[ad_1] WordPress Accessibility Day is just one week away on November 2-3, and registration is still open. Co-lead organizer Amber Hinds published an impressive speaker lineup with 40 speakers from 14 countries. She also noted that 40% of the event’s sessions have at least one speaker who identifies as living with a disability. WordPress professionals who want to learn more about creating accessible websites will want to attend, as the schedule is loaded with a wealth of educational presentations from well-known accessibility experts. Co-lead organizer Joe Dolson will start with opening remarks, followed by the keynote session from Nicolas Steenhout, an accessibility consultant and host of the A11y Rules Podcast. The 24-hour event will include practical sessions on Selling Accessibility to Skeptical Clients, Meeting WCAG 2 without rebuilding from scratch, and When and How to Write Alternative Text. Gary Aussant, Director of Digital Accessibility Consulting at Perkins Access, and Stephen Plummer, Creative Manager at the Perkins School for the Blind, will be presenting a session titled “Proof: Accessible websites can be beautiful too” that will debunk some of the common myths about accessible websites. They plan to show real examples of modern and engaging sites that also work well for screen readers, keyboard users, and sighted users. Full-stack developer Nikole Garcia and Annie Heckel, Electronic Information Technology Accessibility Manager at Cornell University, will give a session on Developing Accessibility-First WordPress Themes. Check out the schedule to browse the rest of the lineup and add the sessions you want to attend to your calendar. Registration is free and the event will be live streamed via YouTube with closed captions. [ad_2] Source link
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#48 – Christina Deemer on Making Digital Content Usable for People With Cognitive Disabilities – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Christina Deemer [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the show, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you all your idea featured soon. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there. So, on the podcast today, we have Christina Deemer. Christina is a senior UX developer at Lede, a company of the Alley Group, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. She’s passionate about inclusivity and community and has spoken at a variety of events about the subject. Christina is autistic and brings her personal experience with neurodivergence and disability to bear in her work. At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a presentation called “embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities”. And it’s this talk, which is the foundation of the podcast today. In her description of the presentation, Christina wrote, “cognitive disabilities are among the most prevalent types of disabilities, yet experts have struggled to provide web accessibility best practices around this area due to cognitive disabilities being such a broad category. However recent work by standards groups has begun to address this deficiency”. In past episodes, we’ve covered website accessibility from some different angles, and today we focus on how the web might be experienced by people with cognitive disabilities. First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually means, and what it encompasses. It’s a wide range of things, and so we talk about how people may differ in the way that they access the web. Memory, over complicated interfaces and readability are a few of the areas that we touch upon. We also discuss what legislation there is in place to offer guidance to those wishing to make their sites more accessible, and as you’ll hear, it’s a changing landscape. Towards the end, Christina talks about her own late diagnosis of autism and how this shapes her experience of the web, particularly with auto-play content and when web design includes elements which flash or flicker. Typically when we record the podcast there’s not a lot of background noise, but that’s not always the case. This is the last of the live recordings from WordCamp US 2022, and you may notice that the recordings have a little echo or other strange audio artifacts. Whilst the podcasts are more than listenable, I do hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links and the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you’ll find all of the other episodes as well. And so, without further I bring you Christina Deemer. I am joined on the podcast today by Christina Deemer. Hello. [00:04:14] Christina Deemer: Hello Nathan. [00:04:16] Nathan Wrigley: It’s very nice to have you on. We are at WordCamp US 2022. We’re upstairs in the media room, and we’ve got Christina on the show today because she did a presentation. Have you actually done the presentation yet? [00:04:27] Christina Deemer: Yes, I did it yesterday morning. I was lucky in that I got to get it over with early and then enjoy the rest of the conference. [00:04:34] Nathan Wrigley: How did it go? [00:04:35] Christina Deemer: It went really well. It was a lot of fun. I had a really great audience. [00:04:39] Nathan Wrigley: That’s nice to hear. That’s good. The subject, I’m just gonna give everybody the title. That’s probably a quick way to introduce what we’re gonna talk about. The subject title was embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities. So we’ll dive into that in a moment. Just before then, though, just paint a little bit of a picture about who you are and how come it is that you’re speaking at a WordPress conference particularly about this topic. [00:05:04] Christina Deemer: Okay. I am a career changer. I spent the first 12 years or so of my career working in arts management. Then I decided I wanted