WP Builds Newsletter #54 – WordPress 5.1.1, plugin updates and Facebook goes down

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 11th March 2019:

WordPress Core

WordPress 5.1.1 Patches Critical Vulnerability
"WordPress 5.1.1 was released yesterday evening with an important security update for a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability found in 5.1 and prior versions. The release post credited Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies for discovering and reporting the vulnerability..."

Community

WordCamp Nordic Hosts Successful Kids Workshop
"WordCamp Nordic hosted a successful kids workshop over the weekend where participants learned how to start publishing with WordPress. The event was held during Contributor Day at the same venue, tucked into a comfortable corner with soft chairs and ample floor space for the kids to stretch out..."

Call for testing: WordPress for Android 12.0
Help needed to test the latest version of the WordPress Android app with some updated block editor capabilities.

WordPress Community Sessions at 2019 Nonprofit Technology Conference a Big Success!
"On Tuesday, March 12, 2019, I spent the day with members of NTEN’s WordPress community at the Nonprofit Technology Conference‘s (NTC) pre-conference day. This was the first year the community had their own track of sessions alongside sponsored sessions, and they were fabulous...!"

How Brexit Will Affect WordPress Plugin and Theme Sellers
"The UK’s imminent departure from the EU (European Union) has left businesses across Europe struggling to understand how this change will affect them. For WordPress theme and plugin businesses, it makes EU VAT collection and payment even more complex than it already is..."

Security

XSS Vulnerability in Abandoned Cart Plugin Leads To WordPress Site Takeovers
"Last month, a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw was patched in version 5.2.0 of the popular WordPress plugin Abandoned Cart Lite For WooCommerce. The plugin, which we’ll be referring to by its slug woocommerce-abandoned-cart, allows the owners of WooCommerce sites to track abandoned shopping carts in order to recover those sales..."

Plugins

From Beaver Builder - Assistant – Every-day Productivity Apps
"Assistant is an every-day productivity tool that lets you navigate your WordPress site and handle quick tasks without needing to go to the WordPress Admin area. Note – This is an early preview release. A full 1.0 release of Assistant will be coming later this year..."

Forminator Quizzes now With Integrations and Wizardry
"Forminator, our WordPress form, poll & quiz builder, was just released this year and has already moved into our top 10 most active pro plugins – and his powers are only expanding! This time it’s Quizzes, now with integrations, a new wizard, and a multi correct answers upgrade..."

Warp iMagick
New plugin to squash and optimise your images.

Engage Your Audience With Sticky Videos on Page Scroll!
"We are providing you the option to make this video sticky for better viewability. A sticky video will pin the video across the edges of the browser. It gives visitors the ability to read a full page while viewing the video simultaneously..."

WP Builds

Using Groundhogg to self host your email marketing with Adrian Tobey
"Email marketing is usually the domain of expensive SaaS apps. Well, not any more. With the Groundhogg WordPress plugin you can automate all-the-things from inside your website! It’s got lots of customisation options and works with a visual builder, just like the services that you’re currently using. Adrian comes on to tell us about how it all got started and how the plugin works and what scenarios it might be useful for…"

Not WordPress, but useful anyway...

Massive Facebook Outage
"It’s not just you. Facebook is undergoing an outage today, March 13, 2019. The outage appears to have started at noon eastern time, which is about 9 AM Pacific. This outage is preventing many people from posting to Facebook onto their news feed..."

Automattic Takes on Facebook with “A Meditation on the Open Web”
"Last week Automattic published a video titled “A meditation on the open web” that calls out Facebook as the antithesis of the open web..."

Chrome Extension - Cloud Vision
"Adds a right-click menu item to images to detect text, labels and faces..."