KrautPress

WordPress behaves differently for logged-in users than for those who merely pass by. So far, nothing groundbreaking. However, even among logged-in users, there can be differences in various aspects of a website. This could be because different user roles have different permissions or because a user has customized the appearance of the block editor in a way that it now suddenly doesn’t behave as expected. The plugin User Switching by John Blackbourn is a helpful companion for troubleshooting in such cases.

In recent weeks, the suspension of the WordPress update infrastructure for WP Engine, a WordPress hosting company, has been the dominant topic in the WordPress community. In this context, decentralized update options have gained renewed attention in public discussions. The plugin Git Updater is far from new but more relevant than ever.

Since the beginning of the Full Site Editor, the next generation of themes has been waiting for its moment to rise. In addition to the old themes, which we now call Classic Themes, there are the modern Block Themes. These are characterized by the fact that, unlike classic themes, they are primarily based on HTML, CSS, and a little JSON. Today’s plugin Create Block Theme is designed to help anyone interested in starting their own block themes.

WordPress and various plugins schedule certain events for the future. Be it the check for new updates, the execution of a backup, or the website status check. The WP Crontrol plugin by John Blackbourn lets us look behind the scenes.

My school was pretty progressive and had a relatively extensive website, even back in the day during my school years. The principal created it using pure HTML. He updated it several times a week. Over the years, thousands of posts had accumulated. Sporting a significant number of photos and illustrations. Then, one day, a legal notice arrived. The entire website had to be taken offline because it was no longer clear where the many images came from or whether the respective creators had consented.

It was a simpler time. Today, we have the luxury of not manually building websites with pure HTML anymore (you still can, and it’s great fun, though). We have tools like WordPress for that. For anyone building a more complex website, a CMS like WordPress makes it much easier to keep track of all image sources and, most importantly, their licenses. That’s where Image Source Control comes in.

Everyone who runs a website or even a blog would like to know if people are actually consuming their content. If you don’t want to go overboard and use a tool like Google Analytics, you’ll need to opt for one of the more minimalist solutions. Koko Analytics is one such option.

I am a big fan of small plugins that run quietly in the background of my websites and make them better. And today’s plugin, Fewer Tags, fits perfectly into this category.

Since the decline of Twitter, the social media landscape has become much more fragmented. While I have been happily active in the Fediverse for several years and plan on keeping it like that, I still have an eye on developments at Bluesky and Thread. I focus on new ways the cool kids post updates, newsletters, and podcast episodes these days.

To facilitate posting on Bluesky, Daniel Post has developed a small experimental plugin called Autoblue.

While preparing for this series of posts, I asked for plugin recommendations in a post on the fediverse. As expected, there were some real surprises among them. One of those is today’s featured plugin: Find My Blocks.

The plugin’s name, likely inspired by Apple’s “Find My” feature, hints at its purpose: helping you locate specific blocks within the content on your website. Developed by Morgan Hvidt, the plugin makes finding and managing any blocks in your site’s content easy.