to do something very different, and I became a developer. And one of my early mentors introduced me to WordPress. So, the first projects that I worked on were WordPress sites. I wrote my first WordPress theme when I was 35, and just really enjoyed getting involved in the WordPress community. And from the beginning of my career, I’ve been very interested in accessibility for a wide variety of reasons. And it’s become a passion of mine. I really enjoy sharing knowledge about accessibility with people. I enjoy hearing people’s stories about accessibility. And recently there’s been a lot of work done on the standards around cognitive accessibility or accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities, and that work has been really fascinating and I’ve wanted to share it with people. And that was how, the reason that I pitched this talk for WordCamp US. [00:06:13] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you. That’s great. The words cognitive disabilities, it probably makes a great deal of sense to you because you’ve parsed and you’ve said it many times. You fully understand it. Would you just run over a brief definition of what it encompasses? And I’m sure it’s not just one thing, maybe it’s a multitude of things. [00:06:28] Christina Deemer:
Continue readingGutenberg 14.4 Introduces Distraction-Free Mode, Redesigns Pattern Inserter – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Gutenberg 14.4 was released today with long-awaited support for distraction-free editing, to the delight of content editors around the world. It hides all non-essential UI and clears the canvas for a focus on text-based content creation. The mode can be toggled on in the options menu in the top toolbar. Distraction-free mode hides the top toolbar, any open sidebars, along with the insertion point indicator and the block toolbar. source: Gutenberg 14.4 release post The project to improve the editing experience for text-based content began with early explorations in February, which progressed into a PR that contributors have been refining for the last few months. This distraction-free mode is a monumental improvement over the days when users struggled to write with various UI elements popping in and out of view. Another major update in 14.4 is the redesigned pattern inserter. It has been updated to show the categories before rendering the patterns, giving users a more fluid visual preview as they browse the pattern library. Patterns can be dragged and dropped from the preview pane into the canvas. source: Gutenberg 14.4 release post Other notable improvements users may notice include the following: Performance benchmarks show an improvement in loading time for both the post and site editors. Check out the release post to see the full list of all the changes and bug fixes included in 14.4. This release will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release next week, but users who are eager to adopt these new features can get them right now in the Gutenberg plugin. [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingThe WordPress Community Isn’t Ready to Leave Twitter – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Elon Musk has bought Twitter in a $44B deal that closed this week, tweeting “Let the good times roll,” on Friday after taking the helm. Musk fired top executives at the company and tweeted an appeal to Twitter’s advertisers to share his motivation in acquiring what is arguably the world’s most important social network: “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk said. “There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.” Musk also hinted at the importance of content moderation, saying “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” The company is forming a council to discuss content moderation, but nobody knows what that will mean for the future of Twitter. Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022 While some Twitter users have considered migrating to Tumblr, the structure and user base isn’t currently comparable to the Twitter experience. In response to Verge co-founder Nilay Patel’s provocative article titled “Welcome to hell, Elon,” Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg tweeted his support. “This is an unfortunately good summary of why running a social network is so hard, as I’ve learned with Tumblr,” Mullenweg said. “I am wishing Twitter the best and also hope this doesn’t slow down Tesla or SpaceX, which I think are critical to the future.” Patel aptly communicated the weight of the political challenges Musk will face in his commitment to steering Twitter away from becoming “a free-for-all hellscape,” which some think has already happened. If Musk decides to open the doors to unsavory characters who were banned in the past, it may drive the social network into the ground. While the WordPress community has many online gathering places – various Slack workspaces, P2 blogs, and Facebook groups – it has always been Twitter that served as the place for both casual interactions and breaking news. It is the de facto social network for those working in tech. There are many who only use the platform for keeping up with WordPress news and the community. “There’s nowhere else to really go!” WordPress product designer Mike McAlister said. “WordPress people are pretty much exclusively on Twitter it seems.” Apart from the few optimistic souls who think Twitter will be better than ever, many community members expressed apprehension about losing the network they have built over the years. As the closing of the sale loomed, people threatened to leave Twitter on principle if Musk gained control. That day has arrived, but for the most part the WordPress community is not abandoning Twitter. “Twitter has had too good of an impact on my life to just jump ship,” Edan Ben-Atar said. “I’ll