Hi,

Welcome to the 50th issue of our Newsletter! 🎉

Thank you for being with us on this incredible journey and we promise you more WordPress goodies in 2022.

We winded up 2021 with our Plugin of the Month article - Publisher Media Kit.

After the holidays, things are slowly picking up speed in the WordPress world, and we will keep you posted on the happenings.

But for now, grab your beverage and pursue the news we have curated for you.

See you next Tuesday!

Bye

• A year in WordPress core – 2021: Some aggregate data for 2021 about WordPress Core contribution on Trac.
• Enhanced lazy-loading performance in 5.9: Lazy-loading images was introduced in WordPress 5.5 and later expanded to also cover iframes in WordPress 5.7. In the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release, the implementation for both has received some fine-tuning to improve performance.
• Take more control over Inner Block Areas (as a block developer): WordPress 5.9 is introducing a new react hook called useInnerBlocksProps that allows you to take more control over the markup of inner blocks areas.
• Proposal for approving Block Pattern Directory submissions: The Block Pattern Directory will soon be live and ready to accept custom Block Pattern submissions. In anticipation of this new directory, Angela Jin has proposed some basic automated checks, along with spam filters.
• Block themes, a new way to build themes in WordPress 5.9: The new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Two, ships with WordPress 5.9 and is the very first default block theme, which makes it a beautiful reference theme to learn from.
• New API in WP 5.9 to access global settings & styles: Following the introduction of a theme.json API in WordPress 5.8 and its corresponding JavaScript API, WordPress 5.9 comes with a PHP public API to read data from theme.json.
• Block editor changes in WordPress 5.9: Summary of updates and changes made to the block editors for WordPress 5.9
  
• New Team Representatives for the Community Team: The Community Team Representatives for 2022 are Sam Suresh and Hari Shanker.
• WordPress Foundation - looking back at 2021: Read on to find out about their various programs in 2021.
• SEO 2021 in review: Despite facing a still-raging pandemic and a slew of updates, SEOs rose to the challenge. Check out the recap of the year’s most important SEO stories and news.
• The state of CSS 2021: What CSS has been up to in 2021.
• Celebrate by writing: What Matt Mullenweg wants this for his upcoming birthday –people to start blogging.
• Elementor Bug Bounty Program: You will be rewarded too.
• Pantone’s 2022 Color of the Year: The Pantone Color of the Year 2022 is a new shade, Very Peri, one that embraces the uncertainty and cautious optimism of our moment. The new shade of periwinkle is a result of almost a year’s worth of research and trend forecasting from the Pantone Color Institute, which begins looking at color trends in the late spring.
• Italian Courts find Open Source Software terms enforceable: In a first-time ruling by Italian courts on open source licensing, a software vendor has lost a civil case for failing to comply with open source license requirements.
• In 2021, the Internet went for TikTok, space and beyond: The most popular domains this year according to data on Cloudflare Radar and those domains’ changes in popularity ranking.
• How Meta is changing Facebook Ads targeting for 2022: Meta has announced the removal of Facebook Ads audience targeting options across four categories, beginning January 19, 2022.
• Google on how to improve SEO Audits: Google’s Martin Splitt offers advice on how to improve SEO audits in a way that makes them more useful to web developers.
• Public Domain Day 2022: On January 1, 2022, copyrighted works from 1926 will enter the US public domain, where they will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The line-up this year is stunning.

• A re-imagined WordPress Block Themes Directory from Munir Kamal: It can help users find the perfect theme for their needs and provide details, such as typography and color scheme. Justin Tadlock has the details.
• A throwback to the past: Retro Winamp Block plugin: Justin Tadlock reviewed the plugin from 10up.

• Starboard acquires stake worth $800 M in GoDaddy: Activist investor Starboard Value LP has purchased a 6.5% stake in web services firm GoDaddy Inc (GDDY.N) worth about $800 million, according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

• 2021 Year in Review: Awsm Innovations, WP Tavern, Yoast, Barn2, Nelio Software, WebDevStudios, rtCamp are among the vast number of companies that published the summary of 2021.
• Francesca Marano has joined XWP: After leaving Yoast, she will be Associate Director of Engineering at XWP. We wish her all the best.
• People of WordPress - Collins Agbonghama: This month WordPress.org features the website builder from Nigeria
• How to move a WordPress site from Localhost to a live site: Guide by Rob Pugh of Jetpack
• Wizard’s SQL Recipes for WordPress – a new book from Jeff Starr: The goal of this book is to help people interact directly with the WordPress database. By entering simple SQL commands, anyone can select, modify, and optimize data quickly and easily.
• Learn how to become a better blogger in 90 Minutes: A new course from Chris Lema
• CreativeThemes announced their new Starter Site, Garderobe: It is designed specifically for the fashionista in each of us.
• 7 Affirmations about the WordPress community: from BobWP
• WP Weekly Awards 2021 Award show analysis: Davinder Singh Kanith and Rob Cairns analyzing the winners of the WP Weekly Awards
• Three WordPress predictions for 2022: David McCan shares his top three predictions for 2022
• Nurturing a community that works for everyone: An interesting read from Todd Jones
• Top 10 web design trends (what makes a great website in 2022?) Will Morris shares ten of the top web design trends for 2022
• Frontend Developer resources 2022: Nick Taylor shares his favourite resources.
• Brainstorming new software features: A peep into how to how a successful team thinks through features. From Jason Coleman of Stranger Studios.

• WordCamp Birmingham on February 4-5, 2022: It will be the first in-person WordCamp on the schedule for 2022.
• WordFest Live 2022 on March 04: Call for Sponsors is now open. This fun festival of WordPress, is also a fundraiser for the Big Orange Heart charity that promotes positive well-being and mental health within remote working communities
• Expand 2022 on April 27-28: Call for speakers is open. Expand (organized by GoDaddy Pro in Orlando, FL) is an event created to connect web pros through networking, education, and fun. The theme of Expand 2022 will be Empowerment.

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