This Week in WordPress #144

Welcome

Issue #144

Let's be honest, we all want to put 2020 behind us and look forward to something better from 2021.

I hope that you got some time away if Christmas is something that you celebrate.

So we're back with a new year of 'This Week in WordPress'. Normally, we'd have a piece of LIVE video content to accompany this Newsletter, but we rewarded ourselves with another week off and so that will all start again next week.

For now here is the WordPress news that I was able to find during the last couple of weeks. There'e quite a bit about Full Site Editing (FSE), and security this week (if you've not heard about the Slorwinds attack - it was really rather huge).

Anyway, let me step out of the way for now and let you get to the news and I hope to see you next week!

WordPress Core

WordPress 5.7 Planning Roundup

Wow - "The main goal for 2021 is Full Site Editing via Gutenberg."

What Is Full Site Editing and What Does It Mean for the Future of WordPress?

"As I said last week, 2021 will be the year of the site editor. Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word confirms it. WordPress 5.7’s release planning is focused on it. It has been a long journey getting to this point, and it will be a much longer adventure afterward. The ultimate promise of the work that began nearly four years ago is nigh."

Gutenberg 9.6 Introduces Drag-and-Drop Blocks and Global Inheritance for the Query Block

"For some people, Christmas arrived a couple of days early. Gutenberg 9.6 launched with its first iteration of drag-and-drop blocks from the inserter. There are some other enhancements like vertical buttons, heaps of bug fixes, new APIs, and other improvements."

Community

Fast... 1-click checkout and login

"One click. No passwords. The world's fastest checkout. Forget passwords. Skip long entry forms. Shop online and securely check out with a single click. It’s safe, easy, and yep, fast."

2020: Step Away From the Fire

"If there was a common theme that held humanity together in 2020, it was that most of us agreed that the year was nothing short of a dumpster fire. That and sweatpants. As people learned to cope with a new reality in the Covid-19 era, the WordPress community has been a beacon of hope."

Damn. Gutenberg Smokes Elementor.

"As someone who comes from a design (not a development) background, I likely couldn’t do my job if page builders didn’t exist— and that’s why Elementor has been so useful to me. But, like any Elementor user, I’ve become increasingly anxious about the future of Elementor and just how bloated it is. I think Google Page Speed Insights agrees."

Learn WordPress Launches Trac Introductory Workshop

"Jonathan Desrosiers, a WordPress core committer and software engineer at Bluehost, has published a new workshop titled “How to Use Trac” on the Learn WordPress platform. The 20-minute video offers a crash course on the ticket tracking software that WordPress relies on to manage core development."

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

Unlimited manual schemas, Google Analytics v4 - SEOPress 4.2 update release

"SEOPress 4.2 is now available. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and improvements."

Introducing Toolset CLI

"We’re happy to announce the release of WP-CLI commands for Toolset. You can use Toolset CLI to perform various Toolset-related tasks right from the command interface. If you’re a fan of WP-CLI and command-line interface in general, Toolset CLI is for you."

Shutterstock Launches Official WordPress Plugin

"Shutterstock has released an official plugin for WordPress. The 17-year old company is as old as WordPress itself but this is the first time it has provided convenient access to its library inside the admin."

Armando WordPress Theme Provides Insight Into the Current State of Full Site Editing

"As we inch closer to a year in which WordPress’s primary focus will be on Full Site Editing, it is fortunate timing that Themes Team representative Carolina Nymark publicly announced her latest theme, Armando. It is a blogging theme that makes use of the latest features from the Gutenberg plugin."

Navigate the Content Canvas With the Block Editor Outline WordPress Plugin

"Last week, Kalimah Apps released its Editor Block Outline plugin to the WordPress plugin repository. The idea is simple. The plugin adds a bordered outline to each block in the document along with their associated labels. For some users, this will help them navigate more complex layouts."

BEST WordPress Cache Plugins 2021

"The plugins are listed in order of what I would recommend for most people to try from first to last. In my own personal use case, I love LiteSpeed Cache the most for my high traffic sites (best performance, features, reliability) and then use Swift Performance Lite or WP Performance for smaller sites. Swift Pro and WP Rocket are nice for clients (and bigger sites) who can pay and need something better than a free plugin."

Elementor v3.1 Beta Release

"In a few weeks, we will be launching Elementor v3.1. This version will focus on some exciting new features and improvements aimed to streamline your marketing workflow, improve stability, accessibility, and enhance your performance. We would love for you to test Elementor v3.1 Beta and let us know what you think about the new features."

Security

SolarWinds and Supply Chain Attacks: Could it happen to WordPress?

"The SolarWinds supply chain attack is all over the news, impacting government agencies, telecommunications firms, and other large organizations. The security firm FireEye was the first victim of the attack, disclosing that they had been hacked on December 8, 2020. On December 13th the US Treasury Department announced that it had also been compromised. At that time SolarWinds Orion was officially reported as the intrusion vector."

Who Attacked SolarWinds and Why WordPress Users Need to Know

"The SolarWinds Orion hack is one of the most sophisticated hacks we have seen in a long time, and arguably one of the most significant hacks in years. Of course, one of the biggest questions for security analysts is who is responsible."

Contact Form 7 Version 5.3.2 Patches Critical Vulnerability, Immediate Update Recommended

"Contact Form 7 has patched a critical file upload vulnerability in version 5.3.2, released today by plugin author Takayuki Miyoshi. The plugin is installed on more than five million WordPress sites."

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

AMP Under Fire in New Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google

"AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), an open source initiative that originated with Google, is coming under greater scrutiny at the tail end of 2020, as the company is facing a rash of antitrust lawsuits beginning in October. The second suit is the one most pertinent to the AMP project."

Why you should Self-Host Google Fonts in 2021

"Web and browsers are evolving fast! Many optimizations we did few years are ago now outdated or not recommended. Delivering Google Fonts to get maximum performance has also changed recently as browsers implemented new features."

Firefox continues cracking down on tracking with cache partitioning

"Mozilla follows Apple's and Google's leads on partitioning, then one-ups them."