BuddyPress 11.0.0 is now available thanks to the efforts of 34 contributors. The release is named “La Scala†in honor of a pizza restaurant located in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb.
Version 11.0.0 introduces a few important changes. BuddyPress has improved the way it loads its JavaScript and CSS assets with the addition of a new filter so that they are now only loaded on community pages. Previously, the plugin would load them indiscriminately on every page, a leftover from how they were loaded in the first Template Pack (BP Legacy). This change is being rolled out progressively, so users who want to take advantage of this improvement will need to add the filter to their bp-custom.php file.
BP 11.0.0 also enables the use of use .webp images for profile and cover images, after a user requested it in a negative review. This feature requires WordPress 5.8 or newer.
This release introduces the ability to fetch activities for or excluding a group of users. For example, developers can now write code to fetch activities for a select few users based on user ID or block updates from some annoying users by excluding their user IDs.
“This change is simple but powerful!” BuddyPress core developer Dan Cavins said. “For instance, you could create custom interest activity streams, or build a mute feature to let your members take a break from other, too-chatty users!”
BuddyPress 10.0.0 introduced an add-ons section in the plugin administration screen for users to easily test plugins or blocks maintained by the BuddyPress development team and hosted on WordPress.org. BP lead developer Mathieu Viet said the team will soon be publishing a Community Media Attachments add-on and a block-based Activity Post Form that will “standardize the way to extend activity updates with richer and more engaging content.” These feature plugins are part of what Viet anticipates will be “a transitional year for BuddyPress” and may be published to the add-ons section independent of a major release.
BuddyPress users should watch for updates to the add-ons section and check out the full list of changes in 11.0.0 in the BuddyPress codex. Updating to the latest version will require WordPress 5.7 or later.
Awesome Motive’s product suite of nearly 20 commercial plugins has expanded to include a backup plugin. The company announced its acquisition of Duplicator today, a 12-year-old freemium product with more than 1.5 million users.
In addition to the backup utility, the plugin enables users to migrate, copy, move, or clone a site from one location to another. Commercial licenses range from $49/year to $299.50/year.
Snapcreek co-founders Bob Riley and Cory Lamle, creators of Duplicator, will be moving on to pursue other endeavors but the rest of the team will continue to work on the product at Awesome Motive led by John Turner.
This is the first WordPress business acquisition of 2023, and it’s a major one as 1.5 million users are changing hands to rely on a new company. Users can expect no pricing changes but some have already expressedconcern about having to put up with Awesome Motive’s trademark aggressive marketing that litters the WordPress admin with ads and upsells.
In the co-founders’ farewell post, they assured users that Awesome Motive will continue working on their prior roadmap.
“We have shared our extensive feature wishlist, and we know that with Awesome Motive’s resources and experience that wishlist will become a reality much faster,” Riley said.
“As we pass the baton, Cory and I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey. We are extremely grateful to be able to play a small part in the amazing WordPress ecosystem.”
Gutenberg 14.9 was released this week with a powerful new feature for site editing that allows users to push individual block changes to Global Styles.
When WordPress makes it this easy for users to design their own sites, there’s always the lingering concern – will the tools inadvertently be used to make sites that are wild and wacky à la GeoCities? For example, if a user makes a change to a Heading block on the Page template, that doesn’t get automatically enabled for headings on other templates, which could potentially create an inconsistent design across the website.
The new “Push changes to Global Styles” button allows users to apply that same change to all blocks of that type. In the example below, the H1 heading has been updated to have a lime green background with red text. Under the Advanced panel in block settings, a new button appears for pushing changes to Global Styles.
It’s important to note that the feature only works inside the Site Editor. Users writing posts and pages will not have the ability to push changes to Global Styles. The new button gives users a quick way to update blocks across the site without having to manually edit every template or figure out the right CSS to apply.
Gutenberg 14.9 introduces support for shadow presets in theme.json, with two bundled default presets (Natural and Sharp). Theme authors can see how it’s done and create custom box-shadow presets, or wait for an upcoming tutorial on the topic. The 14.9 release post includes a screenshot of how this feature might be implemented:
Another new tool for theme developers is the ability to register patterns for specific templates, which would restrict where they appear. This was added via a new templateType property in the patterns registration API. Theme developers can restrict patterns to only show up for the templates where they make sense, such as 404, single-post, single-product, and category templates, for example.
