We had a long wait for the big Bricks 1.8 release, but now 1.8.1 has come rather quickly. It includes the auto-regeneration of CSS files after updates, Bricks integration with WP-CLI, a new Breadcrumbs element, and for developers, documentation and an example for adding your own dynamic data tags.

Joost de Valk looks at how the top 10 CMS options are doing. He found that WordPress is at 43.2% market share, which is .2% more than 11 months ago. There are some comments about how the others are doing also.

Calvin Akn, a security researcher, published an article looking at WordPress malware scanners. The summary of the article is that malware scanning can be helpful for detecting common malware, but more sophisticated attacks can bypass it and give you a false sense of security. Therefore, you should not rely totally on malware scanning but should have good measures in place for prevention. There are some interesting and clever step by step illustrations of the concepts described in the article.

The research in the article was done in conjunction with GridPane and Thomas J. Raef. Patchstack verified the proof of concepts discussed, as noted in the article.

Version 16.0 of Gutenberg, plugin version, was released with the ability to manage pages in the Site Editor, the new command center with an open API, and other enhancements. This version of Gutenberg will be included in the upcoming 6.3 release of WordPress.

Brian Gardner recently held a webinar where he showed how to fork the Frost theme to make your own block theme. He now has created a new base theme called Powder, which seems to be a fork of Frost. He intends people to use it as a basis for their own themes. While Powder is free, Brian created a theme called Powder Social which is a premium theme available for $125 lifetime purchase.

The latest release of Elementor 3.14.0 beta adds the ability to create images using AI from within the Elementor editor. This complements the text-based AI feature.

The WP org team has implemented new filters on the plugin and theme searches for “Commercial” and “Community.”

Liquid Web was acquired. That’s a lot of high profile WordPress properties: Liquid Web, Nexcess, StellarWP, Modern Tribe, LearnDash, Kadnece, and others. I didn’t see that coming.

Some site builders take the approach that the website belongs to the client and the client gets full control. Others restrict client access to what they need to get their job done and hide the rest. In this article the author argues for teaching the client only what they need to know.

My thought is that it depends on the client, the website, and the contract.