Doc’s WordPress News Drop is a weekly report on the most pressing WordPress news. When the news drops, I will pick it up and deliver it right to you.
This week’s video talks about the features in the new beta of Gutenberg (Gutenberg 2.0) plus lots of discussion about WordCamp Miami 2018.
Update your WordPress! Always.
Love WordPress news but hate reading? My name is Doc and this is Doc Pop’s News Drop.
First off, WordPress version 4.9.2 has recently been released and it’s a security update featuring a fix for an XSS vulnerability and 21 other bug fixes.
Now I know that if you are watching this you a probably a smart and suave WordPress user who updates as often as possible, but just in case let me remind you to always keep your WordPress version up to date. Especially on these security releases. You can find that big shiny update button in your WordPress dashboard.
It wouldn’t be a WordPress news video without some mention of the Gutenberg editor. Still no release date for this new block based editor, but Gutenberg 2.0 has now been released for testing.
The big changes in version 2 are user experience and accessibility related.
On the UX side, you can now drag and drop multiple images at one time into a Gallery block or drag an image into your cover images.
Several keyboard improvements have been added such as the ability to toggle the editor mode as well as fixing unexpected keyboard navigation behavior.
Several accessibility issues have been identified and fixed in this release as well.
I think the two big concerns with the new Gutenberg editor are compatibility with existing themes and plugins and accessibility issues, which the team seems focused on fixing.
You can help them out by installing the Gutenberg plugin and letting the developers know of any bugs or issues you may find. The plugin is currently available in the WordPress plugin repository. https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/
Looking for a good excuse for a warm vacation spot? WordCamp Miami is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this March and the line up sounds awesome.
This year, the organizers are expecting over 850 attendees, which is quite a jump from 2010’s sold out crowd of 250. And that’s not even including the folks who are streaming the talks online.
This 3 day event will take place at the Florida International University School of Business from March 16 through 18th with a general admission ticket at the low low price of $40.
The first day of the event, March 16th, is set aside for day long workshops split into three categories: WordPress Beginner’s course, eCommerce, and a Developers workshop.
This year’s event will also feature a two day Kids Camp for kids 6 and up. For those between the ages of 6 & 13, the weekend will be spent focusing on blogging and STEM exercises, while the older kids will be learning how to build and promote their own eCommerce store. All kids will end the Kids camp with their own site with pre-installed plugins.
I saw the Kids Camp at WordCamp Austin and loved chatting with the kids about the sites they were building. Most of them were video game related.
More information can be found on 2018.miami.wordcamp.org
And finally, I’ve recently launched my own eCommerce site and the experience on my first day of sales was… surprisingly stressful. So along with our weekly WordPress videos, I’d like to start documenting what I learn in a series of videos. If you are an ecommerce expert or WooCommerce Wizard and you’d like to share your knowledge in a video interview, I’d love to chat. You can contact me in the comments below or leave me a note on torquemag.io contact page.
That’s it for this week’s News Drop, thanks for subscribing and watching! We’ll see you next week on Doc Pop’s News Drop.
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