A lot of new stuff is stacking up for your attention, now that we are past the Black Friday buzz. The new Newsletter Glue plugin paves the way for WordPress as a substack alternative. A few new plugins to be better with Gutenberg Blocks, the usual product updates and all the interesting buzz from the WordPress ecosystem.
What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- New Launches… the founding member option for the Newsletter Glue plugin is now available. It helps you publish blog and newsletter together inside the WordPress dashboard. Also, a modern component like ACF blocks framework block studio for developers is now available for purchase.
- Surprising users… GeneratePress has pulled up a surprise offering lifetime deal for the first time along with overall price changes. Making more waves, GeneratePress was adjudged as the fastest WooCommerce theme among 21 themes tested by Matteo Duò.
- Blocks Life… Spencer Forman launched fix Gutenberg style plugin to make Gutenberg look like classic editor with some breathing room between the meta boxes. While Jamie from Pootlepress shared a preview of the upcoming Gutenberg Pro plugin.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- In the News… Bluehost hosting has launched the Maestro program for managing multiple websites and clients. This reminds me of earlier positioning of the Flywheel hosting. With the goal of demystifying diversity and let everyone access opportunities, Michelle and Allie have launched underrepresented in tech project.
- Theme Updates… Neve Theme 2.9 has added 3 new features of global colours, cart styles, and the template cloud. The much-awaited, Astra theme’s header footer builder feature is now in beta.
- Let’s Think… did your Elementor website speed get worse or GTmetrix got better at calculations? And, when do you need to make custom Gutenberg block for making it easy for clients?
Quick Bits 👍
- Fluent CRM added new conditional email content block.
- PBF Theme now has LifertLMS support out of the box.
- Groundhogg CRM has crossed 3000+ install milestone.
- Kellen Mace launched Headless WP Decision Tool (fun video).
- Discover a few new plugins at Plugin Draft mega meetup.
- The first round of speakers announced for WordFest event.
- WooCommerce market share has reached 11.7% & growing.
- What’s on your wishlist for the next WordPress 5.7 versions?
- ConvertKit can now run paid newsletters, out of the box!
- And… Google knows when you change the hosting server!
[PHP 8 is here] What WordPress Doing 👍
WordPress is actively working to add compatibility for PHP 8 release. Ram Gall at Wordfence sums up what WordPress users need to know about PHP 8. Also, learn more about new PHP 8 features like union types, JIT, the nullsafe operator, named arguments, attributes, and more.
