Tidbits from Brian - Issue #41
Living by the golden rule, online and offline 🤝
A few years ago, I talked about how keyboard warriors are the worst. Well, little did I realize that things could go downhill a lot more. 😅 Whether it’s politics or WordPress drama, I think I’ve seen the worst come out in some folks over the past year and have lost some respect for a few that I previously followed/looked up to.
I just wanted to share a little friendly reminder to always take a moment and reflect (reread) before you hit that post or share button on social media. Whether you’re religious or not, I think the golden rule is one of the best principles to live by:
Treat others how you would want to be treated.
Changing how you act online versus offline has never made sense to me. If you can’t respectfully disagree on a topic, you really shouldn’t be on social media. It also sets a bad example for the younger generation (remember, anything you post online will probably live forever). Words matter.
I’ve always admired the quote below from Charles Swindoll, it's all about how we react to both the positive and negative things that come our way.
Updates ✍️
We pushed two updates for our Perfmatters WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Added new perfmatters_rucss_async_stylesheets filter. You can now async any stylesheet that you want.
Added built-in async settings for dashicons and animation stylesheets. Improves Elementor performance. ⚡
Added additional logic to better handle stylesheets with media query attributes when including them in used CSS (no longer render-blocking). Speeds up WooCommerce. 🚀
Made some changes to be able to start our main output buffer earlier for better compatibility with other plugins (example, our preload features now work with LiteSpeed Cache WebP replacement).
Added new perfmatters_preloads_array filter. Gives you access to the preloads data array for use in custom integrations. 👨🔧
Added new perfmatters_minify_threshold filter. Turn off the size threshold check when dealing with a lot of encoded inline images in your stylesheets.
Added new perfmatters_after_local_analytics action hook.
Updated our staging site license key exception list with additional format for WP Engine (*.wpenginepowered.com) and stage.* 🔑
Added additional compatibility styles to the Script Manager. 🖼️
Added additional swiper JavaScript file to Elementor quick exclusion.
Added new built-in stylesheet exclusion for Bricks post-specific CSS.
Added new Delay JS quick exclusion for WPBakery.
Added additional built-in CSS selector exclusion for WP Armour.
Added a REST API exception for SureCart.
Added a string check to login URL filter function to prevent a possible PHP error. ↪️
Updated clean uninstall function with current post meta options.
Fixed an issue where new user email requests were not being allowed through the redirect block when using a custom login URL.
Fixed an issue where the Clear Used CSS meta button was not working correctly for certain URL types.
Fixed a PHP warning coming from certain rewrite rule formats when MU Mode was turned on. 🐛
Minor adjustment to CDN rewrite regex to fix an issue that was happening when the home URL was different from the site URL.
Removed Ezoic quick exclusion and moved to built-in deferral and delay exclusions.
We’ve also published a few docs on our Perfmatters site when running our plugin alongside other cache solutions (we’ll be publishing more):
Interesting things 🔎
Misc.
Apple just built a robot lamp. All they need to do is figure out how to make it hop, and we have our childhood Pixar mascot brought to life. 😄
Apple pulls end-to-end encryption feature from UK over government spying demands. This is crazy! Encryption is still there, but Apple now holds the key.
Snagit released version 2025 with some new features such as smart redact, 1-2-3 step capture, removing background noise, and more.
Affinity Designer 2.6 came out. I’m liking the color picker improvements.
Obsidian is now free for work. The commercial license is now optional.
WordPress
GenerateBlocks 2.0 is here! Honestly, this is probably going to be the most exciting update of the entire year for me. A few changes/improvements:
Builds production-ready code as you build your pages. Amazing for performance!
Dynamic tags (display site content anywhere inside block HTML code).
Streamlined HTML and CSS in block design (decoupled from blocks).
The Query block can now query and loop anything. You can now Query post meta and data in your options table.
Style indicators and intuitive settings search.
Full styling control for numerous breakpoints, and you can create your own custom media queries as well as @container queries for maximum flexibility.
Four new starter sites to get up and running fast (service 2.0 pictured below).
WooCommerce (or Woo) introduced the overhaul of their new branding.
Based on customer feedback, Kinsta reworked the MyKinsta menu navigation to include a more functional breadcrumb navigation system, cleaner search, and the “jump to” features still work, which I love.
Austin was able to take advantage of unlimited storage by offloading WordPress uploads with B2 and Rclone. Very clever.
With the introduced complexities of Full Site Editing (FSE), WordPress themes are facing a significant crisis. I still prefer the hybrid approach with GeneratePress One, but I also like what is being done with Ollie.
WordPress 6.8 will use bcrypt for password hashing.
The way the plugin author information is displayed on WordPress.org has changed; it’s now linked to the plugin owner’s public profile.
The “WordPress in 2025” report highlights why it should be a cornerstone of your long-term strategy.
The team behind Astra, SureCart, etc., has launched SureMail. It’s a 100% free and open-source SMTP plugin (with lots of features) for WordPress. Looks promising!
Divi 5 launched their public alpha 8 version, including 60+ fixes and a new feature. I’ve seen a few barebones Divi 5 sites and can say it looks a lot better in terms of modular design. Everything isn’t just lumped into one big JS file.
Performance
Great news! As expected, Speculative Loading is coming to WordPress core. Even sooner than I thought. ⚡ They will most likely default to "prefetch/conservative." So we might add a toggle in Perfmatters to easily swap that to "prerender/moderate." 👍
The performance panel in Chrome DevTools now highlights images whose file size you can optimize. They’ve also updated CPU throttling settings.
If you’re not technical, using Chrome DevTools can be a little overwhelming. Check out this in-depth guide on how to start using it.
How fast are typical website page load times in 2025? DebugBear put together some interesting data using CrUX.
Speaking of DebugBear, they just launched a new free tool to measure your time to first byte (TTFB) from 10 different locations. It works great!
WooCommerce 9.7 got some pretty big performance improvements. 75% faster block editor and 99% fewer callbacks.
AI
Gemini 2.0 is now available to everyone. They also launched a free version of Gemini Code Assist.
Grok 3 was released. I’m definitely having some fun playing around with it. A standalone app for MacOS and Windows is also coming.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code were released. Hard to keep up with all these new AI versions.
Introducing NEO Gamma. Another step closer to robots in your home. 🤖
If you're in the Scottsdale, AZ area, hit me up, and we can grab lunch! 🥗👋
Keep it up.