As we head to the close of 2023, it seems more folks are moving jobs within the WordPress ecosystem. Also featuring in this issue: Free static site hosting from Kinsta, Matt’s lively talk about WordPress’s success in being open source, and a new tool that converts Figma designs to Elementor layouts.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- New Launches… Admin and Site Enhancements (ASE) plugin now with the PRO version and a lifetime offer for a limited time; this plugin has a ton of small and seriously useful features for WordPress users. Also, the team at POSIMYTH has launched a new UiChemy tool that converts Figma designs into an Elementor editable website, and support for the Gutenberg Block Editor layouts is coming soon.
- LMS Plugin Updates… LifterLMS has released a useful question bank feature in the Advanced Quizzes add-on allowing instructors to create assessments with randomized questions pulled from a bank of questions. Also, Masterstudy LMS Plugin has introduced a brand new interface for the course player promising to be more clean and user friendly for your course students.
- Interesting New Things… the team at Breakdance Builder has announced the Breakdance Experts directory featuring profiles of people with expertise in building websites with Breakdance. Also, announced a while back, the full rebranding of iThemes to SolidWP is now complete with products now being called Solid Security, Solid Backup, and Solid Central.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- New Feature Additions… AffiliateWP has added the new QR Code Creative feature allowing easy sharing of promotions in the offline world with handy QR codes. Also, the Cwicly Builder is now with a visual CSS Grid Builder making it easy to layout content on a page in a structured and responsive way.
- Integrations & Features…. Simple Cloudflare Turnstile plugin 1.24.0v by Elliot Sowersby has added integration for Paid Memberships Pro allowing you to protect your Paid Memberships Pro checkout and login forms with Turnstile. Also, SureTriggers has a new email parser feature that allows you to extract data from incoming emails and then route it to apps like CRMs, project management tools, or your email marketing platform.
- Blocks Life… the Stackable block builder plugin has added integration with WooCommerce using dynamic content along with enhanced background color opacity and gradient color picker. Also, the Gutenberg 16.8v update makes the cover block automatically set overlay color when applying the initial background image.
- WP Milestones Journey… check the insightful 15 years and look back at the progress of Pods framework plugin for creating custom post types and custom fields. Also, Sagar Patel shared about the remarkable journey of going from 0 to 100,000 installs milestone of The Plus Addons for Elementor.
- More WP Milestones… Daman Jeet shared about the FunnelKit Funnel Builder plugin crossing 20K+ installs in the directory. Vikas Singhal shared about the single block plugin for creating forms, Gutena Forms crossing 10K+ active installs.
Quick Bits 👍
- Anne’s source of truth series for the next WordPress 6.4 release.
- Noticed: Torsten Landsiedel shared sad story of wpSEO .de plugin!
- David Gwyer on making the Block Editor icons more dynamic – fun.
- Matt Mullenweg chats with Nasdaq on WordPress and open source.
- Insightful: Top languages by GDP in 2023 for multilingual websites.
- Do Update to WordPress 6.3.2 – a maintenance and security update.
- WordPress Photos Directory has crossed 10,000+ free photos now!
Web Hosting Updates + WP Career Moves
Web Hosting Updates… Kinsta has launched Static Site Hosting (for free!) where one can host a static website with HTML pages and assets like JavaScript and CSS files at lightning-fast speed. Also, Hostinger Hosting has a new CEO, Daugirdas Jankus, who has led marketing activities at the company for the past six years.
WP Career Moves… Kathy Zant, the face of Kadence for me and many others, is leaving the Liquid Web / StellarWP as family and other things initiated this change. Rian Rietveld, web accessibility specialist, after being at Level Level agency for 5 years is leaving to pursue self employment. Jonny Harris is leaving XWP after 4 years of being there, but for sure staying in the WordPress ecosystem.
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