Hi,

After the holidays, things are picking up speed in the WordPress world. The community is busy ironing out the features of WP 5.9 expected on January 25.

We are so excited for the first major release of 2022!

And today is the birthday of Matt Mullenweg, the man behind WordPress. He has already revealed his preferred birthday gift - people to blog. (Hint - the Bloganuary challenge)

We wish him all success and happiness and a great year ahead.

Now let’s jump into this week’s news.

Bye!

• WordPress 5.9 RC 1 is available: This will be the first release of 2022 and continues the work towards 5.9 from last year. It features the latest advances of the block editor and is the first version of full site editing in Core.
• Gutenberg 12.3 has been released: This release contains fewer contributions than usual due to the holiday season that took place in some parts of the world in the last two weeks.
• WooCommerce 6.1 RC2 is out: Help test it.
• WordPress 5.8.3 security release: This security release features four security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately.
• WordPress 5.9 Field Guide is available: Take a look at what to expect in WordPress 5.9.
• WordPress 5.9 and PHP 8.0-8.1: A breakdown of changes in WordPress Core that plugin and theme developers need to be aware of and accommodate in their code.
• The new Navigation block in WP 5.9: This guide will dive deeper into some of the more technical aspects of the block’s functionality.
• Miscellaneous Core changes in WordPress 5.9: List of all the changes that developers should know about.
• New capability queries in WordPress 5.9: WordPress 5.9 adds support for capability queries in WP_User_Query. This adds support for three new query arguments in WP_User_Query: capability, capability__in, and capability__not_in.
• State of the Customizer with block themes in WordPress 5.9: With WordPress 5.9 bringing support for block themes, this results in a few changes to how the Customizer works and how one can preview themes.
• Proposal to change JavaScript Coding standards for full Prettier compatibility: Greg Ziółkowski proposed switching to the original version of the Prettier code formatting tool in the Gutenberg project and updating it to the most recent 2.5 version. The decision is to be made in 3 weeks.
• Versions in WordPress: With each major release of WordPress a new version of Gutenberg is included. This has caused confusion over time as people have tried to figure out how to best debug problems and report bugs appropriately. To make this easier, this document will serve as a canonical list of the Gutenberg versions integrated into each major WordPress release.
• WordPress 5.9 performance improvements: There are performance enhancements that everyone can look forward to with WordPress 5.9. Check the list of improvements you can expect.
• Bundled theme updates with WordPress 5.9: List of the significant changes in bundled themes.
• WP 5.9 updates for Settings, Styles, and theme.json: WordPress 5.9 is evolving the theme.json v1 introduced in WordPress 5.8 to a v2. The existing v1 theme.json files will still work as expected, and they’ll be transformed at runtime to the v2 format by WordPress.
• Locking Blocks in WordPress 5.9: To facilitate creating better patterns and templates, WordPress 5.9 comes with a new block level locking mechanism that works alongside templateLock.
• Theme-focused changes and filters in WordPress 5.9: Check the changes relevant to theme authors.
• New requirement for WooCommerce 6.5: PHP 7.2+: Starting with version 6.5, scheduled for release in May 2022, WooCommerce will require PHP 7.2 or newer to work. We strongly recommend upgrading your servers to at least PHP 7.4 in order to keep your WooCommerce sites up to date and secure.
• HTTP/3 is here: HTTP/3 can make a big difference in how users experience your site. In general, the more resources your site requires, the bigger the performance improvement you’ll see with HTTP/3.
• Proposal: mandatory safety measures for in-person WordPress events in 2022: Please share your thoughts.
• Top Emoji trends of 2021: Most notably, the previously dominant 😂“Face with Tears of Joy” has been usurped by the 😭“Loudly Crying Face” as the world's top emoji.
• Google: quality of your languages on your multilingual site can impact each other: Google's John Mueller confirmed that if you have multiple versions of your site (on the same domain name), and one version is deemed high quality by Google and the other version is deemed low quality by Google - the low-quality version can negatively impact the high-quality version.
• Google Search Console Geotargeting can hurt search rankings: Utilizing Google Search Console’s international targeting feature, also known as “geotargeting,” can hurt search rankings if you’re trying to reach a wide audience.
• Google fixes user and permissions issue with Search Console: Full user permissions no longer show as delegated owners for some.
• Google AdSense related search experiments re-enabled: Google has announced that it has re-enabled the AdSense related search experiments. Google said as of January 6, 2022 AdSense publishers can once again create Related search Custom search style experiments in your AdSense account.
• Google Ads to allow ads for sports betting in New York: New York state will begin allowing mobile or online sports bets to be placed beginning January 8, 2022. With that Google has updated its Google Ads gambling policy to allow ads for sports betting from certified and state-licensed entities in New York State.
• Does your domain extension affect SEO?: Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller answers whether your domain extension affects SEO, and other questions related to the search impact of domain choices.
• Google launches ‘Shops’ section in mobile search results: The Shops section shows three retailers (but can be expanded to show up to ten) based on their organic search rankings and is available on mobile devices for select shopping-related queries in the U.S.
• Instagram to show more content from people you don’t follow: Instagram is adding two new feeds to the app, and updating the existing home feed with more content from accounts you don’t already follow.
• Google has launched Chrome 97: Chrome 97 has been promoted to the stable channel and is now becoming available for download. The new release brings a few select refinements and improvements, but nothing too earth-shattering.
• ON24 announces new integrations with Drift: Virtual events and webinar platform ON24 has announced new integrations with conversational marketing platform Drift.

