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Tag: News

  • What’s Coming in WordPress 6.3 (Features and Screenshots)

    WordPress 6.3 Beta arrived a few days ago and is expected to be released on August 8th, 2023. This will be the second major release of 2023 and will come with significant new features and improvements.

    We have closely monitored the development and tried new features on our test sites.

    In this article, we will look into what features are coming in WordPress 6.3 with details and screenshots.

    What to expect from WordPress 6.3 with new features and improvements

    Note: You can try out the beta version on your computer or a staging environment by using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. Please keep in mind that some of the features in the beta may not make it into the final release.

    Here is a quick overview of changes coming in WordPress 6.3:

    Site Editor Enhancements in 6.3

    The site editor in WordPress came out of beta in 6.2. The upcoming 6.3 will improve the site editor with several new features and enhancements to improve user experience.

    New Navigation in Site Editor

    WordPress 6.2 introduced a new navigator to the site editor. This allowed users to choose the template or template part they wanted to edit.

    WordPress 6.3 will bring improvements to this navigator, allowing users to select not just template or template parts but also pages, styles, patterns, and navigation menus.

    Site editor navigation

    The search icon will open the command tool (more on this later), where you can look for the area you want to edit.

    You can also quickly open your site in a new tab by clicking the ‘View Site’ button. The button only appears when you take your mouse to the site title and the search area.

    Manage Patterns in Site Editor

    WordPress 6.3 will also introduce a new and intuitive way to manage patterns. You can view all your patterns inside the site editor.

    Patterns in site editor

    Clicking on ‘Patterns’ will show the patterns available on your site in categorized sections.

    These will include both synced and unsynced patterns that you can use.

    Patterns library in site editor

    Unsynced patterns are standalone patterns that can be inserted at any time. After adding them, you can make changes, and those changes will not affect the original pattern.

    Synced patterns can be used across your WordPress website. Changing them will affect the original pattern. They behave like reusable blocks, so all your reusable blocks will also appear here and now be called ‘Synced Patterns’.

    At any time, you can click on the ‘+’ button in the Patterns menu to create a new pattern.

    Create a new pattern in site editor

    You can also manage your custom patterns by clicking on ‘Manage all of my patterns’ in the sidebar.

    This will allow you to edit and manage your custom-made patterns and reusable blocks.

    Manage patterns

    Quickly Edit Pages

    The site editor will now allow you to easily select ‘Pages’ from the editor navigation menu.

    Edit pages in site editor

    Clicking on this will also show you the pages you edited most recently, enabling you to quickly resume edits on a page you have been working on.

    You can also click the ‘+’ button in the navigation menu to quickly create a new page and immediately edit it in the site editor.

    Create or edit pages in the site editor

    Preview Block Themes in Site Editor

    When installing classic themes, you can already preview them without activating them on your site. This allows you to preview a WordPress theme without changing your live site.

    WordPress 6.3 will also allow users to preview block themes inside the editor. This will help users test-drive a theme before activating it on their sites.

    Live preview block themes

    Note: This is an experimental feature that didn’t work well during beta testing on our test sites.

    Style Revisions to Easily Undo Changes

    WordPress makes it super easy to undo changes to posts and pages using a feature called Revisions.

    The same feature will now be available for site editor styles. It will allow you to see the changes you made to your theme styles and undo them if needed.

    Simply select a style or block that you want to edit in the Styles panel. Click on the ‘Revisions’ button and then select ‘Revision history’.

    Style revisions

    This will show you all the changes made to the style of the selected item.

    You can then switch between different versions and click the ‘Apply’ button to undo a change and revert to a previous state.

    Browse revisions

    The New Command Tool in WordPress 6.3

    WordPress 6.3 will also introduce the new command tool. It will allow users to perform actions quickly using the keyboard.

    Command tool in site editor

    Simply press the CTRL + K or Command + K keys on your keyboard. This will bring up the command tool, where you can simply start typing to search.

    It will then show you matching templates, template parts, patterns, blocks, posts and pages, and more. Selecting an item from the results will open it in the site editor.

    Block Editor Improvements

    WordPress 6.3 will also bring several new features and improvements to the block editor.

    Footnote and Details Blocks

    WordPress 6.3 will ship with two new blocks called Footnote and Details.

    Footnote Block

    Before, the block editor had no easy way to add footnotes to a post. Users had to create footnotes or use a third-party plugin.

