Author: Sarah Gooding

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WordCamp Kent Online Features Business and Marketing Tracks, May 30-31

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One of the exciting things about WordCamps going virtual is the community gaining access to more events and presentations than ever before, from anywhere in the world. Even in this new online-only format, local camps still retain their unique character as they feature speakers from their respective communities.

WordCamp Kent (Ohio) is one of these upcoming events that has been forced online by the pandemic. Organizers will be broadcasting all sessions on the weekend of May 30-31, and tickets are free for anyone who wants to attend.

The schedule for this particular event runs heavy on the business and marketing side of working with WordPress, with very few talks geared towards developers. If you are a freelancer, run an agency, or have a WordPress product business, you will find WordCamp Kent’s program more tailored to topics that help you improve client services.

The schedule on the first day of the event is divided into two tracks: Freelance/Business and User/Marketing. These sessions will run alongside live Q&A and a Help Desk managed by volunteers in the #wp-help-desk channel in the NEO WordPress Slack workspace. The second day of the event will be also be split into two tracks: Freelance/Business/Developer and WordPress 101/User.

Topics include designing websites for generating leads, improving your business model for freelancers and small businesses, client consultations, content marketing, and customer support.

This Kent, Ohio, WordCamp may not have made it on your radar in the past, but the pandemic has opened up events in some ways. It forces a greater number of camps online and allows attendees to join any event without the travel expenses that would ordinarily be prohibitive. In the past, many people who were not local would simply opt to save their money for the bigger camps. The WordPress community has a greater potential to accelerate their learning opportunities, as more smaller camps gain a global audience online.

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Google Patches Critical Vulnerability in Site Kit Plugin

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In late April Wordfence discovered a critical vulnerability in Google’s Site Kit plugin for WordPress that would make it possible for any user on the site to gain full access to the Google Search Console without verifying ownership. Google patched the vulnerability and released the fix in version 1.8.0 on May 7, 2020.

Wordfence published a timeline of the vulnerability, describing it as a proxySetupURL disclosure:

In order to establish the first connection with Site Kit and Google Search Console, the plugin generates a proxySetupURL that is used to redirect a site’s administrator to Google OAuth and run the site owner verification process through a proxy. Due to the lack of capability checks on the admin_enqueue_scripts action, the proxySetupURL was displayed as part of the HTML source code of admin pages to any authenticated user accessing the /wp-admin dashboard.

The other Aspect of the vulnerability is related to the site ownership verification request, which used a registered admin action that was missing capability checks. As a result, any authenticated WordPress user was capable of initiating the request.

Wordfence identified several ways a malicious attacker might use this vulnerability to the detriment of the site’s ranking and reputation, including manipulating search engine results, requesting removal of a competitor’s URLs from the search engine, modifying sitemaps, viewing performance data, and more.

The security fixes are not detailed in the plugin’s changelog on GitHub. It does, however, include a note at the top that states, “This release includes security fixes. An update is strongly recommended.” Google has not published a post to notify users on the news section of the plugin’s official website. Without Wordfence’s public disclosure, users may not know about the importance of the update.

Google’s Site Kit plugin has more than 400,000 active installs, according to WordPress.org. Details of the 1.8.0 update are not available to users in the admin, since the plugin’s changelog is hosted on GitHub. There is no way for users to know that the update includes security fixes without clicking through to research. Due to the great deal of sensitive information to which attackers could gain access, users are advised to update the plugin as soon as possible.

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WordCamp Europe 2020 Online Registration Now Open: Tickets are Free

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WordCamp Europe 2020 is just 37 days away. Organizers announced in April that the event, which was supposed to be hosted in Porto, is moving to be 100% online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. WCEU will kick off with a virtual Contributor Day on June 4, followed by two half days of talks and workshops broadcasted via livestream.

WordCamp Europe is one of the largest regional WordCamps on the planet and has been hosted in many magnificent venues and inspiring cities over the years. The event routinely sells out of tickets and sponsor packages, as companies and attendees rally around this unique opportunity to connect across boundaries, uniting Europe through a shared love of WordPress.

For the first time in the event’s eight-year history, the European WordPress community will have to forego the in-person networking time that many have come to value as both a personal and professional highlight of the year. WCEU Organizers have worked for the better part of a decade to make it one of the most polished and efficient WordCamps. Now the team is forced to pivot and use their expertise to host a top-notch virtual event.

Past local organizing teams have been successful at creating an intimate atmosphere that facilitates rewarding connections with a focus on hospitality. These in-person connections add context to remote interactions and conversations long after the event concludes. Reaching this same high level of interpersonal connectivity between attendees is going to be a challenge for this online edition, but WCEU organizers have a long track record of adapting to different environments. Dozens of other WordPress meetups, WordCamps, and educational events are currently facing the same challenges and are moving online.

Registering for a ticket to WCEU is optional but attendees who want to participate in the virtual networking, Q&A sessions, and contributor day will have be registered. Organizers were expecting approximately 3,000 attendees but hosting the event online may affect those numbers in either direction. Tickets are available for free on the WCEU website, thanks to the event’s sponsors. After eight hours of open registration, there are 4,257 tickets remaining. The event will return to Porto, Portugal, on June 3-5, 2021.

