This Week in WordPress #147

Welcome

Issue #147

Another week, and some more WordPress goodness for you.

Highlights of the news this week which you can find below: The White House has decided to use WordPress for another term - tell that to your clients who think that WordPress is not for them! The Full Site Editing Outreach Program has some ideas about where WordPress should go to make building the entire site better in the future. Wordfence will clean up school websites for free. Pods gets a Pro version.

There's a whole lot more than this, and you can find all that big scrolling down!

This Week in WordPress

This Week in WordPress #147 - "Check buttons and radio boxes"

Recorded on Monday 18th January 2021. With Nathan Wrigley, Paul Lacey, and Birgit Pauli-Haack.

Each week we discuss some of the the stories (from below) which captured our attention. It's like this newsletter but with real people!

If you ever want to join us live you can do that every Monday at 2pm UK time on the WP Builds LIVE page.

'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

Biden White House Sticks with WordPress for Website Relaunch

"President Joe Biden took office today and unveiled a new whitehouse.gov that has been relaunched on WordPress. The previous administration switched from Drupal to WordPress in 2017, and technologists working with the Biden administration decided to stick with the same CMS."

2020 Year in Review

"This year has been a wild ride with some huge ups and downs. We have seen some of our biggest successes and experienced some major challenges; we sold one of our flagship products and we, along with the rest of the world, have gone through a global pandemic."

How to Deploy Local WordPress Sites with DevKinsta

"In this video, learn how to use DevKinsta to create local WordPress sites in just a few clicks."

First Round of the FSE Outreach Program Concludes, Identifies Template-Editing Mode Problems

"The Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program has now concluded its first round of testing. Its first focus area was centered on the template-editing mode introduced in Gutenberg 9.6. The volunteers involved with the project identified several pain points."

Creating a Website with Oxygen

"Oxygen is a website builder for WordPress. It installs as a plugin, disables the theme, and lets you build up your site more or less from scratch. For various reasons that I explain below, I felt it was time to give Oxygen a full fledged test and use it on a production site in order to fully understand the pros and cons of the tool. I have only through the first stage of building a site with Oxygen but I decided that I should go ahead and document it as I go along so that I don’t forget anything important."

Headless WordPress and Headless CMS

"The terms Headless WordPress and Headless Content Management Systems (CMS) have continued to rise on Google trends the last few years, spiking last summer during the height of pandemic, as small businesses all over the world investigated moving their businesses online."

WordPress for Android Previews New Story Posts Feature, Now in Public Beta

"WordPress users on Android may have noticed a new prompt in the mobile app for publishing Story posts. This feature is now in public beta in the Android app, ahead of an upcoming launch on the WordPress iOS app. Stories will also coming to the Block editor on WordPress.com in early 2021."

Announcing Free Site Cleaning & Site Security Audits for K-12 Public Schools

"Wordfence, the leading provider of WordPress security software and services, is announcing today that we are, effective immediately, offering free site cleaning and site security audit services to K-12 public schools in the United States who use WordPress as their content management system."

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

FluentSMTP – WordPress Mail SMTP, SES, SendGrid, MailGun Plugin

"FluentSMTP is the ultimate WP Mail Plugin that connects with your Email Service Provider natively and makes sure your emails are delivered. Our goal is to send your WordPress emails delivery fast, secure, and make sure your WordPress emails reach the email inbox."

Introducing: Pods Pro by SKCDEV, Pods 2.8 in QA, & New YouTube Videos

"I’ve heard feedback from so many people — everyone wants to take Pods further for new solutions to even newer problems. Page Builder integrations, Form integrations, and even more content tools — it’s totally within the wheelhouse of Pods to do these things and do them well. However, these kinds of add-ons are much more specialized and don’t really belong in Pods core."

Custom Layouts Plugin Creates a Posts Display System for Both the Classic and Block Editors

"Ross Morsali, via his brand Code Amp, released the Custom Layouts plugin last week. The plugin’s goal is to provide a visual post layout builder for users of both the block and classic editors."

PHP 8 compatibility, better user experience, dozens of enhancements – SEOPress 4.3 update release - SEOPress

"SEOPress 4.3 is now available. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and improvements."

Elementor Pro v3.1 Beta Release

"This version includes features and capabilities that give you more control and customization options over your sites. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve Elementor's speed and stability, we made performance enhancements and added improvements to existing features."

Security

Uncovering Potential Issues with the Contact Form 7 Vulnerability: More Data Needed

"On December 17, 2020, the Astra research security team disclosed that they had discovered a critical severity Unrestricted File Upload vulnerability in Contact Form 7, the most popular WordPress plugin of all time. The lead researcher, Jinson Varghese, also published a blog post providing limited information about this vulnerability."

WP Builds

What goes into organising and cancelling a live WordCamp?

We all know that the WordCamps in 2020 got cancelled. This was a good idea because saving lives comes before attending online events, but I thought that it might be a good idea to get someone on the WP Builds podcast to have a chat with us about WordCamps nonetheless.

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

CSS Scan Pro | A re-imagined Devtools for web design

"CSS Scan Pro runs on the browser as an extension. It works on all kinds of websites: WordPress, Shopify, React, Wix, all themes, anything. It works even if the website is not yours. No code change is required, and it works offline."

Hoverify | An all-in-one browser extension that helps you in web development

"Hoverify is a suite of tools to enhance your web development experience and boost your productivity."

MapLibre Launches as Official Open Source Successor to Mapbox GL JS

"In December, Mapbox shocked its open source contributor community with the news that Mapbox GL JS version 2.0 would be released under a proprietary license. The JavaScript library powers interactive, customizable vector maps on many high profile websites like CNN, The New York Times, Ancestry, Strava, Shopify, Facebook, and more."