    With WordPress 6.3, users can simply select the ‘Footnote’ option using the three-dot menu in the toolbar.

    Adding footnotes in WordPress 6.3

    Details Block

    Have you ever wanted a way for users to click on some text to reveal more information? The Details block lets you do just that.

    Simply add the Details block and provide the text that will be visible to the users.

    Using Details block

    Below that, you can add the content you want to hide inside the hidden block.

    This content could be text, images, media, and more.

    Preview Details block

    The Details block could be a handy replacement for accordions, which are commonly used to add FAQs or information in a compact style.

    Improved Padding and Margin Controls

    WordPress 6.3 will also introduce improved padding and margin controls.

    Previously, if you unlinked padding and margin controls, they took up a lot of space in the right column.

    In WordPress 6.3, padding and margin controls will be more compact and easy to use.

    Compact padding and margin controls

    Better Handling of Image Aspect Ratio

    WordPress 6.3 will allow users to choose the aspect ratio for an image. This will enable users to easily select the image size while maintaining the aspect ratio.

    This ensures that the images will look good in all sizes.

    Image aspect ratio

    Color and Layout Support for Cover Block

    The Cover block will get improvements in WordPress 6.3.

    Users can now choose its layout options, similar to the Group block.

    Cover layout

    The Cover block will now support duotone filters.

    Users will also find more design options for text inside the Cover block.

    Cover block duotone and colors

    Link control is the tool used by the block editor to add links. WordPress 6.3 will make some adjustments to improve it further.

    New link control

    Users can create a new page directly using the ‘Create Page’ button within the link control tool.

    The toggle to open a link in a new tab is also unavailable when adding a link. However, you can edit a link and find the option tucked away inside the ‘Advanced’ setting.

    Open link in new tab

    Under the Hood Changes

    There are also a ton of changes in WordPress 6.3 intended for developers. Here are some of the new features that you will find in the update:

    • Improved emoji loader to reduce the time spent on loading the emoji script. (#58472)
    • Defer and async support added to the WP Scripts API. (#12009)
    • Fetch priority support added for images. (#58235)
    • Skipping lazy loading for images outside the loop in classic themes. (#58211)
    • Attempt rollback for failed plugin and theme updates. (#51857)
    • Merge get_posts() and get_pages(). (#12821)

    We hope this article helped you get a sneak peek into what’s coming in WordPress 6.3.

    Comment below to let us know what features you find interesting and what you’d like to see in a future WordPress release!

    If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

    The post What’s Coming in WordPress 6.3 (Features and Screenshots) first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • WordPress to Host 6.3 Live Product Demo on Thursday, July 20

    WordPress 6.3 is scheduled to be released one month from today on August 8, 2023. The live product demo date and time has now been set for Thursday, July 20, at at 16:00 UTC. Participants can join live via this Zoom link.

    Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributors Anne McCarthy and Rich Tabor will be hosting the event, moderated by Nathan Wrigley. They will highlight upcoming changes and take questions from participants during a Q&A session at the end.

    WordPress 6.3 is set to introduce an exciting array of new features – the Command Palette, content editing and distraction-free mode in the Site Editor, pattern creation, and much more. There have also been significant changes to pattern management UI as late as Beta 3. The live product demo is a good opportunity to get up to speed with a guided tour of everything new that will be landing in 6.3.

    The event will be recorded and those who cannot attend live can catch it later when it is published on WordPress.tv.

  • WordPress Unveils Plans for Real-Time Collaboration with Major Improvements to Revisions and the Media Library

    In a series of four posts, Gutenberg lead architect Matías Ventura has outlined the project’s phase 3 plans for Real-Time Collaboration, Workflows, Revisions, and the Media Library. WordPress 6.3 is set to be the final major release of Phase 2, which focused on Customization.

    Phase 3 will shift focus from the editors and move into other parts of the admin in an effort to bring seamless collaboration to WordPress.

    “The primary aim of real-time collaboration is to build functionality into the block editors so that concurrent collaboration, shared edits, and online presence of peers are possible,” Ventura said. “Supporting these workflows is not just about concurrency, though, but also about lifting restrictions that have been present in WordPress for a long time, such as locking a post when two people try to edit at the same time.”

    The technical challenges here are in making this available to all WordPress users, even those on the most economical hosting environments. Ventura shared a quick preview of what that might look like, along with the scope of the tasks that would be part of this effort.

