WP Builds Newsletter #25 – Gutenberg updates, ACF blocks and Drupal gets Gutenberg

This weeks WordPress news – Covering The Week Commencing 6th August 2018:

What’s new in Gutenberg?
“Another update has sailed! This one comes after WordPress 4.9.8 release with the “try the new editor” notice, which has increased the number of installs from 15k to more than 120k in a few days. This is an important milestone as we broaden the testing horizons. We’d like to take a moment to thank everyone that has tested and given feedback through the various channels…”

Gutenberg Plugin Garners Mixed Reactions from New Wave of Testers
“WordPress 4.9.8 was released as an automatic update last week, featuring the “Try Gutenberg” callout. The goal of the prompt is to get more users testing the new editor and to raise awareness. Within the first 72 hours of the prompt going into user dashboards, sites with Gutenberg installed have shot up to more than 80,000, a 300% increase. The plugin has been downloaded more than 147,000 times in the past week. Gutenberg feedback is pouring in from a wave of new testers, most of whom are finding out about the new editor for the first time…”

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Are Gutenberg’s Bad Reviews a Sign of Failure?
“Perception is everything. And when the perception of your product or service isn’t very positive, it can really throw a monkey-wrench into your plans for success (just ask Windows 8). Frankly, it can be very difficult to shake free from this kind of negativity. At the moment, that’s what we’re seeing with the WordPress Gutenberg editor. As of this writing, the new editing experience hasn’t been merged into WordPress core, but is available in the form of a beta plugin. WordPress 4.9.8 included a call to test the plugin, which led to a huge leap in usage. With that came a flood of reviews – many of them negative…”

The Pros and Cons of the Gutenberg WordPress Editor
“In this article, we’ll see how Gutenberg works as a page builder and we will go through the pros and cons of the Gutenberg WordPress editor…”

Toolset and Elementor integration is here
“In the last few weeks, we have worked hand-in-hand with the Elementor team. Today, we are happy to announce the first 2 features of our integration. Elementor is a visual design control tool for everything inside of your WordPress website: posts, pages, archives, header, footer and (since Today) WooCommerce elements. Combined with the power of Types and Views, the integration offers almost endless possibilities for your development projects…”

The State of ACF in a Gutenberg World
“Today, we’re going to try and bring you some peace of mind when it comes to using ACF with Gutenberg. While things aren’t exactly perfect just yet, we’ll show you that we are well on the way to that glorious place…”

WP Engine recognized for excellence at the Stevie Awards
“Created in 2002, The Stevie Awards honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevies are awarded during The Annual International Business Awards, an international, all-encompassing business awards program. This year, individuals and companies will be recognized on October 20th, 2018 during a gala event in London. This year, we are honored and proud to have been awarded two Stevie Awards: a Silver Stevie for the Customer Service Department of the Year and a Bronze Stevie honoring WP Engine CMO, Mary Ellen Dugan…”

Install WordPress Locally: 5 Easy Tools For Local WordPress Development
“If you’re looking for a way to install WordPress locally, you probably don’t need any more convincing on the benefits of this approach. As someone whose job is to test hundreds of different WordPress themes and plugins, I’ve become well-acquainted with all the different methods available to install WordPress locally. And in this post, I’m going to share them with you, as well as link out to detailed instructions to help you get setup with whichever method(s) piques your interest…”

If You Use Embed Privacy on Vimeo and AMP, You Need to Know This
“Likely you have clicked through to this post because you use Vimeo and you know what AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is. For me, I use the AMP plugin for WordPress and Yoast SEO has some settings for it as well. In fact, I have been pretty happy with the results. But I am not here to promote AMP or even educate you on it. What I do want to share with you is something I learned the hard way…”

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

Why YouTubers are feeling the burn
“From fashionistas to popular scientists, YouTube’s top video stars are crumbling under the relentless pressure of producing new content for the site…”

Known WordPress Threat Actor Under Investigation For Prescription-Free Online Pharmacy
“Last September we published a series of three blog posts exposing a threat actor who had purchased a number of WordPress plugins as part of an elaborate supply chain attack. This ownership enabled him to inject SEO spam into hundreds of thousands of websites, boosting search engine rankings for various illicit online businesses. In the first post we reported that a backdoor had been placed in the Display Widgets plugin by its author. We demonstrated how the backdoor worked and its purpose. We also found evidence that the plugin had recently been sold…”

Why Did Russia Just Attack Its Own Internet?
“One day last month, scientists at Moscow’s leading cancer research center realized they had lost access to several online databases crucial to their work. And that wasn’t their only problem…”

First Look at Live Demo of the Gutenberg Content Editor for Drupal 8
“One interesting WordPress-related session on the program is titled Introducing the Gutenberg content editor for Drupal 8. This new module ports WordPress’ Gutenberg editor over to Drupal. It was created by Per André Rønsen and his team Frontkom, a digital services agency based in Norway…”