Though it is still experimental, Bricks made a lot of users happy by releasing new search and front-end filters. In this video Paul Charlton provides a quick overview of the new features so you can get an idea of what’s available, how they work, and what’s missing.

Torque’s Plugin Madness starts in a few weeks and they are now taking nominations. The voting is done through bracket style pairings, so voting isn’t done by category. Here is the link if you want to nominate your favorite plugin.

JetEngine allows you to create totally custom queries which is very powerful, but is an advanced feature. Here is a tutorial on using the JetEngine SQL Query Builder from Elena Ivanova of the Crocoblock team.

Toolset released a big update to Access, the plugin for controlling permissions. They also had some minor updates to Blocks and Views. These updates improve performance and provide better comparability with various third party plugins. It is good to see the Toolset team start to update the suite again.

Here is an interview with Rodolfo Melogli, who offered WooCommerce development services. Last year he saw a significant drop in income and has pivoted his business. He now also offers small, single purpose Woo plugins for a low cost LTD, as well a subscription to an online Slack forum and master classes. In the interview Rodolfo shares his insights about Woo and the shifting ecommerce market, as well as his business pivot.

Here is a nice podcast interview with Matt Mullenweg and Michelle Frechette. It is pretty relaxed as Matt is on sabbatical and in a reflective mood. There is a text transcript for those who prefer.

A huge congratulations to the Kadence team. The Kadence Theme topped 300,000 active installs!

Here is a cool video from Anne McCarthy showing a new feature for synced patterns coming to WordPress 6.5. It allows you to set on a block by block basis the ability to customize the content of individual instance while keeping the overall layout intact.

The WordPress Foundation released a summary report for 2023. It shows an increase in WordCamps, MeetUps, attendees, speakers, organizers, etc over 2022.