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Chatterbox Plugin Uses WordPress Blocks to Show Conversations

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Chatterbox is a new plugin with a fun and creative use for the block editor. It displays chat or text threads using blocks that are styled as conversations. Users can type in a record of a chat, including timestamps, with a live preview in the editor.

Since written conversations are essentially little blocks of text and media, the block editor lends itself nicely to composing and displaying this type of content. The Chatterbox block can be found under Layout Elements in the block inserter. It includes the option to select a style (Inbound, Outbound, or Event) and add a timestamp.

Dave Ryan, a WordPress developer at Bluehost, said he created the plugin in order to test Gutenberg’s Block Context API and borrowed the chat component from Salesforce’s Lightning Design System. He suggested that Chatterbox could be useful for showing demos of chat bots, publishing chat records in news stories, or simply adding an engaging visual display to conversations.

Once the Block Context API matures, Ryan plans to add message background and text colors, message sender with name and avatar, and the ability to override the message sender on a per-message basis for group chats. The next steps beyond that on the roadmap include the following:

  •  Implement Bookends and other SFDS Chat options
  •  Animated chat sequences
  •  Automated animated sequences, using character lengths for timing
  •  Automate hiding of message meta based on adjacent blocks
  •  Message Images
  •  Message Files

Ryan said some of the planned features will rely on new features in the Gutenberg project. Once those have been released he will update Chatterbox to include more customization options. The plugin is available for free on WordPress.org and contributors can find the code on GitHub.

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Google Shopping Is Now Open to Free Product Listings

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Google announced today that it is bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in the United States before the end of April and will expand globally by the end of the year. Previously, merchants were required to pay for ad placement and product listings, which led to major online retailers dominating the Shopping tab.

“Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google,” Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce, said. “With hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google each day, we know that many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship, but are less discoverable online.”

This change comes at a critical time when the retail industry has taken a significant hit due to shelter-in-place orders aimed at mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. Free listings make showing up in the Google Shopping tab more accessible for independent stores.

“For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs,” Ready said. “For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab.”  Existing Merchant Center users will retain their ads for specific products as promoted listings but will also now be able to list their full inventories for free.

Google also announced a new partnership with PayPal that will streamline the onboarding process for merchants who want to link their accounts. The announcement identified WooCommerce, Shopify, and BigCommerce as existing partners that offer platforms to help businesses sell online. In light of the current crisis, WooCommerce has ramped up its efforts to make e-commerce more approachable. The team recently hosted a free webinar on how to start selling online and produced a guide to adding a store to an existing WordPress website.

Although Google cites the coronavirus pandemic as a factor in advancing the company’s plans to make it free for merchants to sell on Google, the move is a strategic step towards wooing back the overwhelming amount of traffic it sends to Amazon. If Google’s Shopping tab can become a better source for price comparisons with a diversity of stores, consumers may return to searching Google first when intending to make a purchase.

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Leave at Door: New Free WooCommerce Plugin Enables Contact-free Delivery

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As many countries around the world are currently in some form of lockdown to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by the new restrictions. Restaurants and breweries in particular have had to radically change how they do business and either lay off or furlough the majority of their employees. Many of those that have survived the mandated dine-in closures are jump-starting delivery services in order to stay afloat.

Scott DeLuzio, a WordPress plugin developer and founder of Amplify Plugins, recently noticed a “leave at door” option when ordering food from a local restaurant. He thought it would be a helpful option for WooCommerce store owners to add and created a plugin that makes it easy.

Leave at Door is now available for free from the official WordPress Plugin Directory. It enables customers to maintain social distancing while receiving deliveries. The plugin adds a checkbox before the Place Order button at checkout, which reveals an optional text input for additional delivery instructions. If the customer chooses contact-free delivery, store owners will see it displayed on the admin order edit screen and in the order email. It will also be displayed on the customer’s order invoice.

DeLuzio’s Amplify Plugins shop focuses on plugins that improve the customer experience in WooCommerce. He reported that his products have seen more activity since social distancing recommendations were put in place. With the pandemic slowing down shipments from Amazon and other major retailers, local and independent stores have an opportunity to gain the confidence of new customers.

“I have definitely seen an uptick in plugin sales over the last month or so,” DeLuzio said. “I think, through talking to a few customers, this can probably be attributed to traditional brick and mortar stores and restaurants that are looking to move online to compensate for the lack of foot traffic that they are getting in their stores.”

The availability of contact-free delivery may be the deciding factor for some customers in quarantine, which could make all the difference for small business owners.

“There are probably a good number of local businesses that are struggling these days,” DeLuzio said. “Their customers are probably very concerned with the virus and maintaining social distancing, so if something like this plugin can help them out, even in a small way, I’m happy to have been able to put it together for them.”

Even when some economies begin opening up, there will undoubtedly be customers who will still be keen on having a contact-free delivery option, especially those among the populations most vulnerable to COVID-19. The notion of contact-free delivery may have a longer run beyond this current crisis and perhaps even become a permanent fixture on e-commerce checkout screens.