WP Builds Newsletter #9 – Gutenberg ‘off’, dead page builder and Chrome stops annoying videos

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 16th April 2018:

Gutenberg 2.7 Released, Adds Ability to Edit Permalinks
Gutenberg 2.7 is available for testing and not only does it refine the visuals around block controls, it adds the highly requested ability to edit permalinks. A new pagination block is available that adds a page break, allowing users to break posts into multiple pages. The block is located in the Blocks – Layout Elements section.

Defender Gets Fierce New Security Features (Login Masking and Forced Two-factor)
Defender is flexing some serious muscle when it comes to protecting WordPress. His layered security toolkit, automated scans and alert notifications are best in class. Plus, with 9.5+ million events (that can’t be modified or deleted by hackers) being logged per day, Defender’s Audit Logging is a one-of-a-kind power feature serious WordPress users can’t live without.

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Elementor Pro 2.0 – Introducing Theme Builder
With this release, you can finally visually customize your headers, footers, archive pages, single post pages and other areas of your site. This not only saves you time, but introduces a whole new drag and drop experience to building WordPress websites. We believe the new theme builder capabilities will change how people create and edit websites. We worked months developing the most streamlined, simple process for editing every area of your site. WordPress users on all levels will be able to quickly learn to use and incorporate the new features in their workflow.

Plugins Hosted on WordPress.org Can No Longer Guarantee Legal Compliance
The plugin review team has amended guideline number nine which states, developers and their plugins must not do anything illegal, dishonest, or morally offensive, to include the following statement:
Implying that a plugin can create, provide, automate, or guarantee legal compliance
Mika Epstein, a member of the WordPress.org plugin review team, says the change was made because plugins by themselves can not provide legal compliance.

Mastering Beaver Builder
40% off until 5th May 2018. This course will help you understand and learn every feature of the Beaver Builder plugin (almost!). It will help you establish a solid workflow to use “drag and drop” interface of Beaver Builder for building amazing websites quick and efficiently. Learn to use Beaver Builder for creating more stylish and custom looking layout designs through: overlapping sections, z-index usage, smart typography spread, CSS and much more. Grab $100 PreSale Discount. Course will be available in May – June 2018.

Saying Goodbye to Upfront, Focusing On What Our Members Want & Embracing Gutenberg, Divi, Beaver, WPBakery and more…
In what feels like a different life ago (but was in-fact just 2010) I started to think really really hard about the future of WordPress, user experience and web design. It was a process that culminated in 2015 with Upfront and one which ends today with very mixed emotions and a announcement that might surprise you.

Page-building blocks for the new WordPress editor.
Atomic Blocks is a collection of “blocks” for the new WordPress block editor, also known as Gutenberg. Blocks are chunks of content such as paragraphs, images, galleries, columns, and more. Building with blocks gives you more control to quickly create and launch any kind of site you want!

The WordPress Jargon Glossary
The WordPress Marketing team has put together a pretty cool resource: a guide to a lot of the weird lingo you’ll hear casually cast-off in WordPress conversations without context. While I hope that this can move to a more canonical place: jargon.wordpress.org (with a built-in quick-search feature) would be AMAZING, I love the approach that Bridget Willard and the team have taken to break down some of the unintended barriers that new people to WordPress face.

6 Checklist Items to Complete Before the Gutenberg Editor Launches
The WordPress community is abuzz with the impending arrival of Gutenberg, the new editor that will overtake the current visual editor that people are accustomed to. As this new feature will become the new standard, WordPress is encouraging users to try it out ahead of time. And the sooner the better, as the WordPress 5.0 core update with Gutenberg is expected to roll out in the first half of 2018. As of this article’s publication, that means it could be just a few weeks or months before this editor officially becomes the new standard!

How to Disable Gutenberg: Complete Guide
Gutenberg soon will be added to the WordPress core. This is great news for some, not so great for others. With 99.9999% (estimate) of all WordPress sites currently setup to work without Gutenberg, the massive changes barreling down the pike are going to affect literally millions of websites. And as swell as the whole “Gutenberg” experience may seem, the simple truth is that a vast majority of site owners will not be prepared when it finally hits. Nor will many small business have time or budget to test and update client sites to accommodate ol’ Gut’.

Introducing WooCommerce Inventory Management with iThemes Sales Accelerator
A new Pro module for iThemes Sales Accelerator just landed: Inventory. The Inventory module for iThemes Sales Accelerator is a new WooCommerce Inventory Management plugin to manage the stock of your products with multiple warehouses.

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

Welcome to Grasshopper, the coding app for beginners
The best way to start your coding adventure. Learn with fun, quick lessons on your phone that teach you to write real JavaScript. Move through progressively challenging levels as you develop your abilities. Graduate with fundamental programming skills for your next step as a coder.

Google Chrome to Prevent Videos With Sound From Autoplaying
Google’s latest version of Chrome for desktop will disable most videos with sound from playing automatically. That means users will no longer be bombarded with unwanted audio from videos when browsing with Chrome. The only exceptions are videos that Google believes the individual user is interested in. This is determined by three factors… 1. The user has played the video before. 2.The screen was clicked on at some point during the browsing session. 3.The video appears on a site that the user has added to their home screen on mobile.