Tidbits from Brian - Issue #39

Attempting my first home renovation project 🪚

Hope everyone is having a good holiday! As the weather is a bit cooler in Arizona, now is the time for some home improvements. I’m not a handy person by any means. Think of the biggest nerd you know, and I’m probably 2x that. My parents aren’t really handy either, so I didn’t grow up tinkering with cars or tools. I just bought my first shovel the other day, so I’m not exaggerating. 😂

On the advice of a few close friends, I’ve decided to rip up my deck myself (already started) and put some new tiles down. For many of you, this is probably really basic stuff, but it makes me really nervous (even with just snap-in-place tiles). 😅 I solve unknown problems in the digital world every day, but unknowns in the physical world stress me out.

I’ll be renting a jigsaw to cut the corner pieces. 🪚 The last time I cut a piece of wood was back in high school shop class, so let’s just say it’s been a while. I’ll try to post back a picture once I’ve got something new installed. I’ll most likely be using this decking from IKEA.

Ripping up my old deck

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Updates ✍️

We pushed out a small update for our Novashare WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:

• Improvement: Added conditional inline JavaScript to dynamically add Pinterest descriptions to content images (only added when using the image grid). 🖼️

• Made some adjustments to content marker function to share between different features.

• Removed older changelog entries in readme.txt file and added link to web version. This decreases stored row size. ⚡

• Fixed an issue with WordPress 6.7.1 where the text domain for translations was loading too early.

• Fixed an issue where percentage dimension values were flagging as below the minimum threshold for a Pinterest image pin button. 📏

Pricing updates 📣

Another friendly reminder. 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.

Digital assets for sale 🏷️

• WP Coupons is officially for sale! We stopped development on this plugin almost two years ago now (see timeline). We’ve decided now is a good time to let go of this. If you’re interested, please reach out to us. Here is what is included:

  • All code for the plugin.

  • WP Coupons brand (SVG files, logo, etc.).

  • wpcoupons.io domain name

  • Website itself if you want it for SEO reasons (backlinks, content, etc.)

  • No customer data or subscriptions are included.

• We have a domain name for sale: editwp.com We were previously using this as a live testing/dev site, but now use InstaWP for testing things. If you’re interested, please reach out to us.

Interesting things 🔎

Misc.

• Does anyone else find the Google Lens stuff annoying in Google Chrome? Thankfully, you can turn it off.

• Speaking of Google, they start tracking all your devices in 8 weeks.

• CISA, FBI urge Americans to use encrypted messaging apps to combat Chinese telco hackers. 🔒

• Backblaze is a great way to backup your computer offsite. FYI, iCloud is not a backup (it’s a sync). Use promo code YULESAVE20 to save 20% through 12/31.

WordPress

• Twenty CMS and website-building platforms were ranked by accessibility. WordPress came in 10th place.

• WooCommerce in 2025: Building a platform for the future.

• I don’t want to get too far deep into the WordPress drama, 😅 but I do recommend these two WordPress newsletters if you want to follow along: The Repository and The WordPress Weekly.

• Also, Joost de Valk wrote probably one of the most thought-provoking posts on the topic of WordPress leadership.

• There is a new block site builder: Blockera. They aren’t adding blocks but rather giving advanced controls to existing core blocks. In terms of performance/bloat, I like this approach. It might be worth giving a try.

• Speaking of Matt, he did a WordPress speed build challenge versus Jessica Lyschik. I always find these interesting!

• Make WordPress gets a refresh! Check it out at make.wordpress.org. 🧑‍🎨

• WPAI, an AI startup for WordPress, has been acquired by Automattic.

• BigScoots has partnered up with Mediavine/Journey. I’ve worked with a lot of food bloggers on the BigScoots platform. They are doing a great job.

Performance

• In Lighthouse v12.2.3, the CPU throttling on mobile changed from 4x to 1.2x. That means processing-heavy websites will see better TBT scores. A Christmas miracle. 🎉

• Why is web.dev’s LCP so bad?! Really enjoyed this video about a page having some weird LCP issues and how Harry diagnosed it.

• PerfPlanet puts out amazing content every December. I enjoyed these articles:

  • Top 8 things I want in the Devtools Network Panel The UI changes (showing preloads, fetch, LCP element, defer, etc.)... 💯

  • The curious (performance) case of CSS @import (stop using this!)

  • Speculative loading and the Speculation Rules API

  • Understanding the main thread in the browser

  • Unattributed Navigation Overhead (UNO)

  • What is an AnimationFrame and what can it tell you?

• The Web Almanac is a comprehensive report on the state of the web. I always like to check out their year-in-review performance section. Lots of great data.

• Felix Arntz gave an excellent presentation on WordPress performance: 2024 CWV Impact Retrospective. He mentions that TTFB continues to be a major bottleneck going into 2025 regarding LCP. I agree.

• I’m a big fan of Google’s Squoosh tool. Addy Osmani just released Squish for free batch image compression in the browser (100% client-side). 🚀

• PHP 8.4 is now live at Kinsta. I’ve already updated all of our sites after testing. No issues so far. But looking forward to seeing some benchmarks.

• Kinsta also rolled out a new PHP Performance tool. This is great for those who need to more closely fine-tune the amount of memory behind PHP.

• Slava shared a nice little WordPress performance hack for disabling additional translation logic if your site is only in English.

Marketing

• Google Search changes are killing websites in an age of AI spam.

• You can now verify your Bluesky account on Gravatar.

• Ahrefs has released a lightweight and privacy-friendly (no cookies) Google Analytics alternative. It’s even available on the free plans. 🍪

AI

• My favorite use of AI is obviously things that speed up my daily workflow. Here’s a great example of using AI in Chrome DevTools. 🤖

• Grok has released its new image generation capabilities. My first “Draw me as a Pixar character” prompt was a girl with glasses. Now, it seems to be much more accurate.

• Also, Grok is now available for free on all X accounts. So everyone can play around with it.

• You can tailor Claude’s responses to your personal style.

• Meet Willow, Google’s new state-of-the-art quantum chip. However, we are a ways off until quantum can break any current encryption technology.

• Sora, OpenAI’s video generation model, is out of research preview.

Bitcoin (not financial advice)

• If I were to recommend only one bitcoin video, it would be BTC Sessions Christmas holiday special: 30+ speakers, 7+ hours! 💥

• Strike is on fire lately with everything they are doing:

  • You can now pay all of your bills (mortgage, utilities, etc.) directly from Strike.

  • New feature to set multiple DCAs with different amounts, frequencies, & payment methods.

  • Jack Mallers also chatted about bitcoin 2025 expectations and Strike's new features.

• Rumble announces bitcoin treasury strategy. Tether also just invested in Rumble, sending their stock soaring.

• Here is a clever new way to stack sats without spending a dime (the catch is you have to live in California).

• Charles Schwab plans to enter the spot crypto market once U.S. regulations are better. The incoming CEO says he feels silly for not buying in.

• A “global economic reordering” US-China competition and bitcoin as a tool of US statecraft.

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I hope everyone had an amazing and restful holiday! Here’s to a happy new year. 🥂

Image source: iHire