So yeah, I skipped a week there, didn’t I? You have to trust me, but I really tried to make last week’s newsletter happen while at WordCamp Europe, but I was just too busy connecting with friends and making new connections to properly sit down.
Also quite busy because I was also busy finalizing Scanfully’s launch. Because, yes, that finally happened!
So… you’ll have to excuse me for this extra long edition of Within WordPress 😅.
Hope you enjoy it!
🗞️ Within WordPress News
WordPress 6.6 will bring the following features:
- The theme.json will upgrade to version 3. This is a breaking change so you will need to update your theme with thought. One of the things is adds is default font sizes, as well as standardize Typography and Spacing. Love this seemingly small features, but this will improve theme interoperability tremendously.
- Synced Patterns overrides will finally be available. Truly a game changer.
- Options API improvements will allow you to disable autoload for large options 😍
- WordPress 6.6 unified the different slots and extensibility APIs between the post and site editors.
- Grid layout type is finally here. Learn all about what’s available now.
WordCamp Europe
- Whenever Matt’s on stage at any major WordCamp, there will be interesting takes and bits of information. My buddy James did a great recap which he titled: 11 Reasons Why The Future Of WordPress Is Bright.
- Sam Alderson was inspired by WCEU to write about why we need need to elevate the WordPress Photo Directory’s standards and purpose.
- Katie Keith published her WCEU recap. Very very good read.
- As did Volva Feldman from Freemius.
- and Maarten Belmans from Studio Wombat.
All three are excellent reads that give you a very solid idea of what it’s like to speak, sponsor and be at such a large WordCamp.
- Matt Cromwell and Katie Keith co-presented at WCEU on some of the most practical tips and insights we’ve got from product leaders in our over 65+ conversations through WP Product Talk. Here’s a thread of the insights on X.
- WordPress got a mention in Apple’s WDCC keynote last week. That’s cool!
- The WordPress post and site editors went through a long journey of unification of UI, APIs and preferences. Learn more about the context, process and consequences in Riad Benguella’s latest blog post.
- Did you that if you’re running a WordPress Meetup, you can now host your site for free on WordPress.com?
- Gravatar has been refreshed, rebooted almost. Not only is there (finally!) a new site, there’s also a Profiles as a Service and a new REST API
- Did you know there’s a URL where you can keep track of everything happening with Gutenberg. It’s a great index for understanding what’s coming our way for the next editions of WordPress.
🚀 Performance & Security
- WordPress’ Transients API is an often overlooked tool in helping make your WordPress scale more easily. Ryan Welcher published an introduction to the Transients API for beginners that’s well worth your time if you’ve never really used that API before.
- Optimizing databases is a very strong skill to have for finding performance gains. This article helps you understand the MySQL database. Understand the structure, setup, and key functionalities, plus advanced performance tips.
- How to get a minimal SVG favicon.
- Super interesting case study from Brian Louis Ramirez on the mixed performance effects of content-visibility.
My favorite performance optimizing tools in WordPress:
- NitroPack: Cloud based performance optimizations
- Perfmatters: Clean up Scripts in WordPress
- WP Rocket: The best Front-end optimization plugin
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
As indicated in the intro, we finally launched Scanfully this week. We’ve had a short run for the Early Access crowd, but the positive response was overwhelming! So, after 48 hours of fixing little bugs here and there, we launched!
Have a look at how we can help monitor your WordPress site for health and performance metrics and what we have in store for you next!
Some of my favorite WordPress tools:
💡 Interesting Finds
- Stumbled across ProNotes. This is Apple only, but I wanted to share it with you all nonetheless. It’s an app that adds a whole bunch of cools things to Apple Notes. One of my most used apps.
- CSS Section Separator Generator. Simple and good.
That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!
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