Remkus’ Ramblings – #041 Wireframes & Chart Blocks

ZOMG, I can’t believe the lovely responses and feedback I’ve gotten from all of you on the first couple of newsletters. I love learning how that one tip helped you or how that one link caught your interest. Please keep them coming and do let me know if you have something that could be shared here!

Let’s see what the past week brought us!

WordPress News 🗞

WordPress 5.8 is a month away, but we can already prepare ourselves with what it offers. It’s chock-full and you can read up on it here.

• Hat tip for David Bisset for sharing this super nifty (yes, I am that old) WordPress plugin that allows you to create responsive, interactive, and animated charts right in your favorite Block Editor. It’s called Charts Blocks for Gutenberg and you can find it on Github and WordPress.org.
• Mark Wilkinson shared a tip about being able to distinguish dev environments from production. It’s so simple, but also so effective. Let me know if you’ve done this before!
• A WordPress Wireframe Blocks Kit, wouldn’t that be great if that existed? Yeah, I agree and so did Mike Oliver. The difference between us and Mike Oliver, is that he actually created it. He’s got a collection of over 20 minimal, responsive WordPress block templates you can use to wireframe or jumpstart your next website development project. Built with the free version of GenerateBlocks and the WordPress block editor to be used with any WordPress theme. Thanks Mike!
• We’re staying a bit longer with Mike and GeneratePress, because he’s also created a wonderful course to help you deep dive into how to build lightweight WordPress websites with GeneratePress & GenerateBlocks.

Interesting finds 💡

• This is about the upcoming iOS15 release from Apple. Though, this update’s impact is not limited to just Apple iPhone users. As Apple is working hard in making its software more and more privacy friendly, it also starts to impact a very different group as well: anyone doing any kind of email marketing on the internet. And that includes newsletters! SRH Design have created a Google Doc that outlines a lot of what’s about to change and what the impact of these changes are. Highly recommended to read that document as the impact is huge!
• Speaking of privacy, here’s a very nice Chrome/Brave/Edge browser extension that strips any privacy unfriendly tracking parameters and more of any URL you click on from anywhere where they’re applied. Yes, really, it will automatically remove tracking elements from URLs to help protect your privacy when browse through the Internet.
• Highlighting Ross Wintle again, but I can’t help myself. The man keeps on sharing cool stuff. This time it’s a tool built around Twitter’s search and it allows you to easily finding that tweet you remember someone shared. It’s called Tweet Finder.

What I am reading 📖

Synchronicity, an interesting phenomena. I finished the last pages of Civilization One last Saturday and on Sunday I saw Ross Wintle ask some questions about Earth’s 23 hour, 56 minutes and 4 second rotation. And this, and lots more is covered in this book. Highly recommend!

Speaking of Synchronicity, if you’ve never read Joseph Jaworski’s book on that topic, you’re missing a wonderful opportunity to learn on that topic. In the most beautiful way.

Bonus 🎁

For a number of reasons, I want to stop “voting with my money” towards the Coca-Cola Company’s products. As such, I asked about alternatives to Coke Zero on Twitter. And no, I do not like coffee. In any shape or form.

The responses I got were very helpful and left me with two viable alternatives. Namely:

1. Cáscara, a drink made from the berries from the coffee plant.
2. Club-Mate, a drink especially popular in Germany, but as it turns out, available here (in the Netherlands) as well.

I’ve settled for Cáscara, for now. Number one reason is that my good friend Taeke ordered me a bag and sent it to my home. Thank you, Taeke 😊 ❤️!

So if you’re looking for an alternative to coffee, Coke Zero, Redbull or whatever, have a look at either or any of the suggestion on my Twitter question.

That’s it for this week’s ramblings. Thanks for reading!

Best,
Remkus

Remkus de Vries

WordPress veteran. Performance aficionado. Aspiring strongman.