    In the Workflows document, Ventura details collaborative features that will be part of this phase, including allowing users to add comments, suggest edits, and tag other users for peer review. These enhancements would apply to both content creation and design changes on block themes.

    There are some interesting projects listed within the scope of this section, including a publishing checklist, sharing draft links with permission controls, and exploring hook points for version control systems to take over internal revision systems if desired.

    image credit: Workflows – Matías Ventura

    Users can expect that Revisions will also be getting some major improvements as part of the Collaboration phase of the project.

    “As part of improving the overall experience, we should also go beyond document level history and explore how the interface could let users browse through single block changes and offer the ability to restore them individually rather than requiring full post restores,” Ventura said. “For global styles, we should evolve the revisions panel to allow comparing two revisions side by side. For synced patterns, we could allow browsing edit history with side by side and overlay comparison tools.”

    Long-awaited improvements to WordPress’ Media Library are also considered part of this phase.

    “The main goals are to expand the media management capabilities, unify the block edit and single media interfaces, and improve upon the major media flows,” Ventura said. He highlighted a few major areas that may get some enhancements, such as categorization and tagging, better handling of attached media, and design improvements to the library view.

    Other Media Library projects may include a revamp of the image editing interface, which remains somewhat unintuitive at this time. Ventura proposes these tools, such as cropping and thumbnail browsing, be updated to align more with the current block editor tools.

    Contributors may also be exploring contribution to the commons from WordPress, along with improvements to attribution.

    “As we look into expanding the presence and touch points of Openverse, it’d be interesting to see how contributions to the commons could work directly from a user’s WordPress install,” Ventura said. “Another area to look at is improving handling and presentation of other media types (audio, video, files) and their connection with blocks and the block APIs. We should resurface work on a native Playlist block, ideally powered by the Interactivity API.”

    Reactions to the outlined vision and scope for the Collaboration phase have so far been positive, as users and contributors are eager to see a strong focus come to some of the other parts of WordPress that have not had much attention for years. The newer real-time collaboration features that will take WordPress beyond the days of locking posts while another person is editing, have the potential to speed up content creation and editing for groups working on the same website.

    “Very much looking forward to this phase. I think it will really enable larger teams to work on posts much easier,” WordPress developer Rich Holman commented. “I’ve mentioned this before but the ability to continue working on a published draft without the front-end updating seems important especially with more editors working on something, especially if doing more experimental edits.”

    For more details on the features being considered for this phase, check out the Phase 3 overview post, along with Ventura’s more recent write-ups on how contributors will improve and expand WordPress’ collaboration architecture with updates to Real-Time Collaboration, Workflows, Revisions, and the Media Library.

  • Hey: An Elegantly Simple WordPress Block Theme for Blogging

    Hey is a block theme designed by Automattic for users on WordPress.com and also released for free in the WordPress.org Themes Directory. It’s the kind of simple theme that enables you to quickly get started writing online, without having to configure a bunch of design elements. The homepage features a profile image (Site Logo), site title, and recent posts with dates.

    Single posts display with the feature image at the top of the post, although this template can easily be edited if this is an undesirable feature. Previous and Next post navigation appears under the post. Users can add menu items to display at the top, but clicking the site logo brings the visitor back home in the absence of a navigation menu.

    The Hey theme comes in two different styles – the default and a serif variation. Colors can be adjusted to create a more vibrant palette for the site design.

    One major drawback to this theme, which may not be immediately evident by looking at the demo, is that if users want to display more than the three most recent posts, they will need to add the pagination block inside the query loop block. It will also need to be styled to match the theme better. The query loop can be edited to show more posts on the homepage.

    Although Hey is a simple personal blog theme, it also comes packaged with templates for WooCommerce compatibility. This is likely for the benefit of WordPress.com users who may want to quickly fire up a store. Self-hosted users who want to sell products with WooCommerce will be able to easily display things like the mini-cart, customer account block, product archive, product search results, and more.

    Overall, Hey is an elegantly simple block theme with a clean design and plentiful white space. It’s suitable for the person who wants an almost blank slate to get started, or just a theme that enables writing without any distraction for the reader. Check out the live demo on WordPress.com and download Hey from WordPress.org.

  • WordPress 6.3 to Drop Support for PHP 5

    WordPress is officially dropping support for PHP 5 in the upcoming 6.3 release, which is expected on August 8. WordPress’ minimum supported version has sat at PHP 5.6.20 since 2019, but will be updated to 7.0.0 in the next release. The recommended PHP version will stay the same at 7.4+.

