Google Concludes FLoC Origin Trial, Does Not Intend to Share Feedback from Participants

Google quietly concluded its FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) origin trial this week. The trial was part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, a suite of new technologies designed to replace third-party cookies, fingerprinting, and other commonly-used tracking mechanisms. This particular experiment groups people together based on browsing habits and labels them using machine learning. FLoC’s trial was scheduled to end …

Awesome Motive Acquires SearchWP

Awesome Motive, the company behind MonsterInsights, OptinMonster, WPForms, and several other popular products, has acquired SearchWP, a commercial plugin that enhances WordPress’ search functionality. No changes have been announced for the plugin and Awesome Motive CEO Syed Balkhi says it will be “business as usual” for current customers. “We have built a lot of internal tools to improve our website …

How To Update PHP To The Suggested WordPress Version

Using an outdated version of WordPress core, plugins, or themes puts your site at risk. PHP is no different. While WordPress technically works with some older versions of PHP, you’re sacrificing performance and compatibility, while opening yourself up to security vulnerabilities by using these. For safety and stability, always aim to use the WordPress recommended versions of PHP. In this …

WordPress 5.8 Adds Support for New Emoji Introduced in Twemoji 13.1.0

In the upcoming 5.8 release, WordPress is updating its version of Twemoji, Twitter’s open source emoji library that supports the latest Unicode emoji specification. Version 13.1.0 introduces five new smileys and emotions, including heart on fire, mending heart, face with spiral eyes, face in clouds, and face exhaling. Version 13.1 adds mixed skin tone support for all variations of the “Kiss” …