WordPress Weekly News 018: WordPress 4.8, WordCamp and much more

It’s that time of the week again where I bring you all the latest talking points from the world of WordPress. In this week’s WordPress weekly news, we will look into spam protection, a new WordCamp, and WordPress 4.8.

Let’s begin!

Stop Signup Spam: A plugin to prevent spam registration

Spamming is a big headache if you run a blog or a website. Usually we relate spamming with spam comments. However, spam registration can be as problematic as the comments.

To relieve you of this agony, a new plugin has been approved by the WordPress plugin, The Stop Signup Spam, which stops users from registering on a website if their email or IP address is on the Stop Forum Spam database.

For those of you who don’t know what Stop Forum Spam is, it is a data repository that records spam registration on websites. The plugin is integrated with the WordPress registration form and Restrict Content Pro.

Leland Fiegel, the man behind the plugin, created a website and shortly after, received spam registrations. After some research, he found out that many email addresses were registered with the Stop Forum Spam database. “I had never heard of Stop Forum Spam before, but it is basically an Akismet equivalent for forum sign up spam,” Fiegel said.

Upon registration, an error message will popup “Cannot register. Please contact site administrator for assistance.” The visitors, however, won’t be notified that their registration is blocked because they are registered as spam.  

WordCamp Takes a New Direction – WordCamp In The Green

WordCamps are one of the most anticipated events of the year for WordPress users and fans alike. A few days ago, a new kind of WordCamp was proposed by Köln meetup group in Germany.

The event would take place somewhere outside the city and attendees would be required to stay at the venue of the WordCamp. The format would be as usual and the sessions would take place as they have been until now. However, the added feature would be the outdoor activities that would take place in the area and attendees staying in the same hotel.

This event would be different from the usual WordCamps and the organizing team is very keen on taking it forward. A budget has also been proposed for the event and it is anticipated that it would welcome interest from other communities around the world as well.

WordPress 4.8 – What’s New?

WordPress 4.8 will be the first major update of 2017. The schedule has been revealed and the wait is finally over. The 4.8 will be have a final release on June 8, 2017 and the beta release will happen on May 12, 2017.

The text widget will now have a visual editor. The text widget was targeted more towards skilled developers. Beginners found it difficult to get their way around the text widget. However, the new text widget comes with a visual and text editor. This will allow beginners to edit text directly from the editor without using any code.

With 4.8, you will be able to add images in the WordPress sidebar without using HTML codes or a third-party plugin. A new image widget will be introduced which will allow users to easily add images into the WordPress sidebar.

A new WordPress event and news dashboard will be introduced. It will contain all the WordPress news and events near a user’s location. The dashboard will automatically detect location based on the IP address of the user. So if you have multiple users, they will be shown WordPress events near their locations only.

That’s all from this week’s WordPress Weekly News. If I have missed out on any great WordPress news, do let me know in the comments or send them at [email protected].