WordPress 5.8 Beta 1 Released: New Blocks, New Widgets Screen, and Pattern Directory on Deck

WordPress 5.8 beta 1 is ready for testing. This upcoming release makes major strides towards solidifying WordPress’ site building capabilities, along with improvements to features users have enjoyed since the launch of the block editor. It is one of the most feature-packed releases in recent history and as such requires all hands on deck for testing. New blocks in 5.8 …

Gutenberg 10.8 Adds New Typography Controls and Block Previews

On Wednesday, Gutenberg 10.8 landed in the WordPress plugin directory. The release includes new typography options for controlling the Heading block’s font-weight and the List block’s font family. The Audio and File blocks now show preview content in the inserter. Gutenberg 10.7 felt like it introduced flashier features than 10.8. But, this was still a solid release. Sometimes the things …

WordPress 5.8 Introduces Support for WebP Images

WebP support is coming to WordPress 5.8. This modern image file format was created by Google in September 2010, and is now supported by 95% of the web browsers in use worldwide. It has distinct advantages over more commonly used formats, providing both lossless and lossy compression that is 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs and 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images. …

Open Invitation To Contribute to the WordPress Block Pattern Directory

The upcoming block pattern directory is launching alongside WordPress 5.8 in July. The goal is to make several high-quality designs available for users right off the bat. However, the official submission process will not open until the directory launches. In this chicken-and-egg scenario, the Design team is asking for early contributors to submit their pattern candidates via GitHub. “The project …

Review Signal Publishes 2021 Hosting Performance Benchmarks on New WordPress-Powered Site

Kevin Ohashi has published his 2021 WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks report. The annual report is broken down into six different hosting tiers, from the most economical <$25/month, to the $500+ enterprise level. This is the second year the stats include WooCommerce-specific hosts as a separate category. After eight years of measuring peak performance and consistency for WordPress hosts, Review Signal …

Jetpack 9.8 Introduces WordPress Stories Block Alongside Forced Security Update

Jetpack 9.8 was released this week, introducing WordPress Stories as the headline feature. The Story block, which allows users to create interactive stories, was previously only available on mobile. It can now be used in the web editor. Stories went into public beta on the Android app in January 2021, and were officially released on the mobile apps in March. Version …

Chrome Canary Adds Flag for Disabling FLoC Testing

Google’s controversial Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) experiment now has a feature flag within Chrome Canary (the nightly build of Chrome for developers) that allows users to opt out. In January 2020, Google announced its plans to discontinue support for third-party cookies in Chrome within two years. The first bits and pieces of the company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative started landing …