WP Builds Newsletter #11 – WordPress turns 15, Trusted Authors Program and WordPress Hacked by a Child

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 30th April 2018:

What’s new in Gutenberg?
Things are going well on the road towards completing the first phase of the editor project. Most of the work is centered around polish, getting things ready for merge, and tightening existing APIs. This release has many refinements and improves the capabilities of the Block and Plugin APIs. It also adds a new “spacer” block for generating visual space. The color palette component has been improved to be based on classes instead of inline styles (for registered colors) and includes some important accessibility improvements (like naming the colour).

Jetpack 6.1, Now With Even More Privacy Information
Jetpack 6.1 is available and is considered a general maintenance release. This version adds two improvements to the WordAds module. Users can now use the [wordads] shortcode to place an inline ad on any post or page. Support for the ads.txt file has also been added. A new filter is available that honors the Do Not Track feature. Continuing the progress made in Jetpack 6.0 towards GDPR compliance, 6.1 adds More Info buttons to every module that handles user data.

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Trusted Authors Program
The Trusted Authors Program is an attempt to streamline the review process for authors who are consistently able to show they can to produce high quality code and themes that are in line with the current guidelines. Eventually, it will lower the burden on reviewers/leads and we will have more time for other interesting programs. After a few days of brainstorming, here is what we have.

These are the Biggest Headaches in WordPress for 2018: Survey & Results
WordPress has officially surpassed powering 30% of the Internet, dominating all other content management systems available to webmasters. We asked WordPress users ranging from specialty dev agencies and bloggers to enterprise tech leads and CEOs to share with us their biggest headaches in managing and hosting their instances and the results were interesting enough to share.

WordSesh 5 Scheduled for July 25th
After not having an event in 2017, WordSesh, a virtual WordPress conference, is returning July 25th. The event is being organized by Brian Richards, Founder of WPSessions and a collection of partners. The schedule is online and like previous events, there is a mixture of sessions and live podcasts.

Making it easier to add products to posts and pages with the Products block for Gutenberg
The Products block represents stage one of a project we’re affectionately referring to as “Wootenberg”—the preparation of WooCommerce for the arrival of the Gutenberg editor. Essentially, the Products block is a modern version of the Products shortcode, built for the Gutenberg world we’re all soon to move in to.

WordPress Turns 15: A Look Back at Its Greatest Hits
If you can believe it, WordPress is about to turn 15! Where has the time gone? In order to properly tell WordPress’s story, we’re first going to have to skip back to 2001 where it all started…

Hacked by an 11 Year Old
The Wordfence team recently sponsored and attended WordCamp Atlanta. Instead of doing the usual boring corporate thing with our booth, we decided to host a capture the flag, or CTF contest. A CTF is essentially a hacking contest. It is a series of puzzles that the contestant needs to solve. They might include decrypting an encrypted piece of text, performing a challenge involving a browser and website, or hacking into something we set up.

GeneratePress 2.1
Including… Font Awesome, New Icons, Fewer HTTP Requests, Cleaner CSS, Easier Updated Date and Simplified Mobile Menu CSS.

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

GDPR Privacy Policy
The main focus of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the protection of personal data and digital privacy. Because of this, your Privacy Policy is going to be an important part of your GDPR compliance plan. Here’s what you need to know about updating your current Privacy Policy, having adequate Privacy Notices and getting your users to consent to your Policy terms in accordance with the GDPR.

You should change your Twitter password right now
Yes, it’s that time again — password changing time. On Thursday, Twitter  revealed that a bug caused the platform to store user passwords in unmasked form. Normally, sensitive personal data like passwords would be stored in hashed form using a mix of letters and numbers to protect the content of the password itself. In this instance, it sounds like Twitter stored plain text passwords openly without any hashing on an internal log.

This Stunning Image Made With Pure Code Is Like a Mood Ring For Your Browser
Diana Smith makes web images unlike any you’ve probably seen before. That’s because when you’re looking at one of the user interface designer’s creations, you’re not looking at flat pixel data fetched from a server—you’re looking at pure code, rendered live before your very eyes.

NSA triples metadata collection numbers, sucking up over 500 million call records in 2017
The National Security Agency revealed a huge increase in the amount of call metadata collected, from about 151 million call records in 2016 to more than 530 million last year — despite having fewer targets. But officials say nothing is different about the year but the numbers.

Google is launching .app domains, the first TLDs secured with built-in HTTPS
Over three years after Google paid $25 million to gain the exclusive rights to the “.app” top-level domain, the company is at last making .app domains available to register starting today and running through May 7, at 9 AM PDT via Google’s Early Access Program. The following day, May 8, the domains will go on sale for the general public, including through other registrars.