WP Builds Newsletter #52 – Blocks management, image creation and free videos

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 25th February 2019:

WordPress Core

Block Management Features Proposed for WordPress 5.2
“WordPress 5.1 has been downloaded more than 3.6 million times since its release last week and work on 5.2 is now underway. The upcoming release will be led by Matt Mullenweg with Josepha Haden acting as Release Coordinator. Gary Pendergast posted a proposed scope and schedule that would have 5.2 arriving April 23, 2019…”

Block Editor Now in Beta for WordPress Mobile Apps
“The new Gutenberg block editor that arrived in WordPress 5.0 is now in beta testing on the mobile apps. The editor will be available in version 11.9, which is planned to be released to the public on March 11…”

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WordPress Contributors Propose Shorter, Time-based Release Cycles
“WordPress release cycles may soon take a more predictable cadence, as contributors are considering moving to a time-based approach. The discussion began during a recent core dev chat in mid-February when Gutenberg phase 2 lead Riad Benguella proposed the project move to shorter, automated release cycles…”

WordPress Designers Seek Feedback on Navigation Menu Block Prototype
“Creating a block for navigation menus is one of the nine projects Matt Mullenweg identified as a priority for 2019, and the future of WordPress menus is starting to take shape. Designers working on the new Navigation Menu block have published a prototype this week with detailed notes on how users will interact with the block…”

Community

Get ready for PressNomics 6
“We have reserved an entire boutique hotel in charming Tucson, Arizona where we can network, learn, have fun, and grow our WordPress businesses together. PressNomics 6 takes place on Wednesday, September 11th – Friday, September 13th / 2019 at the Hacienda Del Sol Resort…”

Taking Aspects of WordPress for Granted
“When you’re used to having complete control over an environment and it’s revoked, what then? Because of the open-source nature of WordPress, one of the luxuries that many of us are used to having is complete control over the environment in which we’re working. Given that, you might even say that we take certain aspects of WordPress for granted…”

Major SEO Issue With WPengine
“The problem is with the pagination. For those not familiar with the term –> your blog, categories, etc. likely have a lot of posts across a lot of pages. Click any of those links and you’ll get to /page/2/, /page/3/, etc. all the way up to /page/81/ (in this case). Well it turns out that at WPengine this works by default all the way up to /page/9/ for both users and search engine bots. As soon as you enter double-digits the bots are redirected to the homepage…”

Best Image Formats for Websites Compared! PNG, JPG, GIF, and WebP
“Image Optimization begins with choosing the best file format for your needs. This goes beyond PNG vs. JPEG. There is not one file format to rule them all. Everyone’s image needs are different, even the different images within a single site have different requirements. But no worries, we got you covered…”

Plugins

Create images while you post with the Stencil WordPress Plugin
Cool plugin for this simple SaaS image creator. Really neat if you already have a license.

Toolset Forms vs Gravity Forms: A Hands-On Comparison
“In this post, I’m going to compare the new Toolset Forms vs Gravity Forms. If you’re not familiar with Toolset, it’s a suite of plugins that help you create custom WordPress sites by making it easy to work with custom content types. You can use it to make directories, listing sites, membership sites, and a lot more. Learn more in our Toolset review…”

Gumroad Plugin for WordPress Adds Gutenberg Block for Embedding Products
“Gumroad has updated its WordPress plugin to include a Gutenberg block for embedding a product in any page or post. The online platform enables creators, artists, educators, writers, and anyone else to sell their products without having to manage their own e-commerce setup. Gumroad’s WordPress plugin has been available for several years and is now compatible with the new Gutenberg editor…”

Ecwid E-Commerce Plugin Adds Gutenberg Support, Focuses on Small Businesses to Compete with WooCommerce
“Ecwid’s e-commerce plugin for WordPress is now fully integrated with the Gutenberg editor. The cloud-based store builder, pronounced “eck-wid,” is short for e-commerce widgets, but the service has fully embraced blocks in its latest releases…”

WP Builds

Using WordPress to run your online course with Chris Badgett from Lifter LMS
“It’s all the rage isn’t it? Set up an online course and teach the world about the things you know! You’ve seen the Facebook ads. You’ve sat down and thought about all the great content they you’ll teach to your students, made some videos, created some handouts, even devised some tests that the students will have to complete to graduate. But then the daunting question arises… how do I actually get this online? Lifter LMS might be the answer…”

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

Completely free videos from Mixkit
Nothing much to say except that we like video and free video is even better!

Google: Lighthouse Measures How Fast a Site Loads for Actual Users
“Google’s John Mueller recently stated that Lighthouse metrics are an indication of how fast a site performs for actual users. They’re not necessarily an indication of how Google’s algorithms assess a site with regards to speed…”