    “The minimum supported version was last adjusted in WordPress 5.2 in 2019, and since then usage of PHP 5.6 has dropped to 3.9% of monitored WordPress installations as of July 2023,” WordPress core developer John Blackbourn said.

    “There’s no concrete usage percentage that a PHP version must fall below before support in WordPress is dropped, but historically the project maintainers have used 5% as the baseline. Now that usage of PHP 5.6 is well below that at 3.9% and dropping by around 0.1% every few weeks, plans to increase the minimum supported PHP version can move forward.”

    Blackbourn also emphasized that WordPress’ support for PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 is “very good” and contributors may soon act on a proposal for the criteria that would enable them to remove the “beta” support label on new PHP versions. Nearly 26% of WordPress users are already running sites on PHP 8.0+.

    Prior to this minimum required version boost, some hosts had even taken matters into their own hands in urging users to get on newer versions of PHP. Dreamhost charges additional fees for sites that require extended support for PHP 7.4 and older. IONOS and Strato have similar policies.

    The decision to bump the minimum supported version is happening after a lengthy seven-month long discussion, which surprisingly drew a little resistance. Although sites that remain on PHP 5.6 cannot upgrade beyond WordPress 6.2, they will still receive security updates, as the project currently backports them to versions 4.1+. The bump to 7.0.0 for the minimum supported version will have many benefits for the WordPress ecosystem of themes and plugins, will significantly reduce memory usage for upgraded websites, and provide better security and improvements to core tooling.

    “There are no plans to bump the minimum supported PHP version on a schedule,” Blackbourn said. “The core team will continue to monitor usage of PHP versions and work with the hosting team to encourage users and hosting companies to upgrade their versions of PHP as swiftly as possible. The 5% usage baseline will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.”

  • WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 Released, Introduces UI Changes to Pattern Management

    WordPress contributors are onto another round of testing, as 6.3 Beta 3 was released this week. RC 1 is expected on July 18, and a live product demo is anticipated to be broadcast on Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 16:00 UTC. These demos have become a more regular part of the release process and allow viewers to familiarize themselves with important new features and updates coming in the release.

    Beta 3 includes approximately 34 updates to the Site Editor since the previous beta release, and more than 40 updates coming from Trac.

    A last-minute PR has renamed Library to Patterns in the Site Editor and was cherry-picked to get it included in Beta 3. Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributor Aaron Robertshaw cited three reasons for the renaming:

    • Discovery: this is an opportunity to make patterns front and center as we are introducing the ability to save custom patterns. They should be front and center in the “Design” tab.
    • Clarity: library can be obscure and overlaps with other terminology (like Media Library). We didn’t get to add font library management in this round, but it would have made things more confusing (would a user expect to see their font library under “Styles” or an item called “Library”?). Calling it patterns removes that ambiguity.
    • Presence: patterns is a unique name that has been established in the WP branding parlance for a bit and deserves more clear placement.

    This video from the PR gives a quick overview of the changes testers should see in the Patterns UI as of Beta 3:

    Gutenberg PR: Patterns: Rename Library to Patterns #52102

    Beta 3 introduces a new lock icon to designate theme patterns as unable to be edited or modified. It also adds a sync status details section within the pattern sidebar navigation screen.

    image credit: Gutenberg PR #51990

    There are a significant number of new things being introduced after Beta 1, which seems usual. Major features like the pattern creation and the Patterns section made their debut in Gutenberg 16.1 but had very little testing before being rolled into the upcoming WordPress 6.3 release. This is likely why UI changes are being introduced after Beta 1 has already shipped.

    Check out the Beta 3 release post for more information on how to test. A Beta 4 is anticipated the week of July 11, followed by RC 1 on July 18. The general release is scheduled for August 8, 2023.

  • WPBeginner Turns 14 Years Old – Reflections, Updates, and a Giveaway ($50,000 in Prizes)

    Today is July 4th, which means WPBeginner is officially 14 years old. We’ve come a long way!

    Like every year, I want to take a few minutes and do a quick recap of all the major things happening in business as well as my personal life.

    Bonus: I’m also doing a massive birthday giveaway, and you’ll get a chance to win your favorite premium WordPress plugins worth $50,000. On top of that, you can also win a 1-on-1 mentorship call with me for 1 hour.