stick around for as long as it makes sense. For now, nothing has changed from what is noticeable to the eye.” WordPress designer Dustin Henrich says he is staying but also looking up the people he follows on other platforms. “I’ve made too many good connections, enjoy reading about people’s tech and non tech lives, and learning from some wicked smart people,” Henrich said. “I’d truly be sad if this just all went away.” Decentralized social networking, which has so far failed to gain much mainstream attention, is getting a second look in light of Twitter changing hands. WordPress agency owner Tom Finley is experimenting with using the Activity Pub plugin to set up his site as a private Mastadon server. It implements the ActivityPub protocol for WordPress so readers can see the site’s posts on Mastadon and other federated platforms (that support Activity Pub). Some WordPress community members are flirting with joining Mastadon instances, or have already committed to posting in both networks, but we are not yet seeing a mass exodus flocking to the fediverse. I’m giving Mastodon a try although I’m still sticking around here for the time being. I hate to say it but what about more use of the official WordPress Slack workspace? I often go there if I need to find someone in the community. — Shawn Hooper (@ShawnHooper) October 28, 2022 “We’ve seen this attempted exodus to the promised land many times before,” Ross Wintle said in a post that explains why he isn’t optimistic about people successfully leaving Twitter. “Without a proper mass migration of people and organizations to another service, it doesn’t stick. “You end up with people cross posting to multiple services to reach all the people that they want to reach. And then as a reader I’m checking multiple services and seeing the same things. The signal/noise ratio goes down. And most people get fed up and end up back where they were before.” The most hopeful speculators ask if this could this be the return of blogs. At the moment blogs are not social enough, and there isn’t a critical mass of bloggers eager enough to adopt the protocols necessary to connect their sites in a stream of easily digestible, short updates. Until Elon Musk makes more radical changes, many WordPress community members see no reason to leave Twitter. “For now, I don’t see a reason to leave,” WordPress developer advocate Birgit Pauli-Haack said. “Block, Unfollow, Mute are my friends for curating my feed. I did cancel my subscription to Twitter Blue after 12 months. Being allowed to edit tweets is not worth it.” I’ve been through so many social networks over time as they come and go. I lost count how many people say they are leaving Twitter. I use Twitter primarily for note taking, links, etc. I see nothing about that to change. — David Bisset (@dimensionmedia) October 28, 2022
Continue readingNew Missing Menu Items Plugin Adds Site Building Links to WordPress Admin – WP Tavern
[ad_1] If you are going all in on building sites with the new full-site editing (FSE) experience, then you may have noticed a lack of menu items that will deliver you directly to the tools you need to use. It may be because the Site Editor is still in beta, or because WordPress leadership may still be discussing whether to rename FSE. Perhaps it’s better that users don’t blindly stumble into FSE templates from the main admin menu, but some of these site building features are buried away with no quick access. For example, you are three clicks deep before arriving at Template Parts. Managing reusable blocks is also a tucked away on a separate screen that can be accessed through the post editor but sends you to a new page. If you’re using the block editor, and reusable blocks Do yourself a favor cut and paste this at the end of your website: /wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=wp_block Then bookmark it. — Ben LayerWP & WPDeals.email (@benswrite) October 26, 2022 When LayerWP founder Ben Townsend brought attention to this in a tweet, Roy Sivan responded with a link to a new free plugin that creates quicker access to these menus. Missing Menu Items expands the admin menu with links to reusable blocks, navigation menus, templates, and template parts, so they are all one click away. It adds them to the Appearance menu under the Editor (beta) link: If you are regularly working with Reusable blocks or editing navigation and templates, this plugin will save you some time and help you zip around the editor faster. Missing Menu Items was made by Easily Amused, the creators of Block Styles, a commercial plugin that lets users further customize core blocks with unique styles and boasts “fully responsive block-level design control.” The team will be adding more useful menu links and admin improvements in future releases. Users can contact the development team with menu item requests and they will consider them. Missing Menu Items is available on WordPress.org. Direct support is available for those who have purchased a BlockStyles membership, and community support can be found in the plugin’s forums on the directory. [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWP All Import Is Moving Away from Lifetime Licenses – WP Tavern
