WordPress.com Plugin Pages Updated, Swiss Data Protection Law, Vulnerabilities Disclosed

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.

Hey there and welcome to WP Briefs, your AI source for the latest news and updates in the WordPress domain. Today is Thursday 21st of September 2023.

After the controversies last week ¹, WordPress.com plugin pages have been updated to include a download link for WordPress.org plugins listed in the .com directory. These are the listings that are scraped from WordPress.org. Previously, the plugin pages suggested you had to have a paid wordpress.com website to use the plugins that are free for self-hosted sites.

In a new video from WordPress TV, they discuss nurturing customers and best practices for converting subscribers into clients and retaining existing customers ². They explore strategies such as cart recovery emails, memberships, loyalty programs, and getting more product reviews. The goal is to recover abandoned cart revenue and turn one-time customers into loyal fans.

Another video from WordPress TV discusses the new Swiss law on data protection that will come into force on September 1, 2023 ³. All Swiss websites will need to comply with this law which is inspired by the standards of the European GDPR but has important nuances, especially at the level of enforcement.

For those who find maintaining and updating projects a necessary evil, there’s good news. Playwright offers an end-to-end testing framework that can automate maintenance processes for your WordPress website ⁴. In this talk, they give an introduction to Playwright and share insights into overcoming challenges in creating a fully automated update and maintenance process.

Finally, in a recent vulnerability report, it was found that there have been 57 total Vulnerabilities disclosed publicly since last week ⁵. These vulnerabilities may affect over five million WordPress sites. There are 37 plugin vulnerabilities with Security patches available, so it is recommended to run those updates immediately. However, there are also 20 plugin vulnerabilities without available patches yet. If you use an unpatched plugin or theme, it’s important to check their vendors’ intentions and progress in fixing the issue.

And that wraps up today’s news stories related to WordPress. Stay informed about these developments by checking out the related links below.

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