    Enter WPBeginner’s Birthday Giveaway!

    Since this is a long article, you can easily skip to the section you’re most interested in:

    WPBeginner 14th Birthday

    WPBeginner Story

    I first started using WordPress when I was 16 years old and I fell in love with the community. This led me to start WPBeginner at age 19 with a single mission: to make WordPress easy for beginners.

    Since then WPBeginner has become the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners.

    For those of you who’re new, you can read the full WPBeginner story on our about page and use the Start Here page to get the most out of WPBeginner.

    Personal Updates

    My son Solomon is now 6.5 years old, and it’s quite cool to see him taking interest in WordPress. He attended WordCamp Asia with me earlier this year in Bangkok.

    His favorite task in the company is coming up with mascot ideas for our new plugins at Awesome Motive.

    We as a family are continuing our travels around the world, and it’s really awesome to meet our local WPBeginner users.

    Since the last WPBeginner birthday, we have taken trips to Istanbul, Karachi, Alaska, Dubai, California, Mexico, St. Thomas, Maldives, Thailand, Canada, and more.

    Balkhi Family 2023

    One of the best parts about running a fully remote online company is that I can work from anywhere in the world. We have team members in 50 countries now, and I’m planning to visit at least few more countries this year.

    If you didn’t get a chance to read my 2022 recap, I highly recommend checking it out on my personal blog where I share lessons learned from last year.

    Btw, here’s a preview of a mascot that Solomon helped come up with for our new plugin, Duplicator. The mascot’s name is Willie the Walrus.

    Duplicator Plugin Mascot created by Solomon Balkhi

    WPBeginner Updates

    Thanks to our awesome community, WPBeginner has continued to grow year after year. Aside from all the amazing WordPress tutorials on our blog, there have been several notable updates from last year that I’d like to highlight.

    But before I do that, I want to share a huge milestone that I’m super proud of. We got featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Time Square for passing 25 million active installs of our products.

    This was a huge celebration for our entire team — going from a blog to being in Time Square in New York City!!!

    These milestones are proof that hard work does pay off.

    Talking about hard work, here are some big WPBeginner updates that happened in the last 12 months:

    1. We launched Five New Free Business Tools

    Since last year, we have launched 5 new free business tools to help you do more with WordPress.

    • Keyword Generator Tool: It makes keyword research easy by helping you generate 300+ keyword ideas in a click.
    • Blog Post Idea Generator: It helps you come up with a year’s worth of content ideas in a second.
    • Smart Headline Analyzer: It lets you write irresistible headlines that your users can’t help but click.
    • Website SEO Analyzer: It finds critical errors on your site and generates a free SEO report to fix them.
    • Keyword Density Checker: It enables you to find the primary keywords on any content to fix over-optimization. Also great for competitor research.

    2. Larger community + More Content

    Our community has continued to grow on all social media networks. Our WPBeginner Engage Facebook group now has over 94,000 members.

    And the WPBeginner YouTube channel has passed 291,000 subscribers.

    We also revamped our WPBeginner video site. Now you can access loads of step-by-step videos without hiring a developer for free.

    You can follow us on various social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

    3. Contributing to WordPress and Open Source

    We have always been huge supporters of open source. This past year, we revamped our free Insert Headers and Footers plugin from the ground up and relaunched it under a new brand WPCode.

    It was originally created to help you add code snippets in WordPress without editing your theme’s functions.php file or installing an additional plugin.

    Now we launched a brand new snippet library from where you can find the snippet and add them to your site with one click.

    You can also create your own WPCode profile to save snippets, create private snippets, and more.

    See the full WPCode announcement to see why this is the most underrated yet MUST HAVE plugin for all websites, and it’s now being used by over 2 million websites!

    4. New Acquisitions & Investments

    In 2018, I created the WPBeginner Growth Fund to invest in WordPress-focused companies that are solving important problems that you, our readers, want me to help out with.

    Over the past 12 months, we have made several big acquisitions and investments in the ecosystem.