[ad_1] WP All Import announced it will soon change its business model to annual licenses. The product, which includes free and commercial versions, allows users to import/export XML, CSV, or Excel data and integrates with more than a dozen popular plugins. Since its founding in 2011, WP All Import has been sold with unlimited, lifetime licenses. The product has more than 12,000 customers. In a statement published this week, WP All Import explained that the company went with lifetime licenses from the beginning because most commercial plugins were sold this way when they started in 2011 and customers began to expect it. Some companies have had a rocky transition out of providing lifetime licenses, as the community saw with Delicious Brains’ acquisition of ACF in June 2021. Although they assured existing customers that they would honor their lifetime licenses, a few months later on Black Friday, Delicious Brains began urging them to purchase annual subscriptions. For many companies transitioning away from old pricing strategies, lifetime license holders become dead weight, requiring support without putting revenue back into the company. WP All Import has found success with offering lifetime licenses for 11 years, but the company is making sure its new customers will be paying every year: We are not making this change because because lifetime licenses are inherently unsustainable or support costs are spiraling out of control. WP All Import is a profitable business, support costs generally follow revenue up and down, and lifetime licenses for WordPress plugins are absolutely a sustainable business model. We are moving to annual licenses simply because we will make more money. “While lifetime licenses work, annual licenses are absolutely more profitable over the long term. This is why you see almost every piece of software on earth now being sold with one.” WP All Import is one of the few remaining companies that is still using a lifetime license pricing strategy. The company noted that over the past ten years, the budgets for WordPress projects have grown along with the quality of their software. Generally, the response to the news has been positive. Some are considering purchasing lifetime licenses before they are no longer offered. One customer said he appreciated the honest communication but bristled at the notion that “people just expect to have to renew their software licenses.” “No,” developer Patrick van Kouteren said. “It is being forced upon consumers because it generates more revenue for the business selling it.” Well, that’s honest from WP All Import. But followed by a bullshit statement: “people just expect to have to renew”. No. It is being forced upon consumers because it generates more revenue for the business selling it. pic.twitter.com/U1p0qy4JJt — Patrick van Kouteren (@pvankouteren) November 2, 2022 WP All Import assured existing customers that it will continue to honor their lifetime licenses and offer the same level of support. If the company releases new products in the future, lifetime license holders will be eligible to purchase annual licenses for these products at discounted rates. WP All Import said the company will be making these changes “sometime later this year or next year.” [ad_2] Source link
Continue reading#49 – Matt Cromwell on the Effectiveness of the WordPress.org Repository for Promoting New Plugins – WP Tavern
[ad_1] [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My Is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes and in this case, the effectiveness of the wordpress.org repository for promoting new plugins. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Do that by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there. So on the podcast today, we have Matt Cromwell. Matt is Senior Director of Operations and Marketing at StellarWP, where he provides marketing and business insights and coaching to burgeoning WordPress product owners. He’s also one of the founders of GiveWP, a donation plugin, which uses the freemium model. Having a free version on wordpress.org’s repository as well as a paid premium offering. The wordpress.org repository is where you find yourself when you click the add new button in the WP admin. It’s a place where plugin developers can, if they follow the guidelines, hosts to their plugins. It provides a direct line of access to all WordPress websites, and is therefore a convenient, free place to host your plugin. In return, the plugins in the repository must be freely available by the plugin authors. In the past few weeks, the repository has been in the news. Some statistics were unexpectedly removed, and this has led to a conversation about the governance of the repository, as well as questions about whether or not the repository is still a worthwhile place to offer your free plugins, if you have a premium tier. Alex Denning wrote a post entitled, “WordPress.org is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022”, in which he lays out his thoughts as to why he no longer recommends the WordPress repository. The battle against already successful plugins, low conversion rates, and the difficulty in gaining visibility are amongst the arguments that he puts forward. Shortly after Alex’s post was published, Matt Cromwell posted a rebuttal entitled, “The case for the WordPress freemium model”. And this is the basis of the podcast today. We talk about Matt’s history in WordPress as a premium plugin owner and how his experience leads him to conclude differently. That the WordPress repository can be successful, given the right expectations and approach. He’s found using the repository to be an effective channel to drive the plugins premium tier, as well as a way of offering a useful free donation tool to the community. It’s a fascinating chat and is sure to be of interest to anyone thinking about starting a freemium plugin. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast. Where you’ll find all of the other episodes as well. And so, without further delay, I bring you Matt Cromwell. I am joined on the podcast today by Matt Cromwell. Hello, Matt. [00:04:19] Matt Cromwell: Hi, thanks for having me. [00:04:20] Nathan Wrigley: You’re very welcome. We’ve got a, an interesting subject today, all about the wordpress.org ecosystem and whether or not it would be sensible or otherwise to put your free plugin over there. Before we get stuck into that debate, though properly, anybody that is unfamiliar with Matt, let’s give him an opportunity to introduce himself. So, Matt, just give us a few moments of your time to tell us who you are, what your relationship is with WordPress, what you’ve done in the past in the WordPress space. [00:04:47] Matt Cromwell: Sure. I’ve been in WordPress for a while. I would say about 2012 or so. Jumped in and started building websites with WordPress, mostly helping non-profit organizations, churches, educational institutions. Then ended up partnering up with my longtime business partner, Devin Walker, and he and I decided to tackle a big problem in WordPress, which at that time was how to take online donations. And so we created a plugin called GiveWP, and that was launched in 2015. That has catapulted us into our career, and has done really well and we’re really proud of it. So much so that we sold it last year to uh, Liquid Web, which is where we are now in the StellarWP brands. There, we have also just recently been asked to uh, take on a bit more. And so now Devin and I are both managing GiveWP as well as iThemes, Iconic and Kadence WP. So things keep getting more and more exciting. [00:05:44] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you very much. Yeah, really broad and rich history there. We could have spent the podcast talking about those products, but we’re not going to. Well, I think we might do tangentially as a way of demonstrating different things. But we’re on the podcast today to talk about a couple of pieces which came out. I will link correctly to both of the pieces that we’re in discussions about today. But I’ll mention them both in turn so that those listening to the podcast could possibly have a quick read of them before they pursue any further. So the first one was produced on the 18th of October by Alex Denning over at getellipsis.com, and that piece was called wordpress.org is ineffective for plugin distribution in 2022. And then a few days after that, you, Matt Cromwell, wrote a piece and that was at mattcromwell.com and it was called the case for the WordPress plugin freemium model. And in effect, your piece coming a little bit later was a rebuttal about what Alex was
Continue readingGutenberg Contributors Explore a New Browse Mode for Navigating the Site Editor – WP Tavern
[ad_1] It’s easy to get lost while trying to get around the Site Editor unless you are working day and night inside the tool. The navigation is jumpy and confusing, especially when going from template browsing to template editing to modifying individual blocks. A large PR is in progress for redesigning this UI with the introduction of a “browse mode” that would make the experience feel more like a design tool. Gutenberg lead engineer Riad Benguella opened the PR as a continuation of the ongoing work on this project, which has its roots in ideas and explorations that have been fermenting since 2019. He shared a video that roughly demonstrates the target for the proposed UI changes. It essentially introduces a “navigable frame” where users can select from a menu of features on the left. More detailed efforts on improving the animations and placement of the menu items is happening simultaneously within the ticket. The original idea was to include the “Navigation menu” item inside the sidebar, but Benguella removed it in favor of keeping the PR contained to simply adding the “edit/view” mode. Although such a large PR has the potential to introduce a slew of regressions, Benguella said there is no other way around a big PR due to the the necessity of the structural changes to how the site editor is organized. He is attempting to keep it narrowly focused and not try to tackle features like browsing capabilities and adding UI (template lists, global styles, etc) to the sidebar. The idea is not without some pushback. Alex Stine, Cloud Platform Engineer at Waystar, warned against introducing another Mode into Gutenberg, saying it “feels kind of reckless considering we haven’t refined existing modes for all users.” He noted that Gutenberg already has select/edit mode contexts. “This was a feature basically added for screen readers only,” Stine said. “I am hoping this will one day be removed, but we’re not quite there yet. “I think the community is trying to solve the wrong problem. If Gutenberg itself did not have such a complex UI, there would not be the need for a hundred different modes in a hundred different contexts, blocks, or even editors. We have gone so crazy making everything so quickly, no one thought about how to unify the interface across all editors. This feels like it could be another patch to a bigger problem.” Stine cautioned against growing the UI for something that ultimately doesn’t make things any simpler. “In a sense this PR doesn’t introduce any new mode, it just redesigns the current navigation panel a bit,” Benguella said in response. “I think it’s an opportunity to improve the a11y of the navigation in the site editor. “The confusion in this PR is that it’s not about another mode in the editor itself, it’s higher level, it’s how we choose which template and template part to edit before actually entering the editor.” Although the project’s contributors have been referring to it as “browse mode,” it is essentially a redesign for the existing UI to make it more intuitive for users to navigate. Gutenberg may not need any more new “modes” but the site editor is in dire need design improvements that will unify the experience and make it less chaotic for getting around. During the most recent core Editor meeting, Gutenberg contributors called for feedback on the big PR, since it has so many moving parts and needs more scrutiny. It’s not ready to land in the next release of Gutenberg yet, but the concept is rapidly taking shape and may expand to include more features in the sidebar once the basic structure is in place. [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingAdding Blocks With Animated Backgrounds Using WebArea’s Latest Plugin – WP Tavern