• A brand new free FSE WordPress theme - Bricksy: Bricksy is a free modern block-based WordPress theme. The Bricksy theme combines timeless design elements with a modern layout and easy-to-use features. Justin Tadlock has taken a look into it.
• Microsoft releases IndexNow plugin for WordPress: Microsoft Bing has released a plugin for WordPress to let you easily integrate the IndexNow protocol on your WordPress site. The plugin enables automated submission of URLs from WordPress sites to multiple search engines without the need to register and verify your site with them.
• A new plugin - Markup Markdown: It replaces both the classic and block editors with a Markdown solution. Justin Tadlock has an in-depth review.
• A new plugin - Grainy Gradient Block: This block is a decorative element you can add to your site. It can be used as a separator between content, or put it in a column next to text to jazz up your posts. Justin Tadlock has an in-depth review here.
• Yoast SEO is coming to Shopify: On the 18th of January, Yoast SEO on Shopify app will be released.
• Run plugin.zip for create-block: Grzegorz Ziolkowski’s PR that adds a command to automatically create the plugin zip to the create-block scaffolding tool was merged with the Gutenberg repo. It will be available with the 12.4 version of the Gutenberg plugin on January 20th, 2022.
• WordPress Vulnerability Report: January 2022, Part 1: In 2021, a total of 1,263 plugin and theme vulnerabilities were disclosed. WordPress plugin vulnerabilities comprised 98% of all vulnerabilities that were reported.

• Delicious Brains, WPMarlite and WPForms have published their 2021 Year in Reviews. Also check out the rebranding story of WP Buffs
• More on WordCamp Birmingham & WordCamp Europe: WordCamp Birmingham updates Covid-19 protocols amid Omicron surge, WordCamp Europe still planning for in-person event. WordCamp Birmingham also announced the 3rd round of speakers.
• Embracing customer segmentation: Tips from Chris Lema that will help with your marketing strategy.
• How to make your WordPress website CCPA compliant: Tutorial by Jelisaveta Sapardic
• How to remove your site from Google’s Blacklist: Guide from Simon Keating of Jetpack.
• CSS in 2022: Bramus takes a look at which CSS language features we can expect to land in browsers in 2022.
• What is Tabnabbing & how to safeguard your Elementor site against it: Gabriella Galea explains what tabnabbing is, and what you can do to mitigate it.
• Why Cloud Hosting may be right for your clients’ sites: Will Morris takes a closer look at cloud hosting and why you may want to use this solution for your clients’ sites.
• The best Penetration Testing tools: A well-researched article from Saumick Basu
• How to Migrate From Drupal to WordPress: Salman Ravoof discusses why it could make sense to migrate from Drupal to WordPress and how to do it.
• Database tip: clean up user-agent data: Jeff Starr shares an easy optimization step that can help to free up some precious disk space.
• How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months: Joe Masilotti shares his experience with Mugshot Bot – from developing to selling it.
• Blog Content Strategy for 2022: Kaleigh Moore on what should you know if you own a company and are interested in starting a blog.

• A crash course in Jamstack with Headless WP, Astro, and Buddy on Jan 12: Learn how to set up a Jamstack delivery pipeline and bootstrap your WordPress website with Astro static site generator and Shifter Headless.
• Zero to Block Theme Series: Foundations on January 12: An intermediate learn-up to teach the very basics of WordPress block theme development.
• WordPress Accessibility Meetup on January 17: At the online event, Carie Fisher will discuss what typography choices to consider for creating accessible visual presentations. Pre-registration is required.
• Online YoastCon – Shopify edition on January 20: Organized to celebrate Yoast SEO is coming to Shopify, the event is packed with interesting talks by experts from the SEO world.
• 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
• IAC22 on April 18-23: The IA conference exists to promote discourse and learning about the intentional design of information environments. Save $50 on standard and premium passes by registering before February 16th, 2022.
• 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.
• The First Post Status Twitter Conference on May 24: The goal for the Post Status Twitter Conference is to have two presentations every hour from 9am – 4pm EST, all around WordPress and the web industry, centered on our theme: Give. Grow. Together.

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