    • We acquired Thrive Themes, company behind some of the most powerful growth tools for WordPress. Over 200,000+ smart website owners use the Thrive plugin suite to easily convert website visitors into email subscribers, paying customers, and raving fans. Some of their plugins include landing page builder, quiz builder, course platform, and more. Here’s the full background story.
    • We acquired Duplicator, a powerful WordPress backup and migration plugin used by over 1.5 million websites. You can use it to create automatic backups and store them on cloud. It comes with easy restore option to save time. It’s also the best solution to migrate your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live. Here’s the full background story.
    • We acquired WP101, which offers professionally-produced WordPress training videos to help you learn WordPress, fast. It’s a perfect solution for business owners to offer WordPress training videos in their employee onboarding process. Here’s the full background story.
    • We acquired Easy WP SMTP, which helps you solve email delivery issues and prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder.

    Aside from the full acquisitions, we also invested in HeroThemes, a company that specializes in building tools to help users deliver great customer service on their websites. See more details here.

    I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with the Growth Fund, and it’s really amazing to see the impact our companies are making in the WordPress ecosystem and the larger open web.

    Want me to invest in your business? Learn more about the WPBeginner growth fund.

    Product / Company Updates

    Often readers ask me what is WPBeginner’s income, and how does WPBeginner make money by giving away all WordPress tutorials for free.

    Well, we make money indirectly through our suite of premium WordPress plugins that are now running on over 25 million websites. Aside from that, we also have investments in a suite of other WordPress companies through our growth fund that I mentioned above.

    Our team at Awesome Motive continued to set new records this year, and all of our products saw tremendous growth.

    Awesome Motive Website

    Here’s a list of our plugins that you should check out:

    • OptinMonster â€“ The #1 conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers. There’s also a free version here.
    • WPForms â€“ The most beginner-friendly WordPress form builder used by over 5 million websites. There’s also a free version – WPForms Lite.
    • MonsterInsights â€“ The most popular WordPress Analytics plugin to help you grow your business with confidence. I use this on all of my websites. Free version available: MonsterInsights Lite.
    • AIOSEO â€“ The original WordPress SEO plugin to help you get more traffic. Used by over 3 million websites. There’s also a free version of AIOSEO.
    • WP Mail SMTP â€“ The #1 plugin that helps improve your WordPress email deliverability. The free version: WP Mail SMTP Lite is sufficient for most website owners.
    • SeedProd â€“ The best drag & drop website builder for WordPress. You can use it to create custom WordPress themes, landing pages, and website layouts without any code. Try the free version of SeedProd.
    • RafflePress â€“ A powerful WordPress giveaway and contest plugin to grow your website traffic.
    • Smash Balloon â€“ The most popular social media feeds plugin for WordPress. A free version is available for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds.
    • PushEngage â€“ The leading web push notification software for small businesses. It helps send over 9 billion push notifications each month.
    • SearchWP â€“ The most advanced WordPress search plugin. Completely customize your WordPress search form and search results algorithm to improve your content discoverability and increase sales. Trusted by over 30,000+ website owners.
    • Easy Digital Downloads â€“ the top-rated WordPress plugin for selling digital products and subscriptions. Easily sell eBooks, software, music, and more, protect digital downloads, accept payments, and more. Trusted by over 50,000+ website owners. Try the free version of EDD.
    • AffiliateWP â€“ The most popular affiliate management plugin for WordPress. Easily launch an affiliate program for your store. One-click integration with WooCommerce, WPForms, and 20 other payment plugins. Unlock a new growth channel without the middleman fees.
    • WP Simple Pay â€“ Easily accept payments online without a complex shopping cart setup. Great for simple one-time or recurring payments. Built-in support for credit card payments, ACH bank debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more. Try the free version of WP Simple Pay.
    • TrustPulse â€“ Leverage the power of social proof to instantly increase site conversions by up to 15%. Automatically show real-time purchase notifications and other website activity notifications to increase trust, conversions, and sales.
    • WP Charitable â€“ The top-rated donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress. Over 10,000+ non-profit organizations and website owners across the world use Charitable to create fundraising campaigns and raise more money online. Try the free version of Charitable.
    • Thrive Themes: Powerful growth tool suite for WordPress to help you transform your website into an online business platform. The suite includes Thrive Theme Builder, Thrive Automator, Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, and more.
    • Duplicator: Secure your WordPress website with reliable backups. It also makes it easy to migrate and restore your website to your favorite locations. Try the free version of Duplicator.
    • User Feedback: Easiest way to collect user feedback and make surveys on your website. Great HotJar alternative (free version here).

    We’re a fully remote team of over 290+ people across 50 countries. Want to join our team and work alongside me in helping small businesses grow and compete with the big guys? We’re hiring.

