ThriveDesk is a custom service solution that provides a unified inbox, chat bot, and knowledge base along with a number of other features. Today you can use it with many different platforms, but because it started with WordPress there are a lot of WordPress integrations. These include WooCommerce, SureCart, Easy Digital Downloads, Freemius, FluentCRM, FunnelKit, SureTriggers, and FlowMattic. ThriveDesk is an alternative to onsite help desk plugins. The LTD pricing is still available.

WordPress 6.5 will include a new hook for registering block variants using PHP. Here is an overview and tutorial from Justin Tadlock.

Congratulations to the WPDeveloper team on Essential Addons for Elementor reaching 2 million+ active installs. There have been some security issues and advertising in the admin, but the WPDeveloper team obviously knows how to find the balance between ease of use, features, and price to please users and grow the product.

With events like Cwicly stopping new development, there is a tendency to not trust smaller development teams or the creative single developer. Paul Charlton discusses this in a short video.

Bricks 1.9.7 was just released. This release focuses on security enhancements. There is a minor security fix, but mostly it focuses on hardening. The announcement gives a full rundown on the changes and how to upgrade, as extra steps may be necessary.

Here is an interview with Josepha Haden Chomphosy about her role as the Executive Directory of the WordPress Foundation. It is not ground breaking and it doesn’t provide any details the future, but it is interesting in that it provides some insight to how she sees the project.

Here is a process overview article on the Delicious Brains blog about creating custom block using React and using ACF. It does not go into depth but links to resources for various steps.

Cedric, the author of BricksProps, does a deep dive into BEM and how to use it.

Rich Tabor shares some thoughts on the “composability” of block themes.