Check out the 14.9 release post to see all the bug fixes and enhancements to the editor, accessibility, performance, tooling, and more.
Duplicator is a top-rated WordPress backup and site migration plugin. Over 1,500,000+ smart website owners use Duplicator to make reliable and secure WordPress backups to protect their websites. Along with backups, you can also use Duplicator to easily migrate your website from one host to another within minutes.
Introduction to Duplicator – Quick Overview
Duplicator makes it easy for website owners to protect their websites with reliable and secure cloud backups. You can use it to create manual or scheduled WordPress backups and store them on any cloud service like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.
You can also use Duplicator to easily migrate and restore your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live.
This is why over 1,500,000 smart website owners and developers use Duplicator to backup or migrate websites while saving time.
What makes Duplicator stand out is that it’s both EASY and POWERFUL.
It comes with all the powerful backup features that you need including complete WordPress files & database backup, scheduled backups, recovery points to allow for quick rollbacks, archive encryption for enhanced security, and integrations with all the popular cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, FTP / SFTP, and any S3 compatible storage service like Wasabi, etc.
When it comes to WordPress site migrations, Duplicator really stands out from competition. It has an easy migration wizard, streamlined installer, custom search & replace, support for larger websites & managed hosting, server-to-server import, ability to migrate WordPress multisite to standalone or vice-versa, shared database support, and more.
For developers and agencies, Duplicator helps eliminate the rework by allowing you to create pre-configured sites that you can quickly set up with just a few clicks. Instead of manually configuring the same themes and plugins over and over, just configure one site and bundle it into a Duplicator package. Install the package to create a pre-configured site on as many locations as you want!
Aside from that, you can brand the installer with your own logo, and it comes with tons of developer hooks for further customization.
Smart developers and agencies use Duplicator as their preferred tool because it’s always reliable and it helps simplify even the large complex website migrations.
Whether you’re a small business owner or developer, I highly recommend adding Duplicator to your WordPress toolkit.
As you know, every year I do a WPBeginner reader survey where I ask for your suggestions on what new tutorials we should write, plugins we should build, new features we should add to our existing plugins, and so on.
For the last several years, the number of requests for us to build a beginner-friendly WordPress backup & migration plugin has been increasing.
So in 2020, I finally decided to reach out to Bob & Cory (co-founders of Duplicator) to see if they would be interested in joining Awesome Motive. The reason why I picked Duplicator was because I have used it numerous times for our various website migrations, and it was always the most reliable solution especially when dealing with complex migrations.
Not to mention we have written about them in numerous WPBeginner tutorials, so you already know that I am a fan of the product.
Well 2020 was a crazy year for everyone, so the timing wasn’t right for an acquisition, but nonetheless we stayed in touch. Fast forward to 2022, we came to an agreement for Duplicator to join WPBeginner family of products.
The two co-founders will not be joining the team as they want to move on to the next chapter of their life, but the entire Duplicator team will be joining us in the journey ahead, and I am very excited to work alongside them to build the features that you have been asking for.
As you know, my goal at Awesome Motive & WPBeginner is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Our software today powers over 21 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.
I believe that a reliable website backup solution is a critical part of every website because it helps you protect your website in case something goes wrong.
And that’s why I’m really excited to have Duplicator join the AM family.
Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.
What’s Coming Next?
Our work is just starting.
We have an extensive list of ideas and feature roadmap from the feedback that you, the WPBeginner audience, have shared with us in the survey.
I’m looking forward to making those ideas come to life.
This is truly going to be a game changer!
Whether you’re a small business owner or a developer, I think you will want to choose Duplicator to protect your website with our reliable secure backups, and easily migrate your website when you’re looking to switch hosts.
If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the Duplicator plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.
As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner.
WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.
And I look forward to continuing serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.
WordPress developer Munir Kamal has released a new plugin called CF7 Blocks that does exactly what it says in the name. It brings blocks to one of WordPress’ most beloved plugins, which has kept the same familiar interface and has not yet adopted the block editor.
The Contact Form 7 plugin was created by WordPress developer Takayuki Miyoshi, who has devotedly kept it updated for the past 15 years. His stalwart commitment to keeping it free forever is one of the reasons it has grown to more than 5 million active installs. The developer community has built hundreds of integrations and extensions for CF7 because users found it easy to build forms with its simple interface.
