As we’re closing in on what for many site owners is the busiest period of the year with Black Friday, we’re also closing in on the release of WordPress 6.7
And, now would be a good moment to make sure you’re reading up on how to make the best use of your new and improved CMS tool! Test RC1, and learn what’s new right after checking out our sponsor Omnisend:
Email & SMS marketing automation: Omnisend offers a robust set of marketing automation tools for online merchants, including cart abandonment, product recommendations, automatic branding, product reviews, and more.
Get in front of dedicated WordPress friends and check out my sponsoring options and reach out to me if you think we can be a good fit!
Let’s get to the news of this 134th edition of Within WordPress. Hope you enjoy it!
🗞️ Within WordPress News
As mentioned, WordPress 6.7 is coming up, and as with any new major WordPress release, there’s going to be tons of new and improved stuff. So, let’s talk about it.
- WordPress 6.7 includes a significant improvement for how sizes for responsive images are calculated for lazy loaded images. Available for testing now in the RC.
- 6.7 Sees a lot of internationalization improvements, mostly on how to avoid loading translations too early.
- Block Bindings are now improving the Editor Experience a lot more in 6.7. Have a look at this extensive article explaining all the possibilities now.
- There as brand new Plugin Template Registration API in WordPress 6.7. This will allow you to serve up templates via a plugin easily, for instance.
- Kinsta did a developer’s overview of Twenty Twenty-Five, the next default WordPress theme that ships with 6.7
- And lastly, a whole bunch of miscellaneous Block Editor Changes are listed here to appear in WordPress 6.7.
Here’s other WordPress news I saw happening this past week:
- In a previous newsletter I highlighted Felix Arntz‘ AI Services plugin. Since he released that plugin, he’s published a tutorial on how to use it in the context of writing a WordPress plugin to generate image alt text.
I’m a strong proponent of seeing these types solution plugins. I would even go as far and say these sort of plugins should really be featured/canonical plugins. Set a standard, of sorts.
- Did you know you can conditionally unregister patterns? This is a very unusual situation, but It’s great to have so many choices and features.
Lovely little snippet shared by Justin Tadlock over on the WordPress Developer site.
- Progress Planner, a new solution built by Joost and Marieke’s Emilia Projects has been fully launched recently. It’s a very nifty solution helps you do instead of just plan your actions related to regular updates, content creation, and maintenance. Check it out!
Really cool product and end goal. I’m a fan.
- Brian Coords did a great video about how to add CSS and JS to any block in WordPress. Something Fränk Klein wrote about as well.
- Here’s a cool browser extension for you: WP Inspector. It allows you to quickly access to WordPress site information and links to edit content, access admin and relevant REST API endpoints. Neato.
- My friends at NitroPack are organizing a wonderful webinar with my friend Jono Alderson (yes, I know, I have a lot of friends 😅). The webinar is about what you should and shouldn’t do in SEO. They dissect the latest trends, share what works (and what doesn’t), and offer techniques to boost your rankings and bottom line. It’s set for next week the 30th, and it’s free!
🚀 Performance & Security
- Patchstack talks about the security implications of WordPress repository access restrictions and plugin closures.
- The team behind Chrome released a video on how to improve your website’s INP to create smoother user experiences in your web applications. This video explores how you can use data from new APIs for measuring and optimizing responsiveness.
🔆 Within WordPress Highlight
My friend Calvin Alkan (you may have seen my podcasts with him) built a super cool plugin that could be referenced to as WordPress’ Command Palette on Steroids. It’s faster, more usable, and as Joost said, once you’ve used it, you want it be actived on all your WordPress sites. It’s that addicting. I’m tempted to say, this is what the core functionality should have been.
Calvin calls is CommandUI and you can sign up for its launch release.
BTW, if you’re wondering, didn’t we have Turbo Admin for exactly that functionality? You’re kinda right, but there are differences, as its developer Ross Wintle points out in his blog post.
💡 Interesting Finds
- My buddy Bjørn shared an alternative to Postman. It’s called Bruno and it is a Fast and Git-Friendly Opensource API client, aimed at revolutionizing the status quo represented by Postman, Insomnia and similar tools out there.
I’ve been using Postman since, like, forever, so I love to see innovation in this area!
- I stumbled across a curated collection of A/B test results from best-in-class apps. Super sweet.
- I’m still a big fan of YOURLS when it comes to owning and using your own short URL solution, but this week I found Sink as well. It’s a simple and fast link Shortener with Analytics, and it runs 100% run Cloudflare.
Definitely going to try that for the next time I need to install a new URL shortener.
🔎 Scanfully Updates
Your website is more than just your frontpage, right? We think so! This is why we’ll be adding Priority Pages to our Performance monitoring. For instance, add your WooCommerce pages, your landing pages, you know, your Priority Pages to your Scanfully sites and we’ll check them as well!
Coming to your Scanfully 🔜, but you can already sign up!
🎁 Bonus
🎙️ The Within WordPress podcast’s next episode is with Mihail Stoichev. Formerly of NitroPack. And we talk a great deal about how NitroPack came to be, including the sale to WP Engine as well as what’s next for Mihail.
This episode is packed with entrepreneurial insights, strategic planning tips, and the continual push for innovation and improvement within the WordPress ecosystem.
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