Time to nominate your favorite WordPress products and services at ‘The WP Awards 2022’. In the regular programming, WordPress ecosystem buzz continues, be it someone leaving WordPress or getting surprised by a non-WP page builder, or figuring out a more accurate WordPress market share figure. Plus, the usual stash of new WordPress plugins and feature updates.
🏆 Nominations are now open for The WP Awards 2022 edition, submit a nomination of a WordPress product or service you like, or you have created. The WP Awards 2022 is made possible by awesome gold sponsors: InMotion Hosting, StellarWP, 20i Hosting, Cloudways, and GoDaddy Pro.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- New Launches… the team at WPPOOL has launched the Elementor Speed Optimizer plugin that promises to make your Elementor made website (including Woo sites) very fast loading and optimized. Also, the AwesomeMotive team has released a new WPCode plugin for code snippets, which is actually a revamped version of the hugely popular Insert Headers and Footers plugin.
- Looks Interesting… make your Gravity Forms cooler with animated transitions between form pages and automatic page progression with the new Gravity Perks update. Also, promising faster checkout and more conversions, the Link by Stripe feature is now supported on the MemberPress powered course and membership websites.
- Product Updates… Stackable block addon has added support for JetEngine, allowing you to use data stored through JetEngine’s meta boxes in Stackable blocks. Also, Switching your MainWP dashboard to dark mode is now super easy with the launch of built-in Themes inside the Custom Dashboard extension.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Reverting Pricing… plans of WordPress(dot)com services. Sometime back, WordPress(dot)com’s new pricing plans received a mixed reception (more negative?), and no wonder they have now reverted back to old plans of Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce – along with the good old free plan!
- Next in WordPress Core… 9 years in the discussion, and here is good news with some progress for adding SVG support in WordPress, probably in WP 6.2 or later. As of now, using a WordPress plugin to allow SVG uploads is the most popular method. Also, there is a proposal for a new kind of default theme!
- Blocks Life… making it possible soon is the ability to preview patterns in the themes listed in the directory without installing them. Gutenberg 13.7 updated with new features like block locking to inner blocks with a click of a button and the ability to create templates now for specific categories, pages, and more.
- Big Product Updates… Astra theme got a big update (3.9), especially for WooCommerce users, with functional improvements to shop, product, cart, and checkout pages along with new premium templates. Also, Paid Memberships Pro v2.9 is a big update with new features like UI to add custom user profile fields and built-in templates to create new levels.
- Beyond WordPress… Dave Swift shared why he left WordPress for Ghost, emphasizing the use case of blogging, email marketing, and members-only content delivery. Also, a lot of WordPress users were in awe of the new fluid engine builder from SquareSpace – and of course, drawing comparisons to the Gutenberg Block Editor.
- WordPress Share… in the CMS market going down or up? For all those folks (well, a small section) so invested in this up and down movement, the bi-annual update from Joost de Valk is a good way to stay updated. TLDR: the WordPress market share is at 43%, roughly the same as in December 2021.
Quick Bits 👍
- Now 100+ Block Themes in the WordPress Themes directory.
- BetterDocs revamped UI layout and improved search analytics.
- Auto share WP Posts to Telegram channel with JetpackWP Bot.
- First Move: Yoast plugin directly available on WordPress(.)com!
- WordCamp Asia 2023 tickets release on July 25 for 2020 buyers.
- Apply to speak at WordFest Live scheduled for Nov 18, 2022.
New WordPress Plugins stash for this week!
New plugins to test drive this weekend (or next week). Backuply plugin lets you backup your WordPress website to local storage, FTP, and other online storage services. Airtable users can check Air WP Sync plugin that allows sync with specific content on your WordPress website. Finally, if your website gets a lot of comments – then managing with CommentsWP plugin might turn out a wise decision!
Also, take note of these updates. Beta 2 of the new Breakdance builder is now available, a product from the people behind the Oxygen builder. Also, the official plugin for the SureCart service is now available in the plugins repository.
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