Contact Form 7 interface
CF7 users currently edit forms in the plugin’s dedicated interface. The plugin also includes a block, so users can return to the block editor and select a form to embed.
The new CF7 Blocks plugin makes it possible to edit CF7 forms using WordPress’ default editor, instead of having to mess with shortcodes and HTML. It still has its own dedicated Contact form editing page, except with the ability to customize fields as blocks. New forms will use the block interface and old ones can still be edited using CF7’s default HTML editor.
CF7 Blocks offers a more intuitive experience with pre-made form templates that will automatically insert the necessary blocks so users don’t have to start from scratch.
In the block settings, users can easily customize the text of the labels, enter a value for placeholders, toggle the label on or off, mark fields as required, customize dimensions, and more. Fields can easily be dragged and dropped for re-ordering, a feature that is especially useful with lengthier, more complex forms.
One handy feature is that form fields can easily be transformed into other fields with the click of a button, making it easy to customize a form when the pre-set templates aren’t exactly what is needed.
In the same tradition of Contact Form 7, CF7 Blocks is available for free in the WordPress plugin directory. The plugin also has its own website where users can subscribe to get updates and find out what’s coming soon. Kamal said users can expect more fields to be added to the plugin in future releases beyond the standard fields that come with Contact Form 7. Design options for visually styling and customizing forms are another feature on the roadmap for CF7 Blocks.
The malware targets 32-bit versions of Linux, but it is also capable of running on 64-bit versions. It exploits 30 theme and plugin vulnerabilities to inject malicious JavaScript into websites, redirecting visitors to the attacker’s selected website.
The report states that Doctor Webs’ analysis of the application revealed that “it could be the malicious tool that cybercriminals have been using for more than three years to carry out such attacks and monetize the resale of traffic, or arbitrage.” During this time, the tool has been updated to target more exploitable vulnerabilities.
There are two versions of the malware – Linux.BackDoor.WordPressExploit.1 and Linux.BackDoor.WordPressExploit.2. Version 1 seeks to exploit vulnerabilities in popular plugins like WP GDPR Compliance, Easysmtp, WP Live Chat, and a dozen other free and commercial extensions. A few of these have been known to have frequent vulnerabilities and one was closed due to guideline violations but may still be active on some sites.
An updated Version 2 has a different server address for distributing the malicious JavaScript and an additional list of exploited vulnerabilities for a few more widely used plugins, including FV Flowplayer Video Player, Brizy Page Builder, WooCommerce, and more.
Doctor Web’s report also speculates that attackers may have engineered a long game plan that will give them administrative access even after users update to newer (patched) versions of the compromised plugins:
Both trojan variants have been found to contain unimplemented functionality for hacking the administrator accounts of targeted websites through a brute-force attack—by applying known logins and passwords, using special vocabularies. It is possible that this functionality was present in earlier modifications, or, conversely, that attackers plan to use it for future versions of this malware. If such an option is implemented in newer versions of the backdoor, cybercriminals will even be able to successfully attack some of those websites that use current plugin versions with patched vulnerabilities.
Doctor Web published a document with indicators of compromise, detailing hashes, IPs, and domains that the Linux backdoor malware has been using to infect WordPress websites.
Nick Diego, developer advocate at WP Engine, has released version 1.4.0 of his Icon Block plugin. Diego launched it in October 2021, after struggling to find an efficient way to add SVG icons to the block editor. He is aiming for this small but useful plugin to become “the definitive SVG icon and graphic block.” In the past year, it has grown 1300%Â to more than 7,000 active installs, while staying focused on a tight set of features.
WordPress contributors have been discussing adding SVG support to core for more than a decade, but have not yet found a clear path forward that properly addresses security concerns. In July 2022, the Performance team began working on a module for SVG uploads but it’s still in progress. In the meantime, since the SVG format has nearly universal support across the web, users have relied on plugins like SVG Support (1M+ installs) or Safe SVG (700k+ installs) to upload SVG files to the media library and use them like any other image file.
Diego’s plugin is different in that it was made for use with the block and site editors. The Icon Block registers a single block that allows users to add custom SVG icons and graphics. It also enables access to the WordPress icon library, which contains 270+ SVG icons.
