This Week in WordPress #153

Welcome

Issue #153

Another week, and we're bringing you the latest WordPress news from the last seven days, including...

What do you make of Elementor advertising against the keywords 'Full Site Editing'?
There's a new update to the Editor's Kit plugin - it's now got a templates library
Do you want you WordPress website to speak, with Alexa skills, you can!
Bitcoin mining is using more power than all the 45m people of Argentina!

There's a whole lot more than this, as there is each and every week, and you can find all that by scrolling down and clicking on the links!

This Week in WordPress

This Week in WordPress #153 - "There's always hope!"

Recorded on Monday 8th March 2021. With Nathan Wrigley, Paul Lacey, Birgit Pauli-Haack and
Spencer Forman.

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.

WordPress Core

WordPress 5.7 Release Candidate 2

"The second release candidate for WordPress 5.7 is now available! 🎉..."

Community

Elementor Raises Eyebrows with Google Ads Targeting Full-Site Editing

"WordPress’ growing market share is fueling a continual influx of new users but also a higher level of scrutiny around advertising. Companies with large advertising budgets target this segment of consumers, because many who are new to WordPress need help hosting and creating their websites..."

19 Gutenberg Features You Might Not Be Aware Of (But Should!)

"Though Gutenberg promotes itself as an easier way to build websites than the classic WordPress editor, there’s still a learning curve to it. Discover all these hidden features, though, and you’ll be well on your way to mastering the tool. Let’s lift the veil on the mysteries of Gutenberg. Here are 10 Gutenberg features you might not yet know about and how to start using them. Be aware that you might have to have the Gutenberg plugin installed to take advantage of some of these..."

WordPress Considers Dropping Support for IE 11

"WordPress announced it's seeking feedback on dropping Internet Explorer 11 support to gain considerable improvements to performance and development..."

State of Headless CMS Technology Study Finds Adoption Surging in the Enterprise

"WP Engine [...] announced the results of a new, international research study showing headless is already pervasive in the enterprise. 64 percent of enterprise respondents already use headless, and more than 90 percent of those not currently using headless plan to evaluate headless solutions over the next 12 months..."

DE{CODE} 2021 Looked to the Future of WordPress

"WP Engine’s developer-focused conference DE{CODE} just wrapped up for the second year in a row. The virtual conference acted as a way to bring together people from around the community and learn. The day consisted of three keynotes and a variety of shorter breakout sessions that focused on the life cycle of a website: Set up, Build, Launch, and Optimize..."

When It's (Not?) Burnout

"It’s not burnout, except that it is, and it’s also harassment and abuse and it’s exhausting..."

Doing business in WordPress: missed opportunities

"If you’re new to WordPress-based business, welcome! There’s never been a better time to help people achieve their goals with WordPress. The ecosystem is vast, and we’re a welcoming community..."

WordPress Community vs WordPress Economy

"There are so many people involved – and billions of dollars – that wordpressing (intentional spelling, defined as building infrastructure for, or deploying content on the internet) is seeing WordPress community ideals and business goals start bumping up against each other more and more often. Recently we had issues around WordPress.org/hosting and Bluehost trademark use rear their heads..."

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

Editor Plus 2.6 Adds Block Pattern and Template Library

A couple of weeks ago, Munir Kamal released version 2.6 of his Editor Plus WordPress plugin. The latest version does not add a slew of features as its users have seen in the past. However, it introduces one major upgrade. The new version lets users insert templates from Gutenberg Hub’s growing library directly from the block editor.

Gutenberg 10.1 Enhances Reusable Blocks, Updates Social Icons Spacing Options, and Normalizes Image Block Toolbar

Gutenberg 10.1 landed yesterday with several new features, many of which focused on improvements to the interface and user experience. Users can now control the justification of items in the Social Icons block. The new release also enhances the UX for creating reusable blocks, groups the Image block toolbar controls, and introduces categorized template parts in the site editor.

How to Optimize Elementor for Free Using Our Smush and Hummingbird Plugins

"Elementor is no stranger to the WordPress community, considering it’s one of the best and most popular page builders out there. And to make it even better when it comes to optimization, you can enhance a ton with the help of our free plugins: Smush and Hummingbird..."

Introducing the Elementor Integration for WP Offload Media

"In the first of hopefully many plugin releases this year, the WP Offload Media team has been working hard on some big integrations and improvements. Today we’re pleased to announce the latest integration for WP Offload Media, full Elementor support..."

Security

Critical 0-day in The Plus Addons for Elementor Allows Site Takeover

"Today, March 8, 2021, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team became aware of a critical 0-day in The Plus Addons for Elementor, a premium plugin that we estimate has over 30,000 installations. This vulnerability was reported this morning to WPScan by Seravo, a hosting company. The flaw makes it possible for attackers to create new administrative user accounts on vulnerable sites, if user registration is enabled, along with logging in as other administrative users..."

Critical Vulnerability Patched in WooCommerce Upload Files

"On December 29, 2020, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team was alerted to a potential 0-day vulnerability in the WooCommerce Upload Files plugin, an add-on for WooCommerce with over 5,000 installations. Please note that this is a separate plugin from the main WooCommerce plugin and is designed as an add-on to that plugin..."

Medium Severity Vulnerability Patched in User Profile Picture Plugin

"On February 15, 2021, our Threat Intelligence team initiated the responsible disclosure process for a vulnerability that we discovered in User Profile Picture, a WordPress plugin installed on over 60,000 sites. The vulnerability made it possible for authenticated users with the upload_files capability to obtain sensitive user information..."

WordPress Vulnerability Roundup: March 2021, Part 1

"New WordPress plugin and theme vulnerabilities were disclosed during the first week of March. This post covers the recent WordPress plugin, theme, and core vulnerabilities and what to do if you run one of the vulnerable plugins or themes on your website..."

WP Builds

Create Alexa Skills right inside of WordPress with Shoutworks - WP Builds Weekly WordPress Podcast #219

So the podcast today might catch you a little off guard! It’s not something that I’ve ever played with before. Today we’re talking about Shoutworks, which is a WordPress plugin that lets you boost your voice SEO by creating an Amazon Alexa skill in one click right from inside WordPress.

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'

"Bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina, analysis by Cambridge University suggests. "Mining" for the cryptocurrency is power-hungry, involving heavy computer calculations to verify transactions. Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year - and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps..."

Twitter targets Covid vaccine misinformation with labels and 'strike' system

"Twitter is expanding its use of warning labels on tweets that contain misleading details about coronavirus vaccines. The move, announced in a blogpost on Monday, is designed to strengthen the social network’s existing Covid-19 guidance, which has led to the removal of more than 8,400 tweets and challenged 11.5m accounts worldwide..."

How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

"The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) studies the burgeoning business of cryptocurrencies. It calculates that Bitcoin's total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 annualised terawatt hours (TWh), with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours. The UK's electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the CCAF's best guess for Bitcoin..."

What Are Google Core Web Vitals?

"A page that performs well is one that users actually enjoy visiting. But what exactly is performance? Is it loading speed? User experience? Interactivity? The simple answer is “Yes.” Performance is a difficult term to define, and addressing performance can be even more difficult..."

Firefox 86 Introduces Total Cookie Protection

"Today we are pleased to announce Total Cookie Protection, a major privacy advance in Firefox built into ETP Strict Mode. Total Cookie Protection confines cookies to the site where they were created, which prevents tracking companies from using these cookies to track your browsing from site to site..."