WP Builds Newsletter #34 - Help needed with Gutenberg, Elementor adds Custom Fields integrations and DuckDuckGo on the rise

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 8th October 2018:

Gutenberg 4.0 RC 1 Released, Testing Ramps Up Amid Critical Accessibility Concerns
"A pre-release of Gutenberg 4.0 RC 1 is now available for testing. During today’s core developer chat, Matias Ventura, the project’s technical lead, said he plans to post a full changelog and a video tomorrow. In the meantime, a call for testing 4.0 RC 1 has been posted to the make.wordpress.org/test blog with a list of 15 specific testing items highlighted for attention..."

Call for Testing: Gutenberg 4.0 Pre-release
If you're up for a bit of Gutenberg testing, the team would appreciate it if you were able to help them out.

Tiny Raises $4M in Series A Funding, Publishes Gutenberg FAQ
"Tiny, the company formerly known as Ephox has raised $4M in Series A funding from BlueRun Ventures. Tiny is the company behind TinyMCE, a popular text editor used in many opensource projects, including WordPress..."

Introducing Custom Fields Integration: ACF, Toolset & Pods
"Easily integrate custom fields from WordPress, ACF, MetaBox, Toolset or Pods, and create more advanced websites without code..."

WordCamp Nordic 2019 to be Held in Helsinki, March 7-8
"After many years of planning, WordPress’ Nordic communities are finally getting a regional WordCamp. The first WordCamp Nordic 2019 is set to be held in Helsinki, Finland the weekend of March 7-8 at the Paasitorni Congress Center..."

Jetpack 6.6 Improves Site Verification Tools, Asset CDN Module Now in Beta, Gutenberg Blocks Coming Soon
"Jetpack 6.6 was released today with an update to the Site Verification tools that enables one-click verification and sitemap.xml registration with Google. This release also introduces the beta of Jetpack’s Asset CDN. The new module, built on the same infrastructure as the Photon CDN, speeds up sites by cloud-hosting widely-used Jetpack and core WordPress scripts, styles, and assets..."

Alexis Lloyd and Riad Benguella Will Lead Phase Two of Gutenberg
"As activity ramps up to try to get WordPress 5.0 released in November, Matt Mullenweg has announced who will lead phase two of the Gutenberg project. Phase two focuses on Customization and entire site layouts. Alexis Lloyd, Head of Design Innovation at Automattic, will handle the design and product side. Riad Benguella, a JavaScript Engineer at Automattic, will handle the technical side of the project..."

I have resigned as the WordPress accessibility team lead. Here is why.
"After several years of working on WordPress and accessibility and being part of the accessibility team, I have taken the very difficult decision to leave the WordPress accessibility team. I owe it to the team to explain why I have made this decision and how I hope things can improve for the future. The last year, especially the last few weeks have been too politically complicated for me. It’s better that someone else takes the lead now..."

How E-Commerce AI is Changing WordPress Shops
"We’re starting to see a growing trend in WordPress plugin development. More companies are creating WordPress-friendly AI and machine learning tools. Many of these apps look like the existing marketing and e-commerce options in the WordPress plugin store, but perform better with the power of artificial intelligence. If you’re considering investing in AI for your e-commerce business, look no further than your WordPress plugin search page. Check out these ways to utilize e-commerce AI to improve your e-commerce brand..."

Non WordPress, but useful anyway…

DuckDuckGo Traffic Up 50% from Last Year, Hits New Record of 30M Daily Searches
"DuckDuckGo has hit a new record of 30 million daily direct searches. That represents a 50% increase from last year’s daily direct record of 20 million searches. Being an advocate of transparency, DuckDuckGo makes its traffic data publicly available..."

GDPR has cut ad trackers in Europe but helped Google, study suggests
"An analysis of the impact of Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, on the adtech industry suggests the regulation has reduced the numbers of ad trackers that websites are hooking into EU visitors. But it also implies that Google may have slightly increased its marketshare in the region — indicating the adtech giant could be winning at the compliance game at the expense of smaller advertising entities which the study also shows losing reach..."

Sources week include:
wptavern.com, make.wordpress.org, elementor.com, rianrietveld.com, wpexplorer.com, searchenginejournal.com, techcrunch.com