Issue 141

Welcome

Episode #141

Another week and some more WordPress news for you.

If you did not know we record a LIVE version of 'This Week in WordPress' which you can find in the link below. It's a fun show and little light relief in your week!

This week we have a lot of developments in Gutenberg, be that with theme compatibility or added features. WordPress Core is on the edge of an update and there's always a little light-hearted non-WordPress news at the end.

Have a great week.

This Week in WordPress

This Week in WordPress #141

Recorded on Monday 7th December. With Nathan Wrigley, Paul Lacey, Jan Koch and Bernhard Gronau.

Each week we discuss the stories (from below) which captured our attention.

If you ever want to join us live you can do that every Monday on the WP Builds LIVE page.

WordPress Core

WordPress 5.6 Release Candidate 2

"The second release candidate for WordPress 5.6 is here! WordPress 5.6 is slated for release on December 8, 2020, and we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.6 yet, now is the time!"

What’s new in Gutenberg?

"Gutenberg 9.5 has been released. The big focuses throughout this release cycle were Full Site Editing and Global styles. This release also includes many fixes and some nice new features and enhancements."

Gutenberg 9.5 Improves Site Editor and Adds New Options for Cover and Code Blocks

"Gutenberg 9.5 went live today. The development team is continuing forward with work that we will start seeing down the road in WordPress 5.7 and beyond. The big user-facing highlights for this release were the additions of a full-height alignment option for the Cover block, font-size support in the Code block, and improved previews for block patterns."

'This Week in WordPress' Sponsor

AB Split Test

Want to set up your AB Split test in record time, like a couple of minutes? Use your existing pages and test anything against anything else. Buttons, images, headers, rows... anything. The best part is that it works with Elementor, Beaver Builder and the WordPress Block editor. Check it out and get a free demo at absplittest.com

Community

How To Check WordPress Site Speed With The New GTmetrix (Featuring Lighthouse)

"GTmetrix is now powered by Lighthouse, delivering page performance test results that better reflect the user’s perception of how fast their websites are loading. Any business that wants to stay in business knows it’s essential to have a fast loading website. Websites that load quickly retain more visitors and perform better in search engines Google."

Cloudways vs Runcloud: An Honest Review

"Trying to choose between Cloudways vs RunCloud to host your WordPress site? In this post, I’m going to compare them in detail so that you can make the right decision for your needs, knowledge level, and budget."

Gutenberg Times Live Q & A: Case Study - The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Block

Omar (Yoast partner and CTO) and Willemien (Yoast blog team lead) will take us behind the scenes of the making of the Open-Source Story, a richly illustrated and interactive post about the nature of open-source from a collaborative business point of view. Omar and Willemien will share how they built it with the WordPress block editor, explain their approaches and answer attendees questions.
Dec 10 at 2:30 pm EST (19:30 UTC).

Homepage - Underrepresented In Tech

"Are you a member of an underrepresented group, working in tech? Submit your profile... We’ll ask you a series of questions that will help us index you in our database. Once your submission has been approved, you’ll be added."

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

Admin 2020 Version 2 Introduces New Lite Version, Better Plugin Compatibility, and Modular Architecture

"Six months ago, Admin 2020 captured the attention of WordPress users with its fresh approach to skinning the admin screens. Version 2 of the plugin has been completely rewritten to support a modular architecture so users can enable or disable features, or selectively enable them by user role or username."

Toolset Blocks 1.3.3 and Types 3.4.3 Bugfix Release

"This joint release of Toolset Blocks, Types, Forms, Maps, and WooCommerce Blocks fixes numerous bugs, improves performance and adds a new feature to the Container block."

Block Navigation Plugin Provides Missing Context-Based Outline for the WordPress Editor

"The goal of the plugin is to provide an alternative to the editor’s current navigation. For the most part, it excels. WordPress has set the bar so low that any improvement seems like a godsend."

What is Full Site Editing and how is it shaping a new WordPress?

"Full site editing is a new feature in WordPress that allows you to use Gutenberg blocks to create all parts of your website. You can visually design your website header, footer, archive pages, and more visually using Gutenberg editor. This is like a theme builder that you may be familiar with working in different page builders."

The Yoast and Elementor partnership: building easy and SEO-friendly websites together

"Today, we’re launching the result of a great collaboration: the Yoast SEO plugin now seamlessly integrates with the Elementor page builder! We’re really excited about this integration. It means that millions of WordPress users can now easily build a page with Elementor and optimize its content with Yoast SEO."

Block-Based Bosco, Second Full-Site Editing Theme Lands in the WordPress Directory

"Fränk Klein, a Principal Engineer at Human Made, is now the second theme developer to release a block-based theme to the WordPress theme directory. Block-Based Bosco is a recreation of his Bosco theme, which he released in 2014."

New Plugin Adds Google-Doc Style Commenting to Gutenberg Blocks

"Multidots, a development agency and WordPress VIP Agency Partner, has released a plugin that brings content collaboration to the block editor. The Google-Doc Style Gutenberg Block Commenting plugin landed on WordPress.org in October and is just starting to gain traction."

Security

WordPress Vulnerability News, November 2020

"WordPress vulnerability news is a monthly digest of highlighted vulnerable plugins for WordPress or WordPress security issues that have been published."

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

Salesforce buys Slack in a $27.7B megadeal

"Salesforce, the CRM powerhouse that recently surpassed $20 billion in annual revenue, announced today it is wading deeper into enterprise social by acquiring Slack in a $27.7 billion megadeal."

Elon Musk says SpaceX will attempt uncrewed Mars flight in two years, human landing in four to six

"Musk said that he expects humans will land on Mars in around six years, and that he’s “fairly confident” in that timeline. That’s based on the fact that Earth and Mars are in sync in terms of their relative orbits around the sun approximately every 26 months."

How I Backup Photos and Videos Every Month

"Unfortunately, I lost all digital media prior to 2003. That’s a story for another time, but it was the catalyst for regularly backing up my photos and videos in several formats and in several locations. And though the process by which I do this has changed over the years, I still take the time to do it so much so that I now have 17 years worth of photos and videos organized my year, month, day, hour, minute, and second."

Create QR Codes and Image Cutouts With a Click

I just thought that this was a neat little trick. Creating QR codes at the same time as you're creating th image!