Develop, Test, and Showcase Blocks in Isolation With BlockBook

Riad Benguella released BlockBook, a project that promises to overhaul how developers build blocks and more, on Tuesday. It is a development environment that allows creators to work with blocks in isolation, outside of WordPress. Developers can view individual block properties and test output from a defined block library. BlockBook is available as an npm package. Developers can also contribute …

Revised Block Directory Guidelines Proposal Updates Wording but Changes Little Else

Yesterday, Alex Shiels posted an update to the proposed guidelines for the WordPress block directory. The document adds eight rules for plugin authors to follow if they plan to add their one-off blocks to the directory. The guidelines are additional requirements on top of the existing plugin directory guidelines. While the wording and organization of the block guidelines received a …

How To Bulk Optimize Images With Smush

Using full-sized images on your WordPress site not only takes up storage space but slows down your site, too. Instead of wasting time and effort compressing them manually, see how Smush can help you do it in bulk. Smush is an award-winning image optimization plugin that focuses on compressing and resizing your images. It saves storage space and takes some …

Unsplash Launches Official Plugin for WordPress

Unsplash has released its own official plugin for WordPress, co-developed with the team at XWP. The plugin seamlessly connects Unsplash’s 1 million+ free high-resolution image library with the WordPress editor. Users can easily search Unsplash directly inside the custom block and insert images with attribution and alt description info automatically filled in. The selected images are download and added to …

All in One SEO Pack Plugin Patches XSS Vulnerability

All in One SEO Pack patched an XSS vulnerability this week that was discovered by the security researchers at Wordfence on July 10. The popular plugin has more than 2 million active installs, according to WordPress.org. Wordfence researchers categorized it as “a medium severity security issue” that could result in “a complete site takeover and other severe consequences:” This flaw …

Blocksy Theme Adds New Charity Starter Site, Pro Version to Launch in 2020

Blocksy is one of the best free themes available for the block editor right now and is rapidly growing in popularity. CreativeThemes, the Romania-based company behind the theme, released an update to Blocksy this week, along with a new starter site for charities. The concept of “starter sites” is an interesting new twist on “starter templates,” which essentially allow users …