Tidbits from Brian - Issue #34
Perfect is the enemy of good. šāāļø
I was reading an article that touched on the old saying, āperfect is the enemy of good.ā So many times in life, Iāve held back because I wanted something to be perfect, to reach or finish a goal right off the bat. When in reality, most success comes down to making little improvements and being consistent over a period of time.
Iāve been trying to cut back on sugar and caffeine and havenāt had soda for a few years now, which is great. š„¤ However, I failed many times trying to go cold turkey. What finally worked for me was to stop trying for perfection. I instead moved to carbonated/caffeinated sparkling waters. Now Iām working on reducing my caffeine levels. Giving up on perfection right away is what enabled me to finally reduce my sugar intake by 95%. šŖ
Another example would be working out. Not everyone needs to go to a fancy gym. If you donāt think youāll take the time or stick to it, itās much better to simply work out at home. Those expensive machines wonāt do anything if you give up.
You can really apply that saying to almost anything. Making progress over time is where the real success comes, not perfection.
Updates āļø
We pushed out a big quality-of-life update for our Perfmatters WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Updated CSS parsing library to the latest version (8.6.0) which should help with correctly parsing mathematical operations inside CSS property values. It dramatically improves compatibility with products like Elementor, Automatic.css, etc.
Added additional parameter to excluded page builders array for GenerateBlocks and TranslatePress.
Added additional built-in deferral exclusion for jqueryParams inline script.
Added Delay JS quick exclusion for the Kadence menu.
Fixed a MU Mode issue where home page exceptions would not be applied correctly if a query string was present in the requested URL.
Fixed an undefined array key warning coming from the minify class.
Fixed a minify error that would show up when a prospective file did not have any content.
Fixed an issue where having Remove Unused CSS turned on with no actual stylesheets loading would return a blank screen.
Fixed a CSS error that would show up when trying to determine the current page ID when the queried post was null.
Fixed an issue where the CSS class would attempt to retrieve the contents of a stylesheet even if it didn't exist.
Fixed an issue where minified files would not get picked up by the CDN rewriter.
Removed unnecessary minify library .git directories from the plugin.
Minor style adjustments to the plugin UI.
Updated our license key exception list to include Rocket.net staging sites (*.onrocket.site). š
Also pushed out a small update for our Novashare WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes.
Added Pinterest Description fields back throughout the plugin which will tie directly to the description parameter shared on Pinterest links to help with internal search.
Updated our license key exception list to include Rocket.net staging sites.
Minor style adjustments to the plugin UI.
Moved from using global $post variable to pulling from the queried object to prevent conflicts with other plugins.
Removed certain rel attribute values from links that are no longer needed for modern browsers.
In case you missed them, check out our videos in the Vitality series on time to first byte (TTFB) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). ā” Presentation slides are included in the video descriptions.
In our next video on August 2nd, weāre taking a deep dive into First Contentful Paint (FCP)! Feel free to sign up or mark your calendar if youāre interested.
Interesting things š
Misc.
Browser extensions are powerful and can be dangerous based on what access you give them. A good reminder from Eric Law in his post to be careful.
Client didnāt pay? Thereās a GitHub project for that. It decreases the opacity on a site every day until it completely fades away. š¤£
Switching from Google Photos to iCloud is about to be a lot less painful. This could be handy if youāre moving between ecosystems.
How can you tell if your online accounts have been hacked? TechCrunch published an overview of quick things you can check.
Proton just launched a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs. Itās pretty basic at the moment, but it's great to see more options.
Safari has released a new private browser feature in their advanced settings, not just in private mode.
What is it like to fly Hawaiian with Starlink WiFi service? I think it will be really cool once this is the new norm across every airline. āļø
Apple Maps on the web launches in beta.
Wikipediaās website finally gets dark mode. Iām a sucker for dark mode in anything.
WordPress
Joost de Valk has released his new automatically updated CMS market share report. Definitely one to bookmark. š
Eric Karkovack wrote an interesting post on why WordPress subscriptions are here to stay. Subscriptions help developers to continue to provide value long-term.
WordPress has a rookie problem. James Giroux suggests that to attract new and younger users, we need to focus on what WordPress has always been good at, ownership over content and digital identity. I agree.
