WordPress 5.8 was released today. I’m curious to learn what your favorite feature is that is adds? Add it as comment to the online version of this newsletter or reply to this newsletter by email. I’d love to learn more you!
WordPress News 🗞
Just like last week, we have a lot of WordPress related news this week again, so let’s just dive in!
- One of my favorite plugins saw yet again a wonderful update in the shape of version BuddyPress 9.0. In this day and age of online censorships tightening up all around us combined with the need to own your data, I still believe this is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal in creating online communities. I’ve been using BuddyPress since it’s very first beta and I’m continuously impressed with the progress it’s making. This release adds about 10 BuddyPress Widget Blocks. All ready for the future!
- Post Status, previously owned by Brian Krogsgard, shared what I think it a fun way to look at a very serious movement happening in the WordPress ecosystem. It’s called Acquisition Tracker and it shows you when what WordPress business was sold to what company. The list is already quite long and I predict it will get a lot longer in the coming times.
- Substack Newsletters is/was all the rage, but what if you wanted to do that in WordPress? What would it take? Chris Wilson explain how to do that here. It should come as no surprise I’m a big fan of the Newsletter Glue component of his stack. Check out Chris’ article and if you haven’t checked it out Newsletter Glue before, now is the time if you’re looking for the sweetest, most simple, most WordPress native way of sending out emails. 10/10 would recommend.
- The Template Editor on WordPress.org is new feature that allows block editor users to edit and create templates that a page or posts uses. Similar to the post editor, this feature allows you to edit and create content using blocks, including a few new theme blocks.
- Roy Sivan prelaunched HonorsWP which is to become a new LMS Community. If you’re building LMS sites, you should check it out!
- I love it when people share their steps as they’re learning new things. Rich Tabor does this frequently and recently shared a new thread on Twitter where he’s taking us by the hand as he learns how to redesign his blog based on the new
theme.jsonintroduced in WordPress 5.8. - Lastly, Christopher John released a nifty plugin called Wayfinder. Use Wayfinder to easily select nested blocks. Wayfinder also lets you know the type of block and its active class names. Like I said, very nifty!
Interesting finds 💡
- Gridless Design is a website I came across this week that explains from many perspectives how and why you should be wanting to create gridless designs. Lots of valuable information for both developers and designers.
- Center aligning divs. Who hasn’t failed doing exactly that. Here’s two ways that should always work.
- Using the terminal is how I love to get a lot of WordPress things done. For instance using WP CLI. I’m not a fan of OS X’s default terminal and am using iTerm2 as a replacement. But, I’m always on the lookout for other solution. Enter: Warp. Warp is a blazingly fast, Rust-based terminal that makes you and your team more productive at code and DevOps.
What I am reading 📖
- I’m still reading Brave New World after having finished 1984. Next up is still It Can’t Happen Here. That said, I do read a lot online as well, and particularly this very troublesome article stood out. It’s a Washington Post article that discloses how iOS and Android powered phones are hackable with software licensed out by an Israeli company. The software, called Pegasus, is very actively being used by governments and the like. And to be honest, I found the article quite disturbing to read and I suspect you will too.
- My good friend Sebastiaan shared an interesting book with me that I’ve orded soley based on his recommendation. It’s called More Equal Animals: The Subtle Art of True Democracy, and I think you’ll enjoy is as well.
Bonus 🎁
The bonus for this week is Josh Comeau’s blog about how to learn stuff quickly. And who doesn’t want to know how to do that, right?! Right.
That’s it for this week’s ramblings. Thanks for reading!
Best,
Remkus
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