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Joséphine- WordPress 5.9

Joséphine- WordPress 5.9

WordPress 5.9 “Joséphine”  released on January 25, 2022, is a major WordPress core release. The release was named in honor of acclaimed international jazz singer Joséphine Baker. Baker, a lifelong civil rights campaigner, believed that all people could live in harmony together, in the same way as different instruments in a jazz band blend together to make a whole piece.

Our new version of WordPress includes 3 types of themes, Classical (what we have used so far), Hybrid and Block. The beauty about the new themes is that they include Full Site Editing (FSE) using the WordPress block editor.

WordPress has always been about democratization. These new features enable us to easily add features like colors, fonts, layouts and templates easily to our posts and pages without being a coder.

The release also includes the new Twenty Twenty-Two block theme. The WordPress 5.9 welcome screen says:

“This is more than just a new default theme. It’s a brand-new way to work with WordPress themes. Block themes put a wide array of visual choices in your hands, from color schemes and typeface combinations to page templates and image filters — all together, in the site editing interface. By making changes in one place, you can give Twenty Twenty-Two the same look and feel as your brand or other websites — or take your site’s look in another direction.”

There are are 99 features and 100 bugs fixed in the new WordPress 5.9. From an SEO perspective, one of the items that I am excited about is lazy loading. Up until now lazy loading images in WordPress slowed down the page instead of speading it up. I see that this has been repaired and look forward to trying it out!

The hosting companies are testing out the new version of WordPress and should be releasing it as soon as they have determined that it is stable. If you already see the WordPress 5.9 update, please remember to back up your site before you run the update!

GDPR

GDPR

GDPR is probably a term that has come across your radar recently in the form of a slew of emails from companies that you contacted in the distant and more recent past. It stands for General Data Protection Regulation and is a European law demanding that organizations that collect data over the internet be transparent about how the data will be used.

Although many of you run businesses and own websites in the US and other locations outside of Europe, if someone from Europe visits your website and uses your services in any way, you are impacted by the GDPR law and are liable to pay hefty penalties if you neglect to address this issue on your website.

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WordCamp US 2016, Philadelphia , Dec 2-4 2016 – A Personal Recap

WordCamp US 2016, Philadelphia , Dec 2-4 2016 – A Personal Recap

My third ever WordCamp – WordPress conference – took me to downtown Philadelphia in December 2016. As ‘1099’ freelancer I feel fortunate to live close enough to Philly to be able to drive up for this event.

I arrived on Friday morning following a 3 hour Philadelphia Convention Centerdrive only to discover that the parking at the Philadelphia Convention Center was something like $10 per hour and that several of the parking lots recommended in the link to Philadelphia city parking didn’t exist. I began my morning with a scenic tour of downtown Philly until a lot was located scarcely a block away for $17 all day. Woot!

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