Category: Blog Network Additions

Several updates and a new plugin.

Updates
Kadence Blocks
SO CSS
WP Scheduled Posts

New Plugin
Ultimate Social Media Icons

Updates:
Elementor
Essential Addons for Elementor
Really Simple SSL
WP Scheduled Posts

New:
Kadence Gutenberg blocks
Qubely – Gutenberg blocks
Ultimate Addons Gutenberg blocks

Gutenberg is the block editor added to WordPress since v5.0. Until now it has been disabled, but there are some good reasons to use it instead of the classic editor, so I have made it the default. If you still want to use the classic editor, go to your plugins and enable “Classic Editor” to get back to the boring old editor.

If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Security Update to WordPress v5.2.3

Plugins:
Elementor v2.7.2
Essential Addons for Elementor v3.3.1
Nextgen Gallery v3.2.18
Very Simple Event List v10.7

Added WP Scheduled Posts v2.3.0

WordPress released a minor security fix in v5.0.2

Plugins
Caldera Forms v1.7.5.1
Elementor v2.3.8
Essential Addons for Elementor v2.8.7
iframe v4.4
Nextgen Gallery v3.1.5
Regenerate Thumbnails v3.1.0
Very Simple Event List v9.3
Wordfence v7.1.20

Themes
Astra v1.6.2
Panoramic v1.0.67
SiteOrigin North v1.6.5
Twenty Ten v2.7
Twenty Eleven v3.0
Twenty Thirteen v2.6
Twenty Fourteen v2.4
Twenty Fifteen v2.2
Twenty Sixteen v1.7
Twenty Seventeen v1.9
Twenty Nineteen v1.1

New Plugin
I added Smush by WPMU.  This plugin watches images that are being uploaded to blogs and shrinks them down to a more reasonable size.  This is good for a couple reasons.  First, WordPress doesn’t even use full size images. At least, not really.  So, having a photo straight off your phone that is the size of a building just takes up a lot of space and, if, for some reason, you tell WP to display that image on a page, it takes FOREVER for the image to display.  This plugin will limit the max size of an image stored on the server to 2048×2048 pixels.  That should be big enough to fit any needs.  The second reason is simply disk space.  I’m running the plugin now to “smush” images that are already on the server and one blog is 15% of the way through its images and has already saved over 200MB of disk space.  Doesn’t sound like a lot, but if we can save a gig here or a gig there, that’s a big difference to a web server.

As always, if you notice any issues, just let me know.  There were a lot of updates today.

Big updates today.  It’s been a while because WordPress had a major upgrade to version 5.0. Never a good idea to upgrade a network to a new major version until it has had some time to percolate.  V5.0.1 was released this week, so we have taken all the steps…

Read the next post for information about all the new bells and whistles.

WordPress v5.0 & v5.0.1

Plugins
Elementor v2.3.6
Essential Addons for Elementor v2.8.6
WP Force Login v5.3
Multisite Clone Duplicator v1.5.3
Nextgen Gallery v3.1.2
PDF Embedder v4.0
Really Simple SSL v3.1.3
TinyMCE Advanced v4.8.2
Very Simple Event List v9.2
Wordfence v7.1.18
WP Latest Posts v4.5.4

Themes
Panoramic v1.0.66
Twenty Ten v2.6
Twenty Eleven v2.9
Twenty Twelve v2.6
Twenty Thirteen v2.5
Twenty Fourteen v2.3
Twenty Fifteen v2.1

New Themes
Astra v1.6.1 – Elementor Certified
Ocean WP v1.5.32 – Elementor Certified
Twenty Nineteen – Latest from WordPress

New Plugin
Classic Editor v1.3 – Replaces the new Gutenberg editor in WPv5 with the classic editor

Plugins
Elementor v2.2.1
Essential Addons for Elementor v2.7.8
Nextgen Gallery v3.0.8
PDF Embedder v3.2
Wordfence v7.1.11
WP Latest Posts v4.4.2

Themes
SiteOrigins North v1.5.1
Weaver XTreme v4.06

Added Disable Admin Notices plugin

Disable Admin Notices allows site admins to disable those annoying nag messages in Dashboard.  Whenever a nag pops up you will now see a red “Hide notification forever” link (like this).

 

Just click it, and you won’t have to deal with that one again.

Did a lot of cleaning on the blog network this week.  Archived several blogs that had not been updated in at least 6 months. (If yours is missing, email me and we’ll talk about putting it back.)

Also removed a number of unused plugins and added a few that will be useful going forward.

Over the next few months I’ll also be adding more updated themes and changing out the old themes that are no longer being updated so that the blog network stays safe and secure.  If your site is using one of these old themes I will contact you directly and will be happy to help you make the change.

As always, if you see anything that doesn’t seem right, feel free to let me know.

We found some issues with the older version of PHP that was running the blog network, so our sys admin has upgraded the server to PHP v7.1. That should keep us current for many years.  Thanks Dave for getting that done.

WordPress v4.9.8 came out last week.  More info here.

Plugins
Authorizer v2.8.3
Caldera Forms v1.7.2
List Category Posts v0.78.1
TinyMCE Advanced v4.8.0

Theme
Twenty Seventeen 1.7

Plugin Updates
Caldera Forms v1.6.1
SiteOrigin Page Builder v2.6.5
Simple Page Ordering v2.3.1
SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle v1.11.8
Wordfence v7.1.3
WP Accessibility v1.6.3
WP Latest Posts v4.4.0

Theme Updates
Panoramic v1.0.47
SiteOrigin North v1.4.6

I also added a SiteOrigin CSS plugin that lets you point and click to edit the style sheet in your theme.  Very simple to use.  More info here.

Updates
Caldera Forms v1.6.0
SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle v1.11.7
WP Accessibility v1.6.2

Theme
SiteOrigin North v1.4.5

Added Content Views v1.9.9.6
Allows for a filtered display of blog posts as a grid, or several other display options, for those who would like it.