Exciting Product Updates, New Tutorials, and a Personal Note!

Published about 1 year ago • 3 min read

I've been busy...

It seems like my productivity comes in bursts, and when it rains, it pours. I'll be going over several product updates and running you through my latest tutorials.

As far as a health update, you may remember I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Well, I caved to the doctor and said I wanted a pacemaker. He did another ultrasound on my heart to double-check, and it actually improved to 45% (from the low 30's). So I no longer need a pacemaker! This is great news, as I didn't anticipate getting better.

I'd like to thank all of the newsletter readers who messaged me voicing support and sympathies. I really do appreciate it.

Let's get this newsletter started, shall we?

QuotesDLX 3.0 is here with citations and shortcode support

A customer shared their website with me where QuotesDLX was being used, and I saw that they were having trouble with attribution. I've played with adding citations to QuotesDLX before, but I never finished or polished the feature. Well, I circled back, and now citations are a reality.

Shortcodes have also come to QuotesDLX. I've found that the block editor isn't catching on like most would hope, so to bridge the gap, I've created a shortcode for those using the Classic Editor or a page builder.

Check Out More on QuotesDLX 3.0

Highlight and Share gets Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky Social Networks

a black and white photo of a group of people dancing

I've been busy with Highlight and Share and I've added three new social networks. You can now enable Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky.

If you've never used Highlight and Share, I encourage you to do so. It's a great plugin.

Visit Highlight and Share on WordPress.org

New tutorial: How to create a Live Preview of your .org plugin with Blueprints

You may have noticed that some plugins on WordPress.org have a Live Preview next to the plugin banner. You can create these for your own plugin using Blueprints.

In this tutorial I walk you through what Blueprints are, how to test them, and how to deploy them.

Featured Plugin: Contextual Related Posts Pro

I've used Contextual Related Pro on a few sites so far, and I've been blown away by how fully featured and flexible it is.

I previously used the Jetpack Related Posts module, but it's hard to style, and you can't customize much of the output.

The base plugin is free, but the Pro version does offer some nice features, like a Query Loop block.

Check out Contextual Related Posts Pro

A screenshot of Contextual Related Posts on the Frontend

New tutorial: Create a Block from Scratch

In this long-form tutorial, I walk you through setting up a block and shipping it. If you're interested in block development, this is a great read. If you have any React experience, you'll be right at home.

I chose Gravatar as an example so I'd have the opportunity to show you how to do REST calls from within a block.

Flodesk comes to Comment Edit Pro

Comment Edit Pro is a powerful plugin with many integrations and helpers. A few customers have requested Flodesk, and I'm glad to release the feature.

The Flodesk integration is in addition to the Mailchimp and Convertkit integrations I released last year.

Please Read the Full Announcement

New tutorial: How to Use Namespaces in Your Plugin

If you're creating a WordPress plugin, it's important to namespace your plugin, or provide it with a unique identifier. This tutorial walks you through what namespaces are from a beginner perpsective.

Please Read the Full Tutorial

Ajaxify Comments gets inline lazy loading

Ajaxify Comments 3.0 is here and it can supercharge your comments section by avoiding reloads, lazy loading your comments, and even showing a bit of confetti with the Confetti plugin.

With inline lazy loading, the lazy loading feature is feature complete. For the next version of Ajaxify, I want to focus more on real-time validation of the comment form, and the ability to customize pagination.

Please Read the Full Announcement