    WPBeginner Birthday Giveaway

    To celebrate the 14th birthday of WPBeginner, we are offering premium plugins worth $50,000.

    The prize includes 10 licenses of each of the plugins listed here.

    WPForms, MonsterInsights, OptinMonster, AIOSEO, SeedProd, Thrive Suite, Funnelkit, Uncanny Automator, MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, SearchWP, RafflePress, Formidable Forms, WPCode, Duplicator, Smash Balloon, WP Mail SMTP, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, Pretty Links.

    On top of that, you can also win a 1-on-1 mentorship call with me for 1 hour.

    The winner will be chosen randomly using a random generator script.

    Thank You, Everyone

    I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us in this journey. I really do appreciate all of your retweets, personal emails, content suggestions, and interactions at events.

    I also want to say a special thank you to everyone who’s using our plugins because that enables us to keep bringing more free tutorials on WPBeginner.

    You all are AMAZING, and without you, there is no WPBeginner.

    I look forward to another solid year ahead of us.

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    The post WPBeginner Turns 14 Years Old – Reflections, Updates, and a Giveaway ($50,000 in Prizes) first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • WordCamp Dhaka 2023 Cancelled Due to Concerns of Corporate Influence on Community Decision-Making

    WordCamp Dhaka (Bangladesh) 2023 has been cancelled by The WordPress Community Team due to concerns of corporate influence on the community decision-making process. The camp was scheduled for August 5, and organizers had already secured a venue and progressed on moving the camp forward.

    The Community Team published a statement on the event’s website, which cited the interference of corporate interests:

    The WordPress Community Team’s primary goal is to support and nurture the WordPress community by enabling organizers to create amazing events that celebrate WordPress, its community, and globally shared values. The Community team cannot support the event if a WordCamp is not aligned with these values.

    WordPress events benefit the WordPress community as a whole, not specific businesses or individuals. The Community Team expects that WordCamps decisions should be guided by the community’s collective wisdom and not influenced by any one company’s interests. When companies attempt to exert influence on the planning process, the Community Team must step in to mediate. In this instance, we have decided to cancel WordCamp Dhaka 2023.

    The Community Team urged the Dhaka community to focus on collaborative organization, companies uplifting the community, and greater diversity in participation.

    In an equally vague incident report on WordPress.org, which doesn’t even identify the WordCamp that was cancelled, Community Team contributor Sam Suresh called it “an unfortunate but necessary decision.” He summarized the team’s reasons for the decision:

    The decision to cancel the event was not a result of inadequate planning or insufficient effort on the part of the organizing team. Instead, there were observable actions from local community members to influence decisions that would benefit specific individuals or companies. When this influence did not immediately lead to their desired results, the individuals aimed to undermine the organizing process and event success. While the Community Team took steps to mediate, the inappropriate behavior and actions we saw necessitated the cancelation. This is a rare and extreme decision and underscores the severity of the situation.

    Suresh said the issues applied to the local meetup group as well, and that all co-organizers and event organizers were removed from their roles and required to repeat their orientation to gain access again. A community deputy and a mentor were also removed from their roles in the project and the companies involved in the infractions were banned from sponsoring WordPress events for a year.

    “In times of challenges like these, it is important to remember that anyone can organize WordPress events regardless of who they work for and that WordPress community events are for the benefit of everyone, not any one business or individual,” Suresh said. “As a community, we will not tolerate harassment or influencing unacceptable behaviors.”

    Shortly after publishing, several community members commented with objections to the level of secrecy around the issues at hand and the people and companies involved. The Community Team’s nebulous posts on the matter seem to have further scandalized the situation, instead of offering clarity and transparency.

    “This post definitely abides by the ongoing policy of not letting the community know who is being censured by the Community Services team, even in cases of egregious action,” WordPress marketing and meta contributor Sé Reed commented.

    “I’ve seen multiple cases of people filing harassment reports and various Code of Conduct violations, and that person/people have had various consequences, including being removed from organizing teams. However, those people then cite various reasons for leaving the team, often outright lying. But because of the secrecy around these cases, no one says otherwise and those people can and often do continue to operate in the community without any repercussions beyond secretly losing their ‘official’ role(s).”

    Reed highlighted the damaging effects of the secrecy surrounding these incidents, most notably that explaining the situation often falls to those who filed the report, as the Community Team abdicates any further responsibility after validating the report.

