WP Weekly 203 - Brand New - Send Platform, WooBase, Mega Menu with Blocks

Besides the brand new WordPress 6.6 release, there is a new Send by Elementor platform and WooBase for WooCommerce users. Plus, the big acquisition of NitroPack and the price hike of WebFlow got WordPress attention.

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• Elementor’s Brand New… the team at Elementor is launching a new marketing platform called Send by Elementor for WooCommerce stores built with Elementor or not. The key functionality includes designing email campaigns, marketing automation, and insights. The early access sign-up is now available for a test drive.
  
  
• Faster Woo… promising to improve Woo store owners’ experience, Mark Ashton has launched WooBase for faster and easier access to Woo store data in a modern interface. It uses the power of Rest API and does not access your Woo store data anytime.
  
  
• Free UI Design Kit & WP… Sagar Patel shared (Links X) about the free SproutUi UI Kit and design system tailored specifically for WordPress website creation containing over 1300 components and 250 pages.
  
  
• New for Responsive Images… the WordPress Performance Team has released the Enhanced Responsive Images plugin. It brings experimental enhancements for responsive images with regard to the accuracy of the sizes attribute and lazy-loading of images.
  
  

Updates: InstaWP, Breakdance, Divi AI, Bricks, Events

InstaWP & Duplicator… InstaWP 2.38.0v with many updates, including support for the Duplicator plugin backups as staging sites, support for older WordPress back to 5.x. versions, and large media uploads via S3 bucket.

Breakdance… 2.0v update has introduced a new layout engine, CSS Grid, and Flexbox layout controls in the Design tab along with enhancements for WooCommerce stores and dynamic data functionality.

Divi + Unsplash… making Divi AI features more useful, they have added Unsplash photos collection integration into section and layout generation, allowing you to add real photos accompanying the written content.

Bricks + Thank You Builder… Max Addons for Bricks has introduced the WooCommerce Thank You Page Builder which has dedicated elements like billing address, order overview, order details, and shipping address.

One Off Events… FluentBooking 1.5.0v has added front-end panel option, new one-off event type for single and group bookings, and event search functionality to locate specific events quickly.

1. New Integrations… WP Amelia 7.7v has added integration for WP Fusion, enabling you to sync Amelia appointment bookings with over 50 CRMs and marketing platforms. It has also added new Square integration for payments.
   
   
2. Role Based Pricing… the team at Extify Plugins has updated the recently released WooCommerce Role Based Pricing plugin that allows you to set custom pricing rules depending on a specific user roles like wholesale buyers or regular customers.
   
   
3. New Block Theme… the team at MaxiBlocks is working on a new free theme which is currently in beta phase. It is intended to work out of the box with their MaxiBlocks builder plugin for full site building.
   
   
4. Gutenberg Update… 18.8v update added shadow support for group block, background image support for blocks in global styles, and color support for individual list item blocks.
   
   
5. BuddyPress Update… new major 14.0.0v ‘Da Lucia’ release is now available with over 80 changes focusing improving documentation, code formatting, consistency and stability of the plugin.
   
   
6. Fresh Re-Branding… the team at WPXPO has rebranded ProductX to the all new WooStore branding – a store builder for WooCommerce pages like shop, product, cart, archive, search, and more.
   
   
7. WordCamp Asia 2025 Sponsors… the call for sponsors is open for WordCamp Asia 2025 event with plans ranging from $35,000 to $1,000 price points. Also open, call for speakers and volunteers.
   
   
8. WordCamp Date Scheduling… WordCamp Europe team, Rocío Valdivia and José Ramón Padrón, shared how Eid ul-Adha, a major Muslim holiday, date got overlooked while scheduling for the event. Moving forward, they plan to use a different multi-faith calendar.
   
   

More WordPress Buzz: Acquisition, SEO, & WebFlow!

Acquisition Train… WP Engine has acquired Nitropack service that focuses on improving site speed and performance metrics. Moving forward, Nitropack co-founders, Georgi and Mihail, are embarking on new venture called Navigation AI that links web performance directly with tangible business results. Previously, WP Engine acquired the ACF plugin and it has flourished since then.

FSE Theme & SEO Issue… Sybre Waaijer, creator of The SEO Framework plugin, has brought to notice (Links X) that on the WordPress FSE (Full Site Editing) Theme when comment pagination is enabled, your website will be deindexed from Google. This is due to an unresolved ticket waiting for attention.

WebFlow Price Hike… Nico Cerdeira’s from Failory website shared about WebFlow’s 32x price hike (Links X) from $468 to $15,000/year. This got WordPress folks’ attention, choose open source (Links X) said Matt Mullenweg, welcome to WordPress .com with no bandwidth limits (Links X) said Daniel Bachhuber.

Quick Bits

• A detailed tutorial on creating a mega menu with blocks only.
• WordPress Speed Build Challenges: Lame & Harmful? (Links X)
• Breakdown: True Price of a WooCommerce Store by Rebecca.
• WPShout has launched WordPress Jobs board with free listing.
• 2 Hr Video: Brain shares about Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
• Video: WordPress is a UI/UX Disaster; what do you think?
• You can watch all presentations from the Stellar Spark event.
  
  

New WordPress 6.6 Out + 50th Milestone!

WordPress 6.6 ‘Dorsey’ was released on July 16, 2024. Check out the official announcement post highlighting key changes like easy rollback of plugin updates and 58 accessibility fixes. Also, performance bump with the removal of redundant WP_Theme_JSON calls, disabling autoload for large options, and eliminating unnecessary polyfill dependencies.

Matt Mullenweg reminded us that this is 50th milestone release of WordPress. “No matter what happens in the world, we’re just going to keep cranking”. Also, check this thread (Links X) by Rich Tabor, highlighting all new things in this release, made possible by 630 contributors from 50+ countries.

WP 6.6: Underlined Links Issue + Functions

WordPress 6.6 is making links on websites underlined by default. Underlined links are recommended from the accessibility point of view. There is a CSS workaround to remove underline, and the next WordPress 6.1.1 update should fix it.

Also, check here for all new and updated functions, hooks, classes, and methods in the WordPress 6.6 release.

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Upcoming Events

The WP Awards 2024: Call for Sponsorships is now open.

July 25, 2024: WordPress London Meetup, 6.30PM BST.
August 20, 2024: Inaugural London WordPress Meetup event.
September 17, 2024: WordCamp US 2024 in Portland, Oregon.
September 23, 2024: Digital Asset Congress 2024 in Iceland.
October 09, 2024: WordPress Accessibility Day 2024, online event.

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By
Davinder Singh Kainth
A creative who Loves to Create Online Spaces powered by WordPress.

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