstack, recently launched his
personal blog . He’s already got dozens of interesting articles there, so check it out regardless, but definitely read this one on how to integrate security into the development workflow .
Doing so will make a huge difference. Same as
- This is big: Patchstack found
critical malware embedded in Gravity Forms’ official plugin site . The malicious code had been quietly injecting script tags into plugin pages, likely for months.
It’s a stark reminder that even trusted sources aren’t immune and why routine audits matter.
- The
July 2025 roundup for WordPress developers includes the new editor:transformmetadata key, aPluginInstallFlowcomponent for smoother onboarding, updates to block registration, and fresh insights on the Interactivity API. But also phased plugin releases, custom social icons, Xdebug support for Playground, and so much more.
Well worth a scan if you build with or for WordPress.
- Rae Morey from The Repository wrote out
a new proposal that aims to bring phased updated to .org plugins (as mentioned in the above item on the WordPress Developer Blog update).
🚀 Performance & Security
- Didn’t think you needed a performance case study from Antarctica? Turns out you do. This piece on
engineering for slow internet is a brilliant reminder that resilience, caching, and thoughtful fallbacks aren’t edge cases—they’re the foundation of a robust web.
- Patchstack just launched
Managed VDP with report forwarding , giving plugin developers a hands-off way to handle vulnerability disclosures. Security reports get vetted, anonymized, and sent straight to your inbox. You can opt in to that and never even see a dashboard.
Very neat.
- Did you know, Cloudflare now also offers
Rules Snippets , reusable chunks of logic you can apply across multiple rules. Perfect for managing complex conditions, keeping things DRY, and simplifying rule maintenance at scale.
Think of it as an alternative to Workers. In a way.
- Chrome DevTools just made debugging CSS way nicer. In the Styles tab, you’ll now see
tooltips that break down complex CSS calculations step by step, including full variable chains.
No more guessing where that weird value came from!
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
Tim Nash is launching
- 9 modules,
- 50+ lessons,
- over 4 hours of video,
- practice labs,
- and even certification.
If you know Tim, you know it’s going to be smart, practical, and probably hilarious too.
💡 Interesting Finds
- Here’s something unexpected: Lyra built
Tic Tac NoHTML , a playable tic-tac-toe game written entirely in CSS. No HTML, no JS. A brilliant example of how far CSS can be pushed when you throw the rulebook out the window. - Patrick Brosset highlights a small but mighty CSS upgrade: the
CSS gap is now stylable . You can animate it, transition it, and even style it with custom properties. A subtle change that unlocks cleaner, more flexible layouts. - Drawing with ASCII is super complex and tedious. Well, it was tedious. ASCIIFlow is a client-side-only web-based application for drawing ASCII diagrams. You can use it at
asciiflow.com . - Here’s something super cool:
Vecto3D turns SVGs into lightweight, interactive 3D scenes with just HTML and CSS with no JavaScript or WebGL needed. A clever use of the view-transitionAPI and some geometry magic to bring flat graphics to life.
That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!
Best, Remkus
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