After a little delay, WordPress 6.5 has been released but now WooCommerce 8.8 has been delayed. Also included in this issue: new plugins for forum and rewards program, WordPress .com’s own local WP dev , and website blueprints feature.
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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖
- New Plugin for Referrals… WPPOOL has launched the Echo Rewards Pro plugin, which allows you to set up refer a friend rewards program with automatic referral coupon generation, reward email customization, floating referral widget, and reporting data.
- New Forum Solution… Veena Prashanth and the team behind the WordPress membership plugin, Digital Access Pass, have launched a new Smart Forum Builder plugin for creating community forum space powered by a WordPress website.
- WP Speed… Gijo Varghese shared about launching new FlyingCDN now powered by Cloudflare Enterprise. The new FlyingCDN only works with FlyingPress for the best match and performance.
- New Local WP solution… is coming from the WordPress .com team. It is called Studio and promises a smooth and simple local development process. For now, users can sign up to be notified.
Updates: Rockbase, SeedProd, Novashare, Max Addons
Rockbase Theme… the 1.0.1v update has added promo bar templates with different layouts and a new pill shaped header area template.
SeedProd… 6.17v has added AI Image generation feature within the plugin for automatic text to image creations, powered by DALL-E.
Novashare… 1.4.9v has added an option to automatically add your Mastodon username when someone shares your content to Mastodon, which makes it easy to track your mentions.
Max Addons for Bricks… 1.7.0v has added two new WooCommerce elements: Woo Product Gallery to create dynamic galleries that highlight multiple product images and Woo product images for adding cool hover effects.
Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥
- Website Blueprints… the ZipWP platform has added the website blueprints which allows you to share a copy of your WordPress site with anyone via a link that can be customized further. Also, the xCloud hosting platform has introduced the time saving website blueprints feature for WordPress users, which allows pre-saved website settings like theme and plugins.
- Block Bindings Support… WP 6.5 release brings Block Bindings API which allows you to “bind” dynamic data to the block’s attributes. ACF 6.2.8v has added support for Block Bindings API (and a new way of Pro version activation). Pods 3.2v update has also added support for custom fields in the new WordPress 6.5 Block Bindings API and custom field revisions in Pods that use meta storage.
- WordPress 6.6 Planning… now it is time focus on the next big release, WordPress 6.6 is scheduled for release on July 16, 2024. The call for volunteers is now open for leads in documentation, design, core, marketing, and more.
- WP Milestones… JetFormBuilder from the CrocoBlock team is celebrating three years sharing its feature rich journey, and a standalone website (which I noticed for the first time). Ganga Kafle, a full time sponsored contributor, has crossed a milestone of over 5000 WordPress Themes reviewed!
- Security Yes or No… the team at Patchstack has reported about an unpatched Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability discovered in Oxygen and Breakdance builder. However, the team behind Breakdance believes, “This is not a valid RCE report”. We need common ground somewhere, right?
Quick Bits 👍
- Jocelyn Mozak has passed away on Mar 31, Cami shared on X.
- Redesign: WordPress org site got a fresh makeover, looks neat!
- MaxiBlocks has added over 13K+ SVG Icons to its page builder.
- Samah Nasr is new cohost on Underrepresented in Tech show.
- Syed Balkhi shared (Links X) WPBeginner now into WP services.
- Hostinger is new addition to hosting page on WordPress org.
- Check the full recap coverage of WordCamp Asia 2024 event.
Business of WP: Lite Plan, Rebrand, Money, Paid Trial
New Elementor Lite… Elementor cloud hosting has introduced a new lite plan, which comes with only the free version of Elementor priced at $35.88 for the first year and renews at $143.88 the next year.
Plugin Rebrand… the Website Files Changes Monitor plugin has been rebranded and relaunched as Melapress File Monitor with a free version in the repository.
Money & Journey… Zack Katz shared how Gravity Kit (previously Gravity View) made $4,000 on day one and then surpassed $5.5 million in sales in the next 10 years.
Paid Trial Experiment… Xaver from Mailster did A/B test trials with and without a required payment method. Trials with payment method converted (Links X) at 42%.
WordPress 6.5 is out, after small delay!
WordPress 6.5 ‘Regina’ has been released with the efforts of 700 contributors in at least 57 countries. Check the cool landing page of WP 6.5 release highlighting top features like font library, performance updates, and accessibility improvements.
Rich Tabor in 16 points (Links X) explained what is new in the WP 6.5 release. Also, check this video walk through exploring WP 6.5 on the WordPress channel.
WordPress 6.5 release has added support for the AVIF image format, but Google Search still does not support it. Hence, should you avoid this – by Jon Henshaw.
Woo 8.8 delayed, reverting back to old URL!
WooCommerce 8.8 was scheduled to release on April 9, 2024 – will now be released on April 10, 2024. Google’s latest algorithm update did not work well for the recent WooCommerce .com to Woo .com domain change. As a result, Woo .com will be changed back to WooCommerce .com domain before the 8.8v release.
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