After our absence last week, we're back with a full load of WP news this time. With the first beta for the new WordPress 4.9, tips on dealing with hellish customers and a new type of threat for WordPress sites.
Business
You want to get rid of Xavier, Belle and Will!
They take up a lot of your nerves and productive time, threatening you with complaints or bad reviews: Customers from hell can make your life a living hell. Especially if you develop and support your product alone or with a small team. Zachary Skaggs from WP Ninjas - with the flowery title "Director of Happyness", by the way - shows how he dealt with three types of hellish customers.
Performance
Accelerated Mobile Pages in beautiful: AMP themes
With its Accelerated Mobile Pages, Google has provided publishers with an extremely fast option for content delivery. However, the additional mobile optimization not only comes with a greater dependency on Google, but also with design-related restrictions. There are now providers that address this problem with special AMP themes and offer site operators more control and design options for Google's mobile format.
On our own behalf: Raidboxes wins silver in the CMS host of the year award
Every year, hosttest.de selects the public's favorite hosters. In 2017, we can not only celebrate second place in the CMS host category, but also the 100% Uptime seal! Definitely a reason to celebrate. That's why we have extended our Fully Managed promotion until October 15!
Security
The case of the Display Widgets and SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugins shows that plugin sales or takeovers pose a threat to website operators. In the worst-case scenario, the wrong people can gain access to thousands of WordPress installations. In the most recent case, a spammer used several plugins to send out advertisements for so-called payday loans. The security provider Wordfence was even able to trace the case back to 2013.
Save the Date: Chrome 62 is coming!
The latest version of the Google browser brings an important new feature: a security warning for non-encrypted websites. In the previous version, Chrome had already introduced the "Not secure" warning for sites without an SSL certificate that requested sensitive data, such as credit card information. The warning is now extended to all pages with an input field - regardless of which data is requested. A simple search field is therefore sufficient to generate a warning. Chrome 62 is expected to be released on October 24.
WordPress
The WordCamp Icubator Program enters the next round in 2018. Local communities are supported by experienced members of the global community in organizing WordCamps. In 2016, the program was used to organize WordCamps in Indonesia, Colombia and Zimbabwe.
The first beta for the new WP version 4.9 was released on October 5. According to Product Lead Matt Mullenweg, the update is primarily intended to bring user-centered innovations and improvements: The focus is on code editing, plugin and theme management as well as improving existing features.
