What happened last week - issue #99

This week: Laravel, WordPress, Bluesky and more

What happened last week

I spent last week preparing for WordCamp Wrocław. While I already did this talk in Gdynia, I decided to change a thing or two to make it a bit better.

Also, I’m diving more and more into Bluesky and I feel that it might replace Twitter. It’s already a much better source for new links and resources than Twitter has been for the last few months. If you still haven’t tried it, you should give Bluesky a try.

Oh, and I can already announce that I will be a speaker at WebExpo in Prague next year 🚀 Check it out here.

Interesting links

Unicon — Nicolas Hedger

Unicon is an amazing Laravel library that simplifies adding SVG icons to your app. Just use a helper function or a blade component and that’s it.

Also, I created a simple add-on for Statamic, so you can use it inside of Antlers files.

Core Contributors Voice Concerns Over Mullenweg’s Control and “Culture of Fear” in WordPress Community — Rae Morey

Rae sums up how Matt’s decisions are affecting WordPress's core contributors. I often say that I came for the code, but stayed because of the community. Without the community and their hard work, WordPress wouldn’t be where it is today. So fighting against them seems like a bad idea.

HTML Whitespace is Broken — Doug Parker

Have you ever thought a bit more about how whitespaces work in HTML? The last time I did, I discovered HTML for the first time, just to understand that 2+ spaces are converted to one and that I will have to live with this. Luckily, there are people like Doug. He decided to dive deep into this topic.

Astro Embed — Chris Swithinbank
Astro Embed is an amazing component that makes handing embeds inside of Astro a breeze.

Beautiful focus outlines — Thomas Günther

Thomas wrote an amazing article that shows how to make beautiful focus outlines. A lot of cool examples inside.

Defragment your PHPUnit tests — Ben Holmen

If you think that PHPUnit needs an MSDos defrag-style output, then I have great news for you - Ben just made something that will satisfy your needs.

PHP is Legacy, in 2024 — James Seconde

James does a great job debunking a lot of myths about PHP. Sadly, PHP’s reputation is as it is, but maybe thanks to such articles people will manage to see that PHP5 and modern PHP are different and it’s time to stop making fun of PHP.

Why I'm Migrating from X to Bluesky — Josh Goldberg

Josh perfectly explains my feelings about X and Blusky. Twitter was a big part of my developer and DevRel career. I have so many friends there, but for some time I felt that something was off. Missing notifications, not finding interesting links there, etc. Also, X started promoting more and more local trending content, which often resulted in me learning about different Polish pato streamers swearing at other pato streamers. So, overall I felt that X isn’t for me anymore. I hope Bluesky, won’t make the same mistakes.

Matt Mullenweg Leaked 729K WP Engine Websites—Here’s What I Discovered — Dumitru Brinzan

Dumitru decided to check all the pages that got involved in the Matt vs WPE war. And there is some interesting data. For example, Divi is the most popular theme, Yoast is the most popular plugin, and 10% of websites were set to no-index, so probably their authors didn’t want those URLs to become public.

And how was your week? Did you learn something interesting? Don’t hesitate to press the reply button or share your thoughts in the comment section.

Cheers,

Maciek