Weekly WordPress News: WP 4.5, WPLift Sale Update, Acquisitions, SAAS & More.

This week we saw the release of WordPress 4.5 “Coleman” which brought some nice new features – inline links for the post editor, these felt strange at first as any changes to the UI do when first used but I prefer them now – nice work. It also brought live responsive previews in the customizer so you can see how a theme operates at different screen sizes. There is now support for a custom logo built-in, means I have to go change a lot of themes from using our custom solution now! Finally the other thing of note is Smart Image resizing, you can read about this update in detail here.

Last week I announced that I was putting WPLift up for sale on Flippa, today it was selected as an “Editor’s Choice” listing which is great news, it means it gets displayed prominently on the homepage, included in the newsletter and so on. Bidding has reached $95k with 12 days left to run, check out the listing here.

Let’s get on with this week’s pick of the news…

WordPress News and Articles

• WordPress 4.5 “Coleman” – This week saw the release of WP 4.5, inline links, Custom Logos and more.
• WordPress 4.5 Explained (Features and Screenshots) – Here’s a good run-down of the new features in 4.5
• Welcome to MonsterInsights – New Home of Google Analytics for WordPress – Syed from WPBeginner has Acquired a new plugin from Yoast.
• A new home for our Google Analytics plugins – The announcement on Yoast.
• The Problem in WordPress – Musings on Plugins & SaaS – Enjoyed this post from Chris Lema about incorporating a SAAS component into your plugins.
• Let’s Encrypt Is Now Out of Beta – Let’s encrypt is an initiative to provide free SSL certificates, aiming to encrypt 100% of the web.
• Announcing a new Firewall, a Threat Defense Feed and a New Approach – WordFence update brings a new Firewall, I use this on all my sites.
• 11 Customer Support Lessons Learnt After Solving 3000+ Customer Queries – Tips for Customer Support.
• Hey Automattic, What’s Going on With Edit Flow? – Automattic took over ownership of this plugin, no updates for 2 years now.

Tutorials and How-Tos

• Building Reactive WordPress Plugins Backbone.js – How to create a simple WordPress Dashboard Widget.
• How to get effective support for your ‘broken’ WordPress plugin – What to do if your plugin breaks.
• WP REST API: Internals and Customization – Tutorial series on using WP REST API.
• Kick-Start WordPress Development With Twig: Introduction – WP and the Twig templating engine.
• The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Translation and Localization – How to localize within WordPress.
• An Introduction to Object-Oriented Code for WordPress Plugins – Handy tricks you can use to make your plugins object-oriented.
• How To Use Advanced Custom Fields – An In-Depth Tutorial on using this powerful plugin.

Resources & Freebies

• The Top Free Project & Task Management Plugins for WordPress – Using WordPress for Project Management.
• CleanTalk Review: A Spam Blocking Plugin with Cloud-Based Firewall – Blocking spam with this cloud-based service.
• 60 Best Responsive & Modern Free WordPress Business Themes 2016 – All the best free WordPress Business themes.
• 50+ Best Free WooCommerce WordPress Themes 2016 – The best Free WooCommerce themes.
• 80+ Best Car Automotive WordPress Themes 2016 – Themes for Autos, Garages & Mechanics.
• 50+ Best WordPress Music Themes 2016 – Themes for Musicians, Bands & DJs.
• Silk Lite: A Free WordPress Magazine Theme for Fashion Bloggers – Review of a free Magazine theme which passed the accessibility requirements.