Weekly WordPress News: Blocks Instead of Widgets?

Hey, WordPress friends.

This week, Gutenberg 8.9 (the plugin version) is out with a new block-based approach to widgets. Beyond that, Meta Box published an in-depth comparison of Meta Box vs ACF, which you’ll probably find useful if you’re building custom content websites with WordPress.

Let’s get to all of this week’s news…

WORDPRESS NEWS AND ARTICLES

• Gutenberg 8.9 Brings Block-Based Widgets Out of the Experimental Stage – widgets might be replaced by blocks in the not-too-distant future.
• WordPress Support Team Seeks to Curb Support Requests for Commercial Plugins and Themes – an interesting discussion.
• Gutenberg First – WebDevStudios with some thoughts on the block editor.
• VS Code Wins Best PHP IDE/Editor for WordPress Development in 2020 – what do you think? Which is your favorite?
• The State of Themes and Plugins on WordPress.org in 2020 – some interesting numbers on plugins and themes.
• WordPress Vulnerability Roundup: September 2020, Part 1 – iThemes’ regular vulnerability roundup.

TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS

• Drive Traffic to Older Blog Content for Free with the Revive Old Post Plugin – how to automatically share old content on social media.
• The Website Owner’s Guide to DNS Propagation (2020 Edition) – learn about DNS propagation.
• The Better Way to Add a Guest Checkout in WooCommerce – how to set up guest checkout.
• 6 Rules of Thumb For Creating Website Grids – Elementor shares some tips for working with website grids.
• How to Create a Simple Gutenberg Block Pattern in WordPress – this is the manual method, but I find the Block Pattern Builder plugin to be easier (which we detailed here).

RESOURCES

• Filebird Review: Add Folders to the WordPress Media Library – organize your Media Library.
• Meta Box vs. ACF – learn the difference between these two popular plugins.
• Modern Events Calendar AppSumo Deal – a lifetime deal for this events calendar plugin.
• Get yourself a better agency process w/ David Darke – a new episode of the Matt Report podcast.