Speaking of ownership, this Webflow user got a 32x price increase on his renewal. šØ Many folks responded that this is one advantage of WordPress: you own your content and can easily move providers if something like this happens.
Kinsta launched some nice improvements in July.
Selective push now supports deployments from live to staging.
Lock down SFTP/SSH and phpMyAdmin access with IP allowlists.
All caching features are now located in the same tab for easier access.
Iāve been enjoying the WP Product Talk podcast. They recently chatted with Matt Mullenweg: āWhat Would Matt Do?ā
Awesome Motive has acquired BuddyBoss, an online community and social learning platform for WordPress.
Easy Digital Downloads got some impressive updates this month!
New email editor
Refund notification emails
Detailed email logs (very much needed)
Improved session handling for enhanced performance
Using the loop to grow a WordPress product company. An insightful read from Jonathan Wold.
I connected with this podcast from Matt Medeiros and Cory Miller. They talk about dealing with burnout in entrepreneurship.
WooExpress has been discontinued. Honestly, this was news to me. However, not sure how many were even using it. I think it makes sense for them to focus on improving the main WooCommerce product.
Speaking of WooCommerce, they just published their roadmap for 2024 and beyond.
WordPress is a UI/UX Disaster. Everyone should watch this. I love that Paul never holds back.
Performance
āIf I Didn't Load Test.ā This has to be the highest-quality parody song about performance Iāve ever seen. šµš
WordPress 6.6 āDorseyā was released with some awesome performance improvements.
Conor at DebugBear put out a great post on why you should avoid overusing fetchpriority="high". Overoptimization is a real problem. ā”
The Chrome team has been working on improving INP for pages employing JavaScript modal dialogs. This was rolled out in Chrome 127.
Cloudflare Zaraz adds support for server-side rendering of X and Instagram embeds.
Need to compress videos? Morten Just created a pretty handy tool/wrapper using FFmpeg. Squoosh is another tool and or wrapper I recommend for image compression.
A simple JS coding issue can cause INP. Harry Roberts shared a great example of this happening with an accordion.
Speaking of INP, this interactive demo from DebugBear is amazing to better understand how it works.
The Network panel in Chrome 127 got updated throttling presets: new Fast 4G, Fast 3G renamed to Slow 4G, and Slow 3G renamed to 3G. This better aligns with Lighthouse. š±
I think one of the worst performance issues right now in WordPress is icon libraries. They arenāt getting any better, and most users arenāt familiar with kits. I will try to write up a guide in the future. š
Marketing
Googleās AI overviews coincide with a drop in mobile searches. Honestly, this isnāt too surprising. But at least weāre starting to see some data to support this.
Threads hits 175 million users after a year. Thatās pretty impressive! Iām on Threads if you want to connect. Although I donāt use it very much. š
Fathom Analytics has rolled out a new UI. It looks great! They also added traffic sources.
Google Docs just got better Markdown support when copy/pasting and importing/exporting. This is great for those of us bouncing around between different tools.
Stripe acquires Lemon Squeezy. This honestly makes a lot of sense and I think it will be good for those selling digital products.
Google is no longer deprecating third-party cookies. šŖ This has been something thatās been up in the air for years. At least we can move on now.
Iāve made a task to work on improving accessibility across all my sites. WAVE is a great little tool to start making small changes.
AI
Two ChatGPTs can't stop saying goodbye. This is hilarious!
Cloudflare now has a one-click option to block AI bots and crawlers from accessing your siteās content. Iām still torn on this and havenāt blocked anything yet."
Canva announced that it has joined forces with Leonardo AI. If youāre a Canva user, Iām sure youāll be happy about this.
Careful if youāre churning out a lot of content with AI. Tools are being built, and Google is getting smarter at detecting this. The last thing you want is a penalty.
Generative fill vectors in Adobe Illustrator are kind of mind-blowing!
OpenAI has launched SearchGPT, a temporary prototype of new AI search features.
Iāve always been scared of the water, ever since I was a kid. This is why. š
If you're in the Scottsdale, AZ area, hit me up, and we can grab lunch! š„š
Loving your tidbits. Keep them coming!
always waiting for your tidbits š