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Woo 75% Faster, WP Day at CloudFest & Find Large Images!

Hi Reader 👋🏻,

As we're preparing for the first Beta of WordPress 6.8 to drop next week, it's been somewhat of a quiet week. That in no way means there's not much to share in this 149th edition of the Within WordPress newsletter, though 😊.

Don't you worry. I got plenty of good stuff for you.

So, let's jump in, shall we? (Oh, and btw, I'd love it if you'd reply and let me know which one you like the most!)

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🗞️ Within WordPress News

Here’s what I saw happening this past week:

• I've done this for a few clients in the past, but did you know you can customize how WordPress display's embedded content? Yup, you totally can. Follow this excellent tutorial from the Developer WordPress.org site to learn more.

• Here's a fun plugin by Austin Passy to help identify and sort media uploads by file size. A great tool to help find those 30+ MB images that were accidentally uploaded 🥲

• Exciting developments are happening in WordPress 6.8 for optimization, slider plugins, and anyone using output buffering in their plugin or theme!

• A hugely impactful release for WooCommerce was dropped this week with version 9.7. Smarter shipping displays and, much more importantly, faster performance! WooCommerce managed to cut execution time by 75% when working with Single Product templates and product-related blocks. That's huge! Well done, team!

Related: Tom Cafferkey wrote about exactly how he (and others) built that enormous performance gain.

• Do you sell online? Then you need Omnisend. Earn $68 for every $1 spent, doing basically nothing. Email and SMS marketing so effective, it’s almost boring.

• ​PersonalizeWP v2.8, one of my favorite WordPress solutions, introduces the Content Variations Block, data retention settings, a streamlined user interface and other improvements!

• 📺 Vikas Singhal from InstaWP and I did a webinar on the many layers of WordPress Performance and Security. It was live-streamed on YouTube, so that means there’s a recording.​​

• The DE{CODE} even by WPEngine is evolving! What started as a developer-focused event is now opening its doors wider—welcoming developers, agencies, and brands—to create a truly inclusive space for everyone building on WordPress.

• 📺 Ever wanted to use Node.js to post to WordPress? Well, you totally can, apparently as Brad Schiff demonstrated.

• There's still time to make sure you're going to possibly one of the best WordPress related events this year: PressConf.

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Please check out our wonderful Community Sponsors' offering ☝

🚀 Performance & Security

• Weston Rutter, member of the WordPress Core Performance team, did a presentation at WordCamp Asia about Boosting Performance with Optimization Detective. ← Luckily for us, he wrote about it too!

• Stumbled upon Perf Bench, which allows you to do various performance benchmarks for web technologies.

More (background and application) information is published on WPElevator.

• Meet Baseline—a tool that helps you determine which web platform features are browser-compatible and ready to use in your projects today. With real user monitoring (RUM) data, you can see which browser versions your users are on, check from which version a web feature is supported, and cross-check if your audience is ready for the features you want to implement.

Baseline covers compatibility for 1,006+ web features, making it easier to make informed decisions about features and libraries. Super cool tool.

• My friends over at Uxify did a great job explaining what’s new in Chrome 133 DevTools and how it allows you to boost speed & SEO​
• For those of you running your own Nginx instances, this is a great article on advanced Nginx hardening.

🔆 Within WordPress Highlight

The CloudFest Hackathon, organized by Carole Olinger, is looking like it's going to be a very impactful event, yet again. Check out the list of projects that will be worked on for 2025. Not sure yet which I'll join, but do let me know which one you would pick, Reader!

The Monday after the Hackathon weekend is known as WP Day, and I highly recommend you find yourself in Rust, Germany in about two weeks.

Check out this great background article published by Rae Morey from The Repository.

I made some changes to my favorite tools sections 👇🏻

💡 Interesting Finds

• Check out Ghostty as your potential terminal solution. Love the simplicity and speed.
• Why does target="_blank" have an underscore in front?
• Using Git for version control? Of course, you are. Curious what the best way is to set up Git? Of course, you are! Well, here's how Git core devs configure their Gits.
• In the category of "self-host when you can", Maybe, the personal finance tool is now available for you to install and host yourself.
• Way cool terminal trick:

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Andrew Hoyer @andrewhoyer The best thing I ever did for my Mac OS Terminal. Remove the username and folder name: Edit the zsh shell file (look up bash if you use it): vi ~/.zshrc add this line: export PS1="%% " Save, and open a new Terminal window. Welcome to a clean, minimalist view. 2:0 AM • Feb 25, 2025 1 Retweets 10 Likes Read 3 replies

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🎁 Bonus

🎙️ Another week, another two podcasts published. First one is with Derek Ashauer:

and the second one is with Christos Paloukas:

Two wonderful conversations, I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed recording them.

So... I meant it... I'd love it if you'd reply and let me know which one you like the most!

That’s it for this week’s edition of Within WordPress. Thanks for reading!

Best,
Remkus

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Remkus de Vries – Within WordPress
Tjongervallei 10, Oudehorne, Fryslân 8413 CS
The Netherlands

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