March 2023 saw WordPress’s first major release of the year — WordPress 6.2, which includes many new features, improvements and enhancements. It dropped on March 29, 2023. You can learn all about it in part one of March 2023’s WordPress news roundup.
Part two of our March 2023 news roundup focuses on the latest Gutenberg releases, WordCamps and WordPress acquisitions.
Latest Gutenberg releases
The Gutenberg team released two versions in March.
Gutenberg 15.3 was released on March 13. This release enhances the Duotone design tool, allowing users to set a global filter within the Site Editor’s Styles panel. Previously, users could only do this manually through the themes.json file.
The highlight of this release was the Time to Read block, which shows visitors the post or page’s estimated reading time. Users can add custom CSS to fix the block’s alignment but can’t customize its appearance yet since it’s the block’s first iteration.
Gutenberg 15.4 was released on March 22. This release focused less on improving user-facing features and addressed bug fixes, testing and other improvements. Notable updates include an improved Cover block, new template descriptions and the ability to turn paragraphs into columns.
WordPress introduces a new restaurant theme
Automattic introduced a new block-based restaurant theme called Bibimbap after releasing four new themes in January.
The Bibimbap theme comes with five well-designed block patterns for building restaurant websites. However, the theme needs a few features that would make it more user-friendly.
For example, while Bibimbap is available on WordPress.com, the preview is similar to installing it on a self-hosted site because the theme lacks a live demo.
The theme is recommended for users who know their way around WordPress.
Google Fonts are now bundled in WordPress’s legacy default themes
Following recommendations from the WordPress Theme team to switch to locally-hosted fonts, contributors have updated WordPress legacy themes (the themes used in older versions of WordPress) to include Google Fonts locally instead of loading the fonts over Google’s servers.
The update aims to improve the performance and privacy of WordPress sites while reducing reliance on external sources.
Contributors have already updated the Twenty Twelve through Twenty Seventeen themes. These themes are available for download on the WordPress theme directory.
Automattic acquires ActivityPub
Automattic made its first acquisition for 2023, purchasing the ActivityPub plugin from its German developer, Matthias Pfefferle, who will be joining the team to continue working on the plugin.
Just like Jetpack, ActivityPub allows users to automatically share content with large social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It also allows users to share content to federated networks, such as Mastodon, Pleroma and Misskey.
Anyone on those networks can follow your blog posts, which will show up on their home feed. Responses to posts on those platforms also show up in your WordPress blog’s comments.
Awesome Motive acquires WP101
Awesome Motive, the company behind WPBeginner, OptinMonster, MonsterInsights and WPForms, acquired WP101, a company that’s provided WordPress video training to over three million users.
WordPress agencies and service providers have used the WP101 plugin to offer their clients white-label professional WordPress training videos. Awesome Motive’s acquisition of WP 101 will open the platform to a broader user base.
WP101 is Awesome Motive’s third acquisition in 2023, following its acquisition of the Duplicator plugin and Thrive Themes in January.
WordCamps in March
Following the success of the flagship WordCamp Asia held in February, in-person WordCamps are in full swing. Here were the WordCamp events that happened in March:
- March 10-11, 2023: WordCamp Entebbe, Uganda
- March 11-12, 2023: WordCamp Torrelodones, Madrid, Spain
- March 24-25, 2023: WordCamp Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
- March 25, 2023: WordCamp Kerala, India
Europeans will have a blast with all the WordCamp events happening in April:
- March 31-April 1, 2023: WordCamp Switzerland, Murten, Switzerland
- April 14-15, 2023: WordCamp Torino, Italy
- April 15-16, 2023: WordCamp Vienna, Austria
- April 21, 2023: WordCamp Paris, France
Other news
- WordPress iOS and Android version 21.8 are now available for testing. Sign up to become one of the first iOS beta testers.
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