WordPress News: Updates, Bug Bounty Program, and Performant Translations Coming Soon!

This post was curated and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a WordPress user and developer with over 20 years experience of building things online.

Hello and welcome to WP Briefs, your Advanced machine learning source for the latest news and updates in the WordPress world. Today is Friday 10th of November 2023.

In today’s podcast, we have several news stories to cover. Let’s dive in!

First up, we have news about WordPress. The popular content management system has released a maintenance update, version 6.4.1, to fix bugs identified in the previous release ¹. This minor update addresses several issues and aims to improve the overall user experience ².

Moving on, we have an interesting story about the WordPress Playground project. Originally conceived as an experiment to provide a self-hosted WordPress experience without the need for installation, it has now evolved into a full-fledged project ³. Ganesh Dahal explores how this innovative concept works and its potential applications.

Next, we have news regarding Tumblr. An internal memo from Automattic, the company behind WordPress, reveals that Tumblr has not seen significant growth since its acquisition in 2019 ⁴. As a result, the platform will now be maintained by a smaller team while most employees will be reassigned to other projects within Automattic.

In terms of Security updates, WordFence has launched a bug bounty program to fund research on WordPress Vulnerabilities ⁵. This initiative aims to incentivize researchers and promote collaboration in securing the online community.

Speaking of vulnerabilities, Wordfence also provides us with their weekly report on WordPress vulnerabilities ⁶. Last week alone, they disclosed 79 vulnerabilities in various plugins and themes. It is essential for website owners to review this report and take necessary measures to ensure their sites are secure.

Lastly, contributors to WordPress are targeting the upcoming 6.5 release for merging performant translations into the core system ⁷. After discovering that translations can significantly impact server response times during performance analysis earlier this year, the team has developed a solution that requires no configuration from users. Over 2,000 websites have already tested this feature through the Performant Translations plugin.

That concludes our news roundup for today. Stay tuned for more updates in the world of WordPress!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share on social media. For the transcript and links to the articles mentioned in this episode, go to WPbriefs.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week. Have a great weekend!

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