The MRW Simplified Editor plugin is the solution for people who want to control what Gutenberg blocks and options are available. The plugin is free in the WP plugin directory. Here are details about it and how it works.

For plugin developers – Here is a tutorial on how to add your plugin to the Site Health report.

For Block Theme developers – Brian Coords looks at the possibilities for tracking block theme changes.

CSS Tips: Text and link underline options are easier than you might think. I needed to do this today and saw Kevin Powell just posted a video on it. My good fortune.

Crocoblock has 5 plugins that work with Bricks and they just released a dedicated page highlighting the integration.

Gutenberg 17.5 has been released. It mainly focuses on a couple of refinements in preparation for WordPress 6.5 in March. The main refinement is the unification of preferences for the content editor and the site editor.

Advanced Custom Fields version 6.2.5 is now available. This release is a security fix release containing an important change you need to be aware of before you update. From ACF 6.2.5, use of the ACF Shortcode to output an ACF field will be escaped by the WordPress HTML escaping function wp_kses.

A maintenance release of 6.4.3 is being prepared and is currently targeted for January 30th.

It has not been uncommon for a theme or plugin to stagnate after it is purchased by a hosting company. One exception is ACF. The ACF team has been doing an excellent job moving the plugin forward and also has communicated well with its user base. If you are interested in what the team has accomplished, here is the ACF 2023 year in review.