WP Weekly 186 - Big - Aircraft Builder, Open Source AI Tool, WP 6.5 This Week

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WP Weekly 186 / Big

Out of the blue, this week seems like a big one in the WordPress world. Be it big releases like Rockbase theme and Aircraft Builder or all the buzz for WordPress 6.5, releasing this week. Plus, loads of fresh stuff like new addons for Gravity Forms and another stash of AI powered WordPress tools.

Omnisend is an easy, simple to use email marketing, email newsletter, SMS marketing & automation plugin for WordPress websites.

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What’s Buzzing in WordPress 💖

Accessibility Check Tool… Anne-Mieke Bovelett shared the Can Everyone Use online tool that helps you check the accessibility score of elements in frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind UI, jQuery UI, React Material UI, and Angular Material. This project was part of this year’s CloudFest Hackathon and was the overall winner (Links X).
Big New Theme Launch… Chris Hufnagel and Rafal Tomal have partnered to launch the Rockbase theme promising a solid foundation theme – that is block ready, lightweight, and extensible. Check the demo on the website, looks really neat – and does remind me of more refined Genesis framework days!
New Builder on Blocks… the team at LifterLMS has launched a blocks based Aircraft Builder plugin that works with any theme and the majority of other LMS plugins. Just select any template from the design template library to quickly start the course sales page creation process and customize it according to your needs.

Features: Reset Hub, Block Compatibility, Multi-tier

All in One WP Migration plugin… has introduced the Reset Hub feature which allows you to remove all plugins, erase all media files, revert database to the default state, and restoring WordPress to its initial installation state.

Widget Options… has added full compatibility with classic widgets, Gutenberg widgets, and Gutenberg page blocks to easily manage when blocks appear and to which visitors based on user roles, logged in/out, days of the week, devices.

AffiliateWP… has introduced the multi-tier commissions feature, which allows you to incentivize your affiliates with up to five earning tiers and have them recruit more affiliates for an expanded reach.

Extended WordPress Buzz 🔥

New Gravity Form Addons… the team at IdeaWP has released a new multi-currency addon for Gravity Forms, allowing you to add a currency switcher or assign different currency per form created with Gravity Forms plugin. Johnathon Williams has released free User Entries Lite for Gravity Forms, which displays the user’s last 5 form entries in the user profile, visible only to administrators.
WordPress & AI… James teased the upcoming AgentWP project that promises to answer your WordPress questions, be it for layout, code, bug fix, and more. Hardeep Asrani from Themeisle team shared the QuickWP, an AI-powered WordPress site builder using OpenAI, FSE theme, and WordPress Playground. It has been open sourced for use by anyone in any form.
WP 6.5 is Coming… WordPress 6.5 is scheduled to release on March 26, 2024. Courtney Robertson over at GoDaddy has published a detailed overview of big new features like font library, AVIF image support, and a look at the future direction of synced patterns and automatic update rollbacks. Also, check the WordPress 6.5 release day process over at the Make blog by Akshaya Rane.
GitHub Deployments… aiming to make the development workflow easy, GitHub Deployments is now available on WordPress .com, allowing you to connect to your repository and push changes automatically.
WP Marketing Moves… the proposal and the first steps for making a WordPress Media Corps has generated quite a discussion, check comments here for a variety of views on this topic.
WP Milestones… Siteground is celebrating 20 years in business with 20 lessons for everyone like dream big, find your community, put people first, think one step ahead, and more.

Quick Bits 👍

New Look: Cool Timeline website got a fresh makeover.
Builderius free version will get many new features soon.
8 Hours detailed video to create Elementor site by Pascal.
“What is WordPress?”, how would you define WordPress?
We need to Stop WordPress Toxicity, this video by Imran.
A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer, relatable – right!

New Updates: Perfmatters, SEOPress, & Kadence

Perfmatters… the 2.2.6v has added perfmatters_defer_jquery filter allowing you to manipulate the deferral of jQuery like on single posts of any post type on your WordPress websites.

SEOPress… the 7.6v has added the feature to import of redirects from AIOSEO plugin including regular expression, logged in status, redirect type and more.

Kadence Theme… the 1.2.0v update on March 19, 2024 has added the theme .json file to better support core blocks.

Plugins: Site Owner Admin + Onboarding UX

New Plugin… Dave Grey has created Site Owner Admin plugin that swaps out the site owners email field with a drop down list of the site’s admin accounts and also makes sure this admin is kept active (prevents deletion).

Onboarding UX… ThriveDesk’s WordPress plugin got a makeover, promising a better onboarding experience, a new look settings page, and additional tips on the settings page itself.

SureCart is a fantastic WordPress plugin for ecommerce, offering a modern and intuitive interface that outshines clunky alternatives like WooCommerce.

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Upcoming Events 💬

March 28, 2024: Introducing Bluehost Cloud, an online event.
April 09, 2024: New in WordPress 6.5 by Bud Kraus, online only.
June 15, 2024: WordCamp Europe 2024 in Torino, Italy.
September 23, 2024: Digital Asset Congress 2024 in Iceland.

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