In this issue of Delicious Brain Bytes, we look at the recent release of WP Offload SES 1.7, the opening of the annual ACF user survey, and much more!
WordPress 6.6 RC 2 Available for Testing
The second release candidate for WordPress 6.6 is now available for download and testing, with the third and final release candidate scheduled for July 9th. Testing release candidates is an instrumental part of making sure the release is stable, but make sure you do all your testing in a local environment or on a test server.
The full release of WordPress 6.6 is scheduled for July 16th, promising a sheaf of API enhancements and other features.
WP Offload SES 1.7 Introduces Enqueue Only Mode and Improvements for High-Volume Senders
WP Offload SES 1.7 is now available! Version 1.7 adds a new “Enqueue Only” mode that can be used to prevent sending accidental emails in development and staging environments or to temporarily pause all emails in production environments.
This release also improves the management of sent emails, logs, and attachments, making it easier than ever for high-volume senders to maintain a lean and performant site over time.
Some sites send such large volumes of email that keeping sent email in the database becomes a problem. Either the database table gets rather large, or you can experience performance problems when accessing WP Offload SES’s settings page. WP Offload SES 1.7 can now instantly remove successfully sent email and enables purging email from the log. In addition, accessing the settings page is no longer troublesome, even when there are millions of emails in the log.
Other improvements in the new release include an update to the required version of PHP, better handling of URLs that are already URL encoded, and more. For more information, please see the full release post.
ACF Annual Survey 2024: Share Your Insights
The ACF Annual Survey is now open, inviting users to share their experiences and insights on how they use Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) to build WordPress sites. This survey aims to understand how ACF is being used, identify trends, and guide future development efforts.
The survey consists of around 30 multiple-choice questions, taking approximately 15 minutes to complete. The results help build a more accurate picture of ACF users and how they use the plugin to build WordPress sites. Last year’s survey received an incredible response, with over 2,000 users sharing their insights. These insights have been instrumental in guiding development efforts, ensuring that ACF continues to evolve to meet user needs.
After the survey closes, an aggregated and anonymized version of the results will be published, providing valuable insights into the current state of ACF and WordPress development.
Creating a Tic-Tac-Toe Game with Pure HTML and CSS
Gurveer Arora has successfully created a Tic-Tac-Toe game using only HTML and CSS, without any JavaScript. The game uses radio buttons and labels to create the effect of buttons and state. Each square of the game is designed using HTML and CSS to ensure that only the relevant label can be clicked based on whose turn it is.
To add a level of randomness to the game, Arora created extra labels for all locations and placed them behind a div that acts as a button. The labels are animated and made invisible, making it difficult for the user to predict which label is currently under the button. Check out his post for more details and code examples showing how he pulled it off.
WordCamp Europe and WordCamp Canada
WordCamp Europe 2024, held in Torino, Italy, from June 13th to 15th, brought together over 2,500 attendees from around the world to celebrate and explore the world of WordPress. The event was a resounding success, with a dedicated team of 250 volunteers working tirelessly to produce the event.
Highlights
- Contributor Day: 726 contributors worked across 25 teams, translating 79,059 strings for the WordPress user interface across 29 languages and updating documentation for the forthcoming 6.6 release.
- Keynote Address: Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer discussed sustaining open source software projects, covering funding, contributing beyond code, and convincing buyers of the viability of open source.
- Mid-Year Project Update: WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg shared updates on the contributor mentorship program, WCEU Contributor Day, and the latest innovations with WordPress Playground.
Upcoming: WordCamp Canada 2024
The WordPress community is gearing up for the first-ever WordCamp Canada 2024! Scheduled for July 11th to 13th in Ottawa, Ontario, this event promises to bring together WordPress enthusiasts from across North America to share ideas, collaborate, and drive the WordPress project forward.
The largest WordCamp events tend to draw headlines, but as Damon Cook notes in a recent post discussing his experience at WordCamp Montclair, the regional events are still “…filled with insightful sessions, vibrant community interactions, and a shared passion for all things WordPress.”
Getting Started With Headless WordPress
Headless WordPress separates the content management system part of WordPress from the frontend presentation layer. Decoupling the front and back ends of your site allows you to leverage the power of WordPress as a content hub, while enjoying the flexibility and performance benefits of modern frontend frameworks.
In this article, we discuss the tech stack you need, show you the first steps of setting up your headless environment, discuss some of the frontend frameworks available, and finally highlight some tutorials that show how to build various headless WordPress projects from scratch.
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