WP Builds Newsletter #19 – Acquisitions madness, flaw in WordPress Core and loads of Google stuff

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 25th June 2018:

StudioPress / Genesis Acquired by WP Engine – An Important Announcement About the Future of StudioPress
I’m sure that you’ve heard this already, but StudioPress has been bought, somewhat unexpectedly, by WP Engine. What does this mean? See the next article…

With the Acquisition of StudioPress, WP Engine Bolsters the WordPress Community
“When Brian Gardner founded StudioPress nearly a decade ago, he wanted to provide developers with a quick and easy way to build stand-out themes for WordPress. To say he accomplished that goal is an understatement. Today, StudioPress’ Genesis Framework is the most popular theme framework for WordPress and its themes are among the most widely used within the WordPress community. Genesis alone has served as the foundation for more than 1 million WordPress sites..”

Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress (GADWP) is Now ExactMetrics
“With over 17 million downloads and over 1 million websites, Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress (GADWP) is the second most popular analytics plugin in the WordPress.org repository. Today, I’m thrilled to announce that we have acquired the GADWP plugin from Alin Marcu and rebranded it as ExactMetrics..”

Gutenberg 3.1 Introduces Tips Interface to Guide New Users
“Gutenberg 3.1 added a tips interface that supports and guides new users who are learning to navigate the editor’s blocks and settings. The tips appear when a new user opens Gutenberg, highlighting useful items on the page…”

WooCommerce Sales Tax for the US: How to Enable Automated Calculations and Filing
“The US Supreme Court decided this week that each state can now require sales tax to be collected on internet sales. This ruling opens the door for states to do something that they haven’t been able to before: tax a lot of internet sales. While WooCommerce can’t advise you on which taxes your business needs — that’s a question for your accountant — you can configure settings in WooCommerce to either manually or automatically calculate taxes based on the requirements of the new rules…”

What does the future hold for WordPress?
“WordPress has been undergoing some pretty big changes lately. With the REST API promising to revolutionize WordPress development, and Gutenberg promising to do the same for the user interface, it’s not surprising if you find it all a lot to take in…”

How To Use Folders To Improve Your Beaver Builder Media Workflow
“Beaver Builder gives you the power to build amazing WordPress sites with drag and drop. But in order for you to actually get to build those amazing sites, you need the proper workflow to set yourself up for success. When you’re talking about building a site, a big part of that workflow involves the images that you use in your designs…and the ability to quickly find those images…”

Drop It Plugin Brings Gifs and Unsplash Photos to Gutenberg
“If you’re writing all your posts in the new Gutenberg editor but don’t want to give up convenient access to your fancy gifs and stock images, the new Drop It plugin has you covered. Riad Benguella, one of the engineers who is working on Gutenberg, created the plugin to offer one-click image insertion/upload from Unsplash.com…”

Arbitrary File Deletion Flaw Present in WordPress Core
“The security community has been abuzz this week following the disclosure of a vulnerability present in all current versions of WordPress. The flaw, published in a detailed report by RIPS Technologies, allows any logged-in user with an Author role or higher to delete files on the server. By exploiting this arbitrary file deletion vulnerability, malicious actors can pivot and take control of affected sites. The report contains the complete details of the vulnerability, but we’ve summarized it for more casual consumption…”

Yoast SEO 7.7 – New Snippet Editor and Better Snippet Variables
“The snippet editor is one of the core pieces of technology in Yoast SEO. It helps you build snippets that truly stand out in the search results to get you traffic. To make this vital piece future-proof and to update it with new features, we needed to rebuild it. In Yoast SEO 7.7, you’ll find the result of that. Plus, a new and incredibly easy way of working with snippet variables…”

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

The Layouts of Tomorrow
“Grid is the first real tool for layout on the web. Everything we had up until now, from tables to floats to absolute positioning to flexbox – was meant to solve a different problem, and we found ways to use and abuse it for layout purposes…”

Google ups its Linux Foundation membership to the $500,000/year Platinum level
“Google  has long been a member of the Linux Foundation, but at the relatively low Silver level. Today, the company is stepping up its commitment by becoming a Platinum sponsor — the highest level of membership the open-source nonprofit organization currently offers. Silver membership for large corporations run just under $100,000 per year, while Platinum sponsors pay $500,000. As part of this move, Sarah Novotny, Google’s head of open-source strategy for the Google Cloud Platform, is joining the Linux Foundation board of directors…”

Google Calendar gets an ‘Out of Office’ mode
“Google  Calendar is the latest Google app to get an update focused on improving users’ “digital wellbeing.” The company announced today it’s rolling out a new “Out of Office” feature in Google Calendar, alongside a setting for customizable working hours. The working hours signal to others when you’re unavailable, and allows Google Calendar to automatically decline meetings on your behalf outside those hours…”

Introducing App Maker
“App Maker is a new low-code application development tool for G Suite that lets organizations quickly build and deploy custom apps tailored to their needs. We previewed App Maker with a few of our enterprise customers and partners, here’s what they had to say…”