July has been packed with exciting developments in the world of WordPress. Highlights include the release of WordPress 6.6, WPBeginner’s 15th anniversary, and the launch of innovative tools by the WordPress Performance team and WPCode.
This month’s news also includes significant acquisitions, such as Awesome Motive’s acquisition of BuddyBoss and WP Engine’s acquisition of NitroPack.
Let’s dive into these updates and share key insights from this month’s WordPress news.
This is a new monthly series called WPBeginner Spotlight, where we will be covering all the behind-the-scenes news from the world of WordPress.
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WordPress 6.6 Was Released With Exciting New Features
WordPress 6.6 is finally here, with new features and improvements to enhance your website-building experience. This update focuses on making your site editing smoother and faster.
The new Grid block allows you to create complex grid layouts easily, offering better control over your content design. You can adjust column widths, apply custom styling, and drag items across columns.
The update also introduces Section Styles and Mix and Match Style Variations. These features let you apply unique styles to different sections and combine design elements effortlessly.
We are particularly excited about the automatic rollback for the plugin updates feature. In our experience, many users were reluctant to turn on automatic updates because they were afraid of broken updates.
With 6.6, if an auto-update breaks your site, then WordPress will revert to the previous stable version. This ensures your site remains functional and secure.
Lastly, WordPress 6.6 includes performance improvements, better accessibility, and enhanced support for internationalization.
For a detailed walkthrough, you can see our WordPress 6.6 release post or the official WordPress 6.6 Field Guide.
BuddyBoss Joins Awesome Motive Family
BuddyBoss, a leading platform for building online communities and membership sites, has joined the Awesome Motive family of products.
This acquisition brings together two powerhouses in the WordPress ecosystem, promising to deliver even more value and innovation to users.
BuddyBoss is known for its powerful features, which allow users to easily create social networks and build online communities. With this acquisition, Awesome Motive plans to enhance BuddyBoss’s capabilities for even better integration with popular WordPress plugins and tools.
Syed Balkhi, CEO of Awesome Motive and WPBeginner, shared his excitement about the acquisition in the announcement post:
As a business owner, I have always believed that having control over your content and distribution is key to long-term success. This is why I believe adding a private community with premium content and a branded mobile app is going to help make your business more resilient in the long-term.
Syed Balkhi, CEO of Awesome Motive
This move is part of Awesome Motive’s ongoing strategy to expand its portfolio of products and services to offer comprehensive solutions to WordPress users.
WPBeginner Turned 15 Years Old
This month, we are celebrating WPBeginner’s 15th anniversary! Founded in 2009 by Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner has grown into the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners.
Over the past 15 years, we’ve helped millions of users with tutorials, guides, and resources to build and improve their WordPress websites.
To celebrate the milestone, we ran a giveaway ($50,000 in prizes) and offered special discounts.
The giveaway is over and we’re currently selecting the winners. If you’re selected, you should have already received an email about it.
WPCode Launches Game-Changing AI-Powered Code Snippet Generator
WPCode, the best WordPress code snippet plugin, has launched a groundbreaking tool: WPCode AI.
WPCode AI lets you generate and modify code snippets with AI. All you have to do is describe what you want your snippet to do in plain English.
It automatically generates the code snippet so you can implement an additional feature to your site without coding yourself.
WPCode AI comes in handy if you’re looking to add custom functionality, improve site navigation, or integrate new features. It turns your commands into optimized, functional code in seconds.
WPCode AI integrates seamlessly with its extensive library of over 1,400 snippets. It also supports advanced features like smart conditional logic and auto-insert locations.
While WPCode AI is a premium feature, the free WPCode lite plugin comes with essential features to manage code snippets in WordPress.
Solid Backups Ends Support for Google Drive Backups
Solid Backups has announced that it will no longer support backups to Google Drive. This change affects all users using Google Drive as their main backup destination.
The decision to discontinue support is due to ongoing issues with integration and reliability concerns.
Solid Backups (formerly BackupBuddy) has been around for a long time. However, its aging code base would require a lot of development resources to keep up with Google’s API changes.
Users are advised to switch to alternative backup destinations supported by Solid Backups, like Dropbox, Amazon S3, or local storage options.
Tip 💡: Users who want to store backups on Google Drive can try other WordPress backup plugins like Duplicator, which supports Google Drive cloud backups and easy one-click restores from backups.
MemberPress Released Social Login Addon
MemberPress has launched a new Social Login addon. It aims to simplify the login process for users by allowing them to log in to WordPress membership sites using their social media accounts.
This add-on was needed due to the growing demand for more convenient login options. Users often find it challenging to remember passwords, fill out login forms, or recover lost passwords, leading to frustration.
In some cases, these difficulties can even cause users to abandon the signup process altogether.
MemberPress aims to help site owners retain and engage their members by allowing them to use their existing social media credentials.
Social logins help improve the user experience and, by eliminating barriers to entry, can lead to higher membership sign-ups and engagement.
This feature supports popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and WordPress.com and is available to MemberPress Pro users.
WP Engine Acquires NitroPack to Boost Site Performance
WP Engine has acquired NitroPack, an all-in-one SaaS solution for improving website speed and performance metrics, including Google’s Core Web Vitals.
NitroPack, used by over 219,000 websites, is known for its intuitive automation, which enhances page load speed with little to no technical expertise required.
This acquisition strengthens WP Engine’s suite of web technologies, adding more power and flexibility for customers.
Heather Brunner, WP Engine’s Chairwoman and CEO, highlighted that “NitroPack’s integration will replace multiple optimization tools with a single powerful solution, driving significant performance improvements.”
The acquisition comes after the successful introduction of Page Speed Boost. This feature uses NitroPack’s technology and has already shown significant improvements in Core Web Vitals scores for WP Engine customers.
In Other News
- MonsterInsights launched the Date Comparisons feature to provide deeper insights into your website’s performance. It allows users to compare their Google Analytics data across different time periods to track marketing campaigns, seasonal trends, and website updates.
- WordPress Performance Team released the Enhanced Responsive Images plugin. It automatically optimizes image sizes for faster loading times, improving overall site performance.
- Google URL shortener goo.gl will stop working on August 25th. We recommend using the free Pretty Links plugin to build your own custom link shortener using WordPress.
- Uncanny Automator 5.9 now lets you connect your WordPress site with Notion, Campaign Monitor, and the Kadence theme. Uncanny Automator is the #1 WordPress no-code automation tool. Try the free version here.
- Mark Ashton launched Vendbase, a new platform designed to make WooCommerce store management easier through advanced data visualization, streamlined management tools, and real-time analytics.
- Kestrel Acquires CheckoutWC: This acquisition aims to improve the checkout experience for WooCommerce stores by integrating Kestrel’s innovative features.
- InstaWP Adds Support for the Duplicator Plugin: This update allows users to easily clone and migrate their WordPress sites using the Duplicator plugin.
- WP Mail SMTP launched SMTP2Go integration. The most powerful WordPress SMTP plugin continues to get better by ensuring that your WordPress emails are always delivered to users’ inboxes.
- WPExperts Acquires Honeypot for Contact Form 7: This acquisition aims to improve spam protection for Contact Form 7 users.
That wraps up this edition of WPBeginner Spotlight.
We would love to hear your thoughts on how to improve and expand this column. Also, if you have any newsworthy items you’d like to see featured next month, please let us know.
Feel free to send us your suggestions or leave a comment below about what you’d like to see in future editions.
We’ll be back next month with more WordPress news and updates. Thank you for being part of our community!
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The post WPBeginner Spotlight 02 – Plugin Acquisitions, New Releases + More WordPress News first appeared on WPBeginner.