This Week in WordPress #157

Welcome

Issue #157

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

Sorry that there was no "This Week in WordPress" show this week. We had some guests who had to cancel, and it was a public holiday in the UK as well. We'll be back again next week, and you can watch it live if you like.
Full Site Editing needs your help - go create a header and give your feedback
WordCamp Europe if on the lookout for speakers
There's a new page builder in town, called Bricks
What will the new Block Patterns Directory look like?
Jetpack turns 10!
and Unsplash has been bought by Getty Images...

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!

WordPress Core

FSE Outreach Round #4: Building a Restaurant-Themed Header With Gutenberg’s Site Editor

"Anne McCarthy announced the fourth round of testing for the Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach program last week. This testing phase calls for users to build a restaurant-themed header via the Gutenberg plugin’s site editor. Testing is open to anyone, and participants should leave feedback by April 8..."

Community

Call for Speakers – WordCamp Europe 2021

"In June 2020, the European WordPress community came together at the first , and also the biggest, WordCamp Europe Online. Although we all considered it odd not to meet and attend the event in real life, it has now become quite a common thing: large events going live online..."

Celebrating Women’s Achievements and Recognizing Challenges That Remain

"This year, WP Engine marked both International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month with a series of events and creative projects spearheaded by Roar, one of our Employee Resource Groups, which focuses on providing a safe, open environment for all, and advocating for women to achieve their professional aspirations where opportunities have historically been limited..."

Introducing Our New Blog: Speed at Scale

"Welcome to our re-designed blog covering innovation, performance and the future of WordPress..."

Delicious Brains Labs: Our Experiment with an AI Content Bot

"Now, we’re not yet at a point where we have AI machines that can think like a human, and to be honest, as a programmer, I’m not convinced the concept will ever exist as it does on the silver screen. However, we have seen advances in specific AI types, specifically machine learning and language models, becoming hot topics lately. One such type of AI is OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, also known as GPT-3..."

How NOT to monetize a free plugin: One Click Demo Import acquired by Awesome Motive

"I was surprised to see an update notice for the free One Click Demo Import plugin. The plugin was updated from 2.6.1 to 3.0.0 on March 31st, 2021. I got a bad feeling about this update the moment I saw the changelog. These are the changes..."

Open Collective Launches Funds to Help Companies Streamline Donations to Multiple Open Source Projects

"Open Collective has launched Funds, a new funding infrastructure for funneling contributions to open source projects. Any open source project can receive contributions from a Fund, even those that are not listed on Open Collective due to having their own foundation or working with another fiscal host. The new feature was added to Open Collective’s existing non-profit funding platform that serves more than 2,500 projects..."

Behind the Scenes of Our Website Redesign

"I'd like to take you on a behind-the-scenes journey of our process to give you a perspective on why we did things the way we did, and maybe you can get some helpful tips along the way too..."

Plugins / Themes / Blocks

Bricks – Visual Site Builder for WordPress

"Build WordPress Sites That Rank. A Faster, More Customizable & Performant Tool To Visually Design Your Entire Site..."

Gutenberg 10.3 Supports Default Image Sizes, Continues Normalizing Toolbars, and Categorizes Theme Blocks

"Version 10.3 of the Gutenberg plugin landed yesterday. Users can now define a default Image block size. The development team also continued work on normalizing block toolbars, created a “theme” block category, and added a padding option to the Verse block..."

FluentCRM 2.0 - Lots of New Features and Updates!

"Let me start by thanking all of you for suggesting these beautiful features and waiting patiently. Your suggestions and trust mean a lot to us and we were working for the last 3 months to bring your suggested features into action. So without further ado, let’s explore the features we’ve released in FluentCRM 2.0...!"

First Look at Initial Designs for WordPress’ Block Pattern Directory

"WordPress contributors began discussing the possibility of a block pattern directory in October 2020, an idea that garnered enthusiastic support. The directory would offer a place to browse user-submitted patterns, as well as one-click installation of patterns from the block inserter inside the editor..."

Compatibility Center, new import tools, better HTML sitemap and Content Analysis – SEOPress 4.5 update release

"SEOPress 4.5 is now available. We encourage you to update your site as soon as possible to take advantage of the latest features and improvements..."

News – So you want to make block patterns?

"If you’ve ever built something for the WordPress block editor — a theme or a plugin — you may have also heard about block patterns. Looking at the patterns that come bundled with WordPress, I thought it would be nice to dedicate to them a short post. They’re pretty nice, useful shortcuts when you know them, but there’s a good chance you may not know what they are or why you might want to use them..."

Jetpack turns 10

"Jetpack was born in March 2011. For the last 10 years, we’ve been happy to help you protect, speed up, and grow your business or hobby. Thanks for letting us travel with you on your journey towards success. Here’s to the next 10 years...!"

WP Builds

How we built the WP Buffs business - WP Builds Weekly WordPress Podcast #223

WP Buffs has been a company on the rise for several years now. I'm sure that you've seen some of their content and perhaps listened to their podcast or attended their WPMMR summit? The podcast today is all about how you can grow a 'side gig' business into a thriving business by creating engaging content around the subjects that your target audience really want to know about. So WP Buffs is really in the business of maintaining WordPress website, but how do you get noticed in this competitive field? How do you gain new customers when your rivals already have heritage? Content, that's how. Joe Howard explains how they created content which they knew people wanted to consume from keyword research. Blog posts, then a podcast, then a virtual summit. Join us on the podcast today to see how they did it...

Jobs

Now Hiring: Full-Stack Software Developer

"I’ve been working solo on ProjectHuddle since late 2016. It’s always been my “baby” and I’ve poured my blood sweat and tears into it. Since then it’s grown quite a bit and now at the point where I need to find development support to keep it growing. I’m looking for an experienced full-stack developer for ongoing development work on ProjectHuddle on a contract basis..."

Not WordPress, but useful anyway…

Hypnotic loops and self-soothing sounds: the rise of #OddlySatisfying and visual ASMR

"As a subreddit devoted to strangely satisfying video clips grows into a behemoth, a new wave of digital artists are manufacturing their own..."

Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

"This is not one of those tech acquisitions where the company is bought to be shut down. Unsplash will continue to operate as a standalone brand and division of Getty Images. The entire Unsplash team will be staying and building Unsplash in the direction we have been..."