    “This action is damaging to the community as a whole, as we do not have a full picture of who we are working with and we continue to unknowingly support and empower people who have not honored their community commitments,” Reed said.

    Not all participants in the discussion were in favor of The Community Team identifying the individuals involved, but in this situation they demand to know the companies that were banned from sponsoring WordPress events.

    “I’m on the fence about knowing peoples’ names here, but I think people definitely need to know the companies involved; actively trying to sabotage a WordPress WordCamp is a serious breach of trust for the community,” WebDevStudios Director of Engineering Mitch Cantor said. “Especially when they may turn around and then make money from that said community they tried to sabotage.”

    Dealing with these types of sensitive situations is not an enviable task, but the community, for whom these decisions are designed to serve, is calling for a greater level of transparency regarding those who act in ways that are not aligned with WordPress’ globally shared values.

    “One way or the other, protecting folks who have violated the Community Code of Conduct is a policy that very clearly needs to be revisited,” Reed said.

  • Ultimate Member 2.6.7 Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

    Authors of the Ultimate Member plugin have released version 2.6.7 with a patch for a privilege escalation vulnerability. Last week WPScan reported that Ultimate Member had still not fully patched the vulnerability after multiple inadequate attempts. There was evidence that it was being actively exploited in the wild.

    Working through the complexities of this security issue, WPScan researcher Marc Montpas opened a ticket on WordPress trac, identifying an issue with the meta key field in the usermeta table using accent insensitive collations:

    Looking at the latest string of vulnerability issues that came up related to the Ultimate Member plugin I discovered that the usermeta table has an accent insensitive collation for the meta_key field. This results in queries for wp_cãpăbilitiës to return the actual wp_capabilities row! See update_metadata() function in wp-includes/meta.php

    Imagine the attack surface this brings. In fact, don’t imagine, just look at the recent attacks in the wild.

    This particular issue made it more difficult to fully patch the vulnerability in question. Ultimate Member released version 2.6.7 on July 1, 2023, which whitelists for metakeys the plugin stores while sending forms. The plugin’s security advisory details a few other changes that may affect third-party developers:

    2.6.7 also separates form settings data and submitted data and operates them in 2 different variables.

    [It] includes some significant changes to how forms submissions are handled. This may cause 3rd-party modifications to stop working. For Third-party developers, please update your customizations to support the new changes in the latest version

    Ultimate Member recommends users review and delete any unknown administrator accounts, reset all user passwords including the admin, enable SSL and backups, and send any advisories to site members and/or customers about the incident. The plugin’s developers are working on releasing a feature inside the plugin that will enable the website admin to reset passwords for all users, but it is still being finalized:

    The reason for this is a site using our plugin may have been hacked or injected with malware that sniffs login inputs, because this vulnerability issue is prone to these attacks, we recommend to reset passwords after updating with a security patch. This is to ensure the best protection for your website user’s passwords.

    All Ultimate Member users should update to the latest available version, 2.6.7, which has the patch for the vulnerability. The plugin’s developers are awaiting more feedback from WPScan and are evaluating all their extensions to ensure they are secure.

  • WordPress Plugin Review Team Adds 6 New Sponsored Volunteers, Opens Applications 

    A new era has begun for WordPress.org’s Plugin Review Team. Mika Epstein, who has served for the past decade, is stepping down, but not before launching a new crew of volunteers.

    The team is responsible for approving newly submitted plugins, maintaining the Plugin Reviewer Handbook, as well as investigating any reported security issues and guideline violations.

    Historically, the Plugin Review team has had very little turnover, but a new crop of six sponsored volunteers will be contributing an estimated 50+ hours per week. The new members include David Pérez, Evan Herman, Francisco Torres, Luke Carbis, Marta Torre, and Paco Marchante. Their efforts are already in demand as they work to tackle a large backlog of plugins.

    “Given the nature of the work the team does, joining this team is a little different than some of the others: each new member will go through a vetting process by current team members before being selected,” Epstein said. “Some of the things the team is looking for are: a solid track record as a plugin developer; the ability to communicate clearly, kindly and constructively – both with other developers and users; interest in improving tools and processes; and excellent collaborative and conflict-management skills.” 

    Epstein is encouraging more volunteers to apply, if they have at least five hours per week to devote to the team, as they could still use more help. Prospective team members can submit an application, which will be evaluated by current team members. Applicants will be required to send examples of plugins they have coded to demonstrate their experience, provide references, and detail some of their contributions to the project.