One advantage of the plugin is that users don’t need to install a whole block library if they just need SVG icons. In version 1.2.0, Icon Block added the ability for developers to register their own custom icon libraries.
The latest release expands width control beyond what is offered in the core Image block to support %, px, em, rem, vh, vw, or whatever units are defined in theme.json. These units are also available in Global Styles, so users can control width based on how the theme author intended. Diego, who said he prefers to use native WordPress components wherever possible, updated width controls using Gutenberg’s HeightControl, which isn’t yet available in core.
“Luckily, it is built out of components that have been in WordPress since 6.0. I ported the code from the HeightControl over to a custom DimensionControl in the Icon Block and made a few modifications to meet my specific needs,” Diego said.
Icon height support is a new feature in the latest 1.4.0 release, another feature request from the plugin’s community of users.
“One thing to note is that I choose to exclude % from the height unit options,” Diego said in the release post. “Using % can have unexpected results based on the icon’s container height and is quite unintuitive.”
Version 1.4.0 also improves color support to better support Global Styles. When themes define a primary and secondary colors in theme.json, icons set to use these will work seamlessly with style variation switching. This is a beautiful demonstration of how block developers can make their plugins work harmoniously with Global Styles to improve the experience of full-site editing.
In future releases, Diego said he plans to work on a way to allow users to insert custom SVG icons from an “uploaded” SVG file, as well as explore ways to integrate with third-party icon libraries. Access to Font Awesome, Boostrap icons, Ionicons, and other SVG libraries would give users a much wider selection beyond the WordPress icon library when designing their sites.
Users can submit feature requests via the issues queue in the plugin’s GitHub repository. Since Diego is developing the plugin using native WordPress components as much as possible, users can also expect additional functionality to become available as it is added to WordPress core.
“There are tons of great icon plugins in the WordPress ecosystem, free and premium,” Diego said. “Most have more features and functionality than the Icon Block. However, what makes this block different is its strong commitment to WordPress’ core design principles.
“The goal was always to make the block feel like it belonged in WordPress itself. I have strived to use as many core block supports and components as possible. Version 1.4.0 stays true to this effort with much-needed enhancements.”
It is hard to believe 2022 is coming to a close. After two years of learning how to live and work apart, this year allowed for us to start to come back together. There were more in-person events, more contributions to Core, and three massive releases. The uncertainty of the landscape started to fade, and the perseverance of the community was on full display.
Though we can never fully predict what will happen next, one thing is for certain, the WordPress community will continue to be a pillar of strength through all of life’s ups and downs.
A lot happened this year, let’s get into some of the biggest wins for WordPress in 2022.
In-Person Meetups Ruled
There’s no denying that COVID took a big bite out of in-person events. In 2020 and 2021, a lot of WordCamps were forced to move online or cancel altogether. That was turned on its head this year. While there were some online events, in-person was definitely king in 2022.
500 meetups doubled their size in 2022
22 WordCamps happened in 2022 (Up from 1 in 2021)
34 WordCamps are currently being planned for 2023
Let’s look at some of the big ones:
WordCamp Europe
Finally, WordPressers descended on Porto, Portugal to celebrate WordCamp Europe. After two years of planning, scheduling, and replanning, the organizers got to see their hard work realized.
2,300 people attended the event with 800 of them going to Contributor Day. It was a huge turnout in a beautiful location, with peacocks roaming the venue grounds.
As always, talks were top notch with topics ranging from security to eCommerce. If you missed anything, all talks are now live on WordPress.tv.
Next year, WCEU will take place in Athens! Get ready for some Olympic-sized learning on June 8-10, 2023.
WordCamp US
Torque Editor Emily Schiola listening to WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg at WCUS
Another giant among WordCamps returned in 2022, WordCamp US. After two years of cancellations, the conference made its triumphant return in San Diego. This truly felt like a homecoming. While other WordCamps including Europe moved online in 2020 and 2021, US organizers decided to cancel completely. So it wasn’t only the first in-person WCUS but the first one in two years.
The weather was stormy but the spirits were high as people attended talks about design practices and accessibility. One of our favorites was when Developer Advocate at WP Engine, Nick Diego, created a block from start to finish in only 15 minutes. A really cool showing of just how easy Gutenberg is to use.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at least one killer online conference, and that is Accessibility Day. This 24-hour virtual conference is completely free and focuses entirely on accessibility. There were 24 hours of content from 20 speakers. 40 percent of presentations include a speaker with a disability.
The event was originally started by the Website Core Accessibility Team back in 2020 and this year volunteers took over organizing.
According to the website, “Our mission is to demystify website accessibility for WordPress developers, designers, content creators, and users so that they can more easily build websites that work for everyone, regardless of ability.â€
This was such a cool event that pulled in people from all around the community, and we hope to attend again next year!
WordPress 6.1 and Site Editing
There were three big Core releases in 2022 but the most notable came at the end of the year with WordPress 6.1, “Mishaâ€. The release, named for Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha†Alperin, focused heavily on design in WordPress.
Twenty Twenty-Three Theme
As with every end of the year release, 6.1 shipped with a new default theme but Twenty Twenty-Three is not like other themes. Most notably, this theme comes with 10 style variations designed by community members. These variations act as a reskin of your site. Completely change the color palette, fonts, and more with one click.
Looking for a fun, pastel vibe for your site? Check out Sherbet made by Brian Gardner, a Developer Advocate, Principal at WP Engine.
An example of a site made with Sherbet.
Or if you’re looking for something more muted, more classic, take a look at Whisper by Developer Advocate at WP Engine, Damon Cook.
An example of a site made with Whisper.
These style variations are such a huge win for WordPress. Not only do they offer a quick and easy way for users to switch up their sites, it’s a great opportunity for designers to get their work out there. I’m excited to see which variations ship with the Twenty Twenty-Four theme next year!
And That’s Not All
Of course, the theme is just one aspect of an incredibly exciting release that leads us closer to finishing Phase Two of Gutenberg, set to be completed in March of next year. Phase Two is all about Site Editing and block themes and boy did 6.1 deliver.
6.1 introduced Fluid Typography, which allows fonts to change based on the screen size. There’s nothing more annoying than designing a beautiful site and seeing it break on mobile. Fluid Typography takes the guesswork out of creating for multiple devices.
Other huge updates include:
Borders: You can now adjust the border on any block from the sidebar.
List Block: You can now drag within the list block. No more retyping and formatting.
The URL has been moved up right under the Publish date.
The Preview button has been changed to just View.
Looking Forward: State of the Word 2022
This year wrapped-up with a live streamed State of the Word speech delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivering the State of the Word.
You can find a full breakdown of the speech here, but overall the focus was the future of WordPress and leaving something powerful for future generations.
Contributions
After two years of lower than normal contributions, Mullenweg announced an astounding number of people volunteered their time this year.
A breakdown of contributions from this year at the 2022 State of the Word address.
One of the most impressive things about this graphic is that 322 people returned to contributing after taking a break in 2021. WordPress simply cannot exist without volunteers from around the community, so this is very inspiring to see.
Gutenberg Phase 3
As mentioned above, Gutenberg Phase 2 is coming to an end. That means that Phase 3 will begin. This phase will focus on collaborative editing, think Google Docs-like features right in the editor.
This will be a huge upgrade for content creators and editors.
Plugin Taxonomies
Another big announcement was regarding plugin taxonomies. Four new default taxonomies were added this month to make it easier for plugin authors to categorize their products.
They are as follows:
Single-player plugin: Created by an individual, might have paid aspects, not accepting contributions.
Community plugin: Completely free, built by the community, for the community. There are no upsells. Contributions are not only encouraged, they are regularly requested.
Canonical plugin: A community plugin that has been “blessed†by wordpress.org. The plugin will be featured there, and WordPress core team members will perform frequent security checks. Think Gutenberg.
Commercial plugin: A plugin owned by a company, may or may not accept contributions.
WordPress Playground
Finally, Mullenweg announced Playground, a way to test your WordPress site totally in a browser.
You can test out plugins, design choices, updates, and anything else you can think of in real time without using a host, database, or web server of any kind.
This is a very cool tool that you can start playing with today.
Better Together
Wow, what a year! It is absolutely incredible the things the WordPress community accomplished together. If this year has taught us anything it is that you cannot stop the power of WordPress. The community will not let it fail.
Thanks to all the event organizers, content creators, theme and plugin authors, agencies, and contributors who make WordPress the strongest CMS on the web.
One of Matt Mullenweg’s announcements at the 2022 State of the Word was the addition of new taxonomies for the theme and plugin directories that will help users more quickly ascertain the purpose of the extensions they are considering.
With nearly 60,000 free plugins available and more than 10,000 free themes, it’s not always immediately evident which extensions are officially supported by the community and which have commercial upgrades and support available.
The new “Community” and “Commercial” designations were created to demystify the selection process and empower users to find plugins and themes that suit their needs. They were live on WordPress.org last week and plugin and theme authors were invited to opt into the categorization. The categories are visible in the sidebar of the listings.
In the example below, Akismet, Automattic’s commercial spam plugin that is bundled with WordPress, has the new Commercial category applied, indicating it is free but offers additional paid commercial upgrades or support.
The categories do not yet seem to be as widely applied to themes, but one example is all the default themes fall under the “Community Theme” designation, indicating that they are developed and supported by a community as opposed to being a part of a commercial endeavor.
There are currently just two categories, but meta contributor Samuel (Otto) Wood said this effort is “the start of a broader categorization of plugins and themes.” He outlined how plugin and theme authors can opt into the new categorization feature:
To opt in a plugin or theme, email plugins@wordpress.org, or themes@wordpress.org, and simply ask to opt into it. This is a manual process for now. In the future, we will be adding a method for plugins and themes to do it themselves.
Once your plugin or theme is added, you will get a new feature (on the advanced tab for plugins, or at the bottom of the listing page for themes). For both cases, it’s a simple URL entry.
For Commercial extensions the URL is a support link. Community extension URLs will be labeled as a contribute link.
Several participants in the comments of the announcement suggested that commercial-tagged plugins and themes should also have the option to include a “contribute” link since they are open source software. Wood’s response seems to indicate the URL is more about where to direct support.
“This is a matter of categorization,” he said. “Community plugins are those that are mainly supported by a community of users. Commercial plugins are those primarily supported by a commercial profit-seeking entity.”
Once these categorizations are more widely adopted, it will be interesting to see if the theme and plugin directories will add the ability to filter search results using these tags. This would allow users to narrow down the results to be in line with their expectations for support.
Gutenberg 14.8 was released today with a major update to the Site Editor’s interface that makes it feel more unified as a design tool.
In August, Gutenberg designer James Koster shared some mockups for updating the Site Editor to include a “navigable frame†where users can select from a menu of features and styles on the left. This was one answer to what Koster identified as unbalanced feature weighting, a critical design flaw that he said was negatively impacting users’ experience with the editor.
In October, contributors began moving this idea forward, and now the first iteration of the new “browse mode” is making its debut in Gutenberg 14.8. Automattic-sponsored contributor Ryan Welcher published a video demonstrating the new UI for navigating the Site Editor:
Version 14.8 also introduces Style Block, which is now nestled into the Global Styles panel. It offers a way to visualize how global style changes will affect blocks by previewing them (both core and third-party blocks) in a resizable panel. This is especially useful when a theme has many style variations that would otherwise be time intensive to save and then preview with various blocks. It helps users answer the question, “How are these styles going to look with my blocks?” Styles can also be previewed for individual blocks.
Users who have been missing the Custom CSS panel from the Customizer will be delighted to know that Gutenberg 14.8 adds custom CSS to the Styles > Custom panel in the Site Editor. This first iteration is shipping as Experimental, so users who want to test it can enable “Global styles custom CSS” under the Gutenberg > Experiments menu in the admin.
When checking out patterns in the inserter, hovering over a pattern will now reveal its title. The invisibility of pattern titles becomes an issue when patterns are visually similar to one another with slight variations. Having the title be visible helps users sort through and select the best pattern for their needs.
The Navigation block has several updates that should improve the experience of building and editing menus:
Navigation block: Add page list to Link UI transforms in Nav block. (46426)
Navigation block: Add location->primary to fallback nav creation for classic menus. (45976)
Navigation block: Update fallback nav creation to the most recently created menu. (46286)
Navigation block: Add a ‘open list view’ button. (46335)
Navigation block: Removes the header from the navigation list view in the experiment. (46070)
Gutenberg 14.8 includes dozens of enhancements and bug fixes beyond these highlights. Check out the release post for the full changelog.
