📆 This is the May 2021 edition of “This Month in WordPress with CodeinWP.”
Hey everyone, hope you and your loved ones are happy, healthy, and safe! We are back with some news about WordPress that you might find interesting. This time, we are going to discuss Gutenberg 10.4, a new performance optimization plugin launched by the Jetpack team, Gravity Forms 2.5, and WordPress reconsidering working with some WordCamp sponsors.
May 2021 WordPress News with CodeinWP
Gutenberg’s latest version 10.4 was released on 14th April with some exciting enhancements, bug fixes, and APIs. This version has introduced the first iteration of block widgets in the Customizer. That’s right, now you can also use the block widgets while customizing your theme from the WordPress Customizer. You can simply click on the inserter icon to add the blocks.
This version has also introduced some new updates for the Site Editor List View. This includes enhancements to icon sizes and spaces, new colors on hover, focus, and select states.
The publishing UI has been updated to be more descriptive and let users display the site icon and name exactly as they want them in the full-screen and mobile versions.
This version also includes:
- Rich text placeholder enhancements
- Improvements to Navigation Block
- Editor and front-end parity refinement
- The possibility to revert the template to theme defaults within the Site Editor
- New APIs and bug fixes
Automattic Launches Jetpack Boost: A New Performance Plugin
The first version of Automattic’s new performance optimization plugin Jetpack Boost was launched on 19th April. This is a free plugin that focuses on the performance of your site and can be used separately from the main Jetpack plugin. It’s easy to use and comes with three performance modules:
- Critical CSS: This module generates the critical CSS for your site that makes your posts and pages load fast on your end.
- Defer JavaScript: It makes some tasks load after the page load so your visual design elements can load faster.
- Lazy Loading Images: This module only loads the images when the user scrolls down to see them.
These features will make your site’s load speed much faster, which will also have impact on your SEO. Additionally, the plugin shows you the score before and after the optimization.
Here’s what Nauris Pūķis, Automattic engineer had to say about launching Jetpack Boost separately and not including it with the main Jetpack plugin.
We want Jetpack Boost to have a life of its own – focused on performance and make it available to everyone, including people who don’t want to use the main Jetpack plugin.
Nauris Pūķis
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Gravity Forms 2.5 is Now Available: The Next Generation of Form Building
Gravity Forms 2.5 was released on 27th April. This release includes a new design for the form editor and accessibility enhancements that make Gravity Forms “the most accessible form builder on the market” – as claimed by their team.
- With the new design, the drag and drop feature is also added to the form builder that will make managing the form layouts pretty easy.
- This release has made many enhancements for sake of accessibility and has added many tools that will help to create accessible forms for the users.
- Some updates are made to the markup and style to make your forms more attractive.
The update also includes:
- Improved front-end accessibility
- New UI design in the form editor
- Drag and drop columns
- Complete revamp of CSS styles
- Other form editor enhancements
You can check out the demo of this new version here. Plus, find more details about version 2.5 here.
Companies Running Competitive Ads Against WordPress May Soon be Banned from Sponsoring WordCamps
The WordPress Community team started a discussion about banning the companies that put WordPress in a bad light from sponsoring WordCamps. This was started after a WordCamp organizing team raised concerns about a potential sponsor.
Cami Kaos published a list of the existing expectations for sponsors and those who want to participate in the community’s events program. Those include things such as no discrimination, respecting the WordPress trademark and licensing, and others from the WordCamp Organizer Handbook.
Kaos posed the following two questions to the community:
Should the WordCamp and meetup programs accept sponsors, speakers and organizers who engage in competitive marketing against WordPress?
How should competitive advertising be defined in the WordPress space?
Cami KaosIt is suspected that the potential sponsor in question is Elementor because of their recent campaigns. However, the discussion post doesn’t specify anything about it.
“Criticism can be healthy and good marketing when done in good faith and with a tool that truly addresses a user need,” Mark Root-Wiley said. “What makes criticism objectionable is when it strays past details of software and into harmful criticism of people and communities, and it seems like the existing standards cover that.”
Great Articles From Around The Web
That sums up our May 2021 WordPress news roundup. Anything we missed?
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