Tidbits from Brian (Black Friday edition) - Issue #38
Cutting back on subscriptions. ✂️
The older I get, the more I like and want “simple.” Over the last six months, I’ve been moving away from some products that I haven’t been using as much and consolidating subscriptions. I have no issue supporting developers of products or tools I can’t live without, but it’s always good to save money and time where you can.
Here are a few of the changes I’ve made recently.
I moved from Mimestream back to Gmail on the web. Mimestream would still be my first recommendation to anyone who wants a dedicated email client. But for me, I’ve found that the web version works just fine. And honestly, keeping my personal email closed throughout the day to focus on business emails works better for me.
I moved away from Ulysses to Apple Notes. I’ve been using Ulysses for years to write all of my blog posts and keep track of my personal notes. However, I finally just forced myself to start writing again in the WordPress Block Editor. And while I still think it has its quirks, it’s getting there. Because of this, I realized that Apple Notes is actually pretty awesome for everything else. It just works. 📒
I’ve been paying for the Pro+ plan of Feedly for years. It was really great back when Twitter (now X) had an API. I could follow tweets in Feedly. But that went away. The other feature I utilized is the ability to follow newsletters. However, I realized I could use the free Kill the Newsletter! tool to port the newsletters into it. So, while I still utilize Feedly, the free version seems to work fine for me. 📧
I moved from the Alfred app over to the free version of Raycast. I utilize this for snippets, emojis, quicklinks, and for converting case.
In my last newsletter, I mentioned I was trying out Zen Browser. Well, it didn’t last very long. 😅 I just can’t get used to a sidebar for my tabs.
Black Friday deals on things I use 🏷️
Ironically, now it’s time to share some of those juicy Black Friday subscriptions with you! 😆💥 Here are a few select deals on products and services I use and recommend checking out.
Kinsta: There has never been a better time to migrate to better hosting. Get 50% off all hosting plans and free migration (Nov. 5 – Dec. 3). They also boosted resource limits for everyone.
Annual billing: 50% off in the first year.
Monthly billing: 50% off for the first 6 months.
First month free for Single 35k and WP 2 plans.
InstaWP: 50% off yearly plans (Nov. 22 – Dec. 6). I utilize InstaWP every day for testing plugins/themes, sharing staging sites with clients to troubleshoot, etc. It’s an invaluable tool, which I’m happy to pay for!
Proton VPN: Up to 70% off, depending on the plan you choose.
Imagify: 40% off on the Infinite plan (Nov.19 – Dec. 4). Discount code: BFCM24AFFI
Snagit: 25% off (Nov. 29 – Dec. 6). This is what I use to take all of my screenshots.
GTmetrix: 35% off on yearly PRO plans (Nov. 18 – Nov. 29). Discount code: BF2024 I use this tool daily to help optimize client’s WordPress sites.
Mangools: 35% off all plans (Nov. 18 – Dec. 1). If you’re on a tight budget, Mangools is an excellent alternative to something like Ahrefs or Semrush.
RightBlogger: 50% off the first year on new purchases and upgrades (Nov. 21 – Dec. 2). Discount code: BF2024
Namecheap: Up to 97% off on domains (Nov. 29 – Dec. 6).
If you're bargain hunting, I compiled a larger list of Black Friday deals. Make sure to check it out.
You can also get 30% off new licenses and upgrades on our WordPress plugins (Perfmatters and Novashare) through Dec. 2nd. Discount code: BLACKFRIDAY
Updates ✍️
We pushed out an update for our Perfmatters WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Added new local Google Font option to Limit Subsets that are downloaded and included in the stylesheet. In our tests, we saw an 80% decrease in the font CSS size when selecting one specific subset. 🔥
Added new local Google font option to change the Print Method with options for file and inline.
Added new priority option to manual preloads which can be used to add a specific fetchpriority attribute (auto, high, low) value to individual preload tags. ⚡
Added new perfmatters_lazy_element_selectors filter.
Removed unnecessary trailing link tag from delayed stylesheets when using remove unused CSS.
Removed crossorigin option for manual preloads. The attribute is now automatically added to fetch and font preload tags.
Increased action button response message timeout to 10 seconds in plugin UI.
Fixed a PHP warning coming from Disable Google Maps function if a post ID was not found on a single post URL.
Fixed an issue with WordPress 6.7.1 where the text domain for translations was loading too early.
Removed deprecated plugin option to load Google fonts asynchronously.
Translation updates.
📣 Heads up. We will be raising prices on our single and business licenses for Perfmatters come January 1st, 2025.
This is to better handle our one-on-one support approach. We love helping clients optimize their sites and always go the extra mile, and we want to continue to do this. 🧑🤝🧑 Many times, we will answer any performance questions clients have, assist in configuring our plugins, etc. And all of this takes a significant amount of time.
Current single license: $24.95 → New single license: $29.95
Current business license: $54.95 → New business license: $59.95
All customers before 2025 will be grandfathered in at the old pricing as long as an active subscription is maintained. 👍 Pricing for our Novashare plugin is not changing.
If our Perfmatters plugin has ever helped you, we would greatly appreciate a vote in The WP Awards. 🏆
Interesting things 🔎
Misc.
I still enjoy a good almond milk latte from time to time (I can’t do dairy). Happy to see Starbucks no longer charges extra for this. Almond milk is mainstream. ☕
While I’m not into politics, the data junkie in me loves the deep dive from Cloudflare into internet traffic shifts and cyber attacks during the election.
Is Apple about to enter the smart home camera market? The more competition, the better, in my opinion.
WordPress
GeneratePress 2.0 is on the horizon! I couldn’t be more excited about this.
WordPress 6.7 is here with a lot of changes. I always enjoy Carlo’s in-depth summaries of all the changes.
Dumitru Brinzan analyzed the data from the 729,000+ leaked WordPress sites from the controversial WP Engine Tracker. Some of the findings are interesting. 🤔
Performance
I had a fun time chatting with Mike and Marcel on the Do the Woo podcast about WordPress and WooCommerce optimization. 🎙️
Kinsta has launched Google’s C3D VMs in Taiwan! These things are blazing fast.
Robert DeVore launched BenchPress, a free WordPress plugin designed to help developers identify performance bottlenecks in their code and optimize for speed.
PHP 8.4 is here! I’m sure many hosting providers will start adding this over the next couple of months. Looking forward to seeing more benchmarks.
Elementor keeps pushing out performance updates, which is always awesome to see!
I don’t usually like to call products or solutions out, but this has to change. On this client’s site, they had 637 KB from font libraries alone, and less than 1% of them were used. 🤦 Developers need to take performance more seriously.
Ridiculously large font libraries
Marketing
Google Calendar finally got dark mode! I tend to use Apple Calendar more these days, but happy to see they rolled this out.
AI
OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Search, enabling real-time web searching within its chatbot. Free users will also be getting access in a few months.
Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts. However, I think it’s safe to assume that if you’re using any social media network, your data is out there for grabs these days.
Most have reported that Apple Intelligence notification summaries are pretty bad. I’m more worried about the data privacy issues with this. 🔒
Bitcoin (not financial advice)
Kraken launched their desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. They built it from the ground up using Rust with performance in mind.
Strike has introduced auto-withdrawals to cold storage. Great if you are DCA’ing on a regular basis.
Gary Gensler, the chair of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, announced he will be stepping down.
BlackRock's bitcoin ETF set a record for biggest daily inflow above $1.1 billion. It also surpassed its gold ETF.
Jack Dorsey announced in a published shareholder letter that it would reallocate resources to focus on bitcoin mining equipment development. ⛏️
For those of you in the states, have a Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