[ad_1] As always, I like to highlight some things on the lighter side of the WordPress world. We have had enough business acquisitions in the past week — the whole year, really — that we need to take a break and enjoy the more experimental developments that the community has to offer. Such as the case with WebArea’s latest plugin, Background Animation Blocks. It is a collection of six blocks with different animated effects. I am obsessed with all things space and night-sky related, so I was immediately drawn to the Stars block. It has an animated background of simple dots floating in the background. It is also the most advanced animation, following the mouse cursor of the end-user. Stars animated block. The Stars block has a size, scale, and color setting for the background effect. Each of the other blocks has unique options, depending on what it does. Some, such as Bubbles and Gradient, allow the end-user to control the animation speed. Others have multiple color inputs. In total, the plugin provides six individual blocks with unique animation effects for the background. Effectively, they behave like the Group block, serving as a simple container. Each of the blocks supports both wide and full alignment. They allow users to control the text and background colors. And, any other block can be placed inside of them, just like you would expect from the core Group or Container blocks. They do not support some of the newer layout features from the Gutenberg plugin that other container-type blocks have. There is no need yet because those features have not landed in WordPress, but it is something to watch out for in the future. It is easy enough to wrap these animated blocks inside of another Group block for those features, though. However, I prefer not to put the burden of nesting on the end-user if possible. There are some downsides to the approach the plugin developer took. The animated backgrounds could have been tacked onto the existing Group or Cover blocks for WordPress, essentially behaving as a settings extension. An alternative route would have also been to create a single “Animated Container” block and allow the user to choose the specific background effect. With this method, the plugin author could have used the variations API to make each of the animations searchable and appear via the block inserter. However, the individual block route has been done before. Automattic took the same approach via its Starscape and Waves blocks. They are simply shipped as separate plugins instead of bundled as a collection. I prefer this solution because it allows users to pick and choose only the blocks they want. Assuming the library of animated blocks grows in future versions of the plugin, it could become overkill. The second issue is the plugin does not make use of the theme color palette in some instances. It uses the standard text and background color options for its blocks, but any custom setting only displays a color picker. For those who want to use a theme-defined color in those cases, they must know the hex code. Or, simply eyeball it to get it close enough. Despite what are, at best, trivial issues, the plugin was fun to tinker with. The blocks do not have to be relegated to the zanier side of WordPress. It is easy enough to adjust their settings for more subtle effects that could work for business-related or other types of sites. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWooCommerce 5.7.0 Patches Security Issue that Could Potentially Leak Analytics Reports – WP Tavern
[ad_1] WooCommerce shipped version 5.7.0 through a forced update for some users earlier this week. The minor release was not billed as a security update but the following day WooCommerce published a post explaining that the plugin was vulnerable to having analytics reports leaked on some hosting configurations: On September 21, 2021, our team released a security patch to address a server configuration setup used by some hosts, which under the right conditions may make some analytics reports publicly available. This was technically classified as a broken access control vulnerability, according to the WPScan. WordPress.org pushed an automatic update to affected stores beginning on September 21, for all sites that have not explicitly disabled automatic updates. The WooCommerce team created a patch for 18 versions back to 4.0.0, along with 17 patched versions of the WooCommerce Admin plugin. Those whose filesystem is set to read-only or who are running WooCommerce versions older than 4.0.0 will not have received the automatic update and should proceed to manually update their sites. WooCommerce recommends users update to the latest version, which is now 5.7.1, or the highest number possible in your release branch. The security announcement post has detailed instructions for how store owners can check to see if their report files may have been downloaded. More than 5 million WordPress sites use WooCommerce. At the time of publishing, 59.8% are running on version 5.4 or older. Only 12.8% are using the lates 5.7.x release. It’s not possible to see how many sites are still vulnerable, because WordPress.org only displays a breakdown for the major branches users have installed. Some site owners running older versions may still be active in applying security patches but not prepared to update to the latest release. WooCommerce 5.7.1 was released earlier today after the team received multiple reports of broken sites following the 5.7.0 update. This release includes fixes for regressions and new